they had raised his resentment, and the prospect of revenge began to open; "God propoundeth unto men," he said, " examples," probably referring to the wars undertaken by divine command against the ancient idolaters of Canaan. "When ye encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads until ye have made a great slaughter among them, and bind them in bonds; and either give them a free dismission afterwards, or exact a ransom; until the war shall have laid down its arms. This shall ye do. Verily, if God pleased, he could take vengeance on them without your assistance; but he commandeth you to fight his battles, that he may prove the one of you by the other." Cowardice, or reluctance to engage, were denounced as among the greatest crimes-courage as the highest virtue. "As for those who fight in defence of God's true religion, God will not suffer their works to perish; he will guide them, and will dispose their heart aright; and he will lead them into paradise, of which he hath told them." "* Innumerable passages of a similar kind might be quoted from the chapters revealed at Medina, nor is it to be questioned, that they succeeded in raising the martial spirit of his hearers to the highest pitch. "The sword," says the prophet, "is the key of heaven and of hell: a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months' fasting or prayer.

Who

soever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment, his wounds shall be resplendent as vermillion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.”

* Chap. xlvii.

We are aware of the difficulty of assigning precisely the date of these effusions, but if, as is most probable, they were poured forth previously to his drawing the sword they must have been designed, as unquestionably they were adapted, to fire the Arabs with enthusiasm and intrepidity; nor was the hope of considerable booty wanting, still further to produce this effect, since the wealthy caravans, of their more southern countrymen, were continually passing the deserts of Medina, and sometimes they were but poorly guarded.

66

"*

It has been insinuated that Mahomet first took up arms in his own defence, and by more than one historian, he has been justified in seeking to repel, or prevent the hostilities of his enemies, and to exact a reasonable measure of retaliation. "The choice of an independent people," says Gibbon, had exalted the fugitive of Mecca to the rank of a sovereign, and he was invested with the just prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or defensive war.' That such a sentiment was entertained by a Mahometan does not at all surprise us, nor is it marvellous that it should be justified by an infidel; if it be true, war needs nothing to render it laudable, but the pretext of former injuries, and the possession of power. The defence set up for Mahomet, is equally availing for every sanguinary and revengeful tyrant; and men, instead of being bound together by the ties of clemency and mutual forgiveness of injuries, are transformed into fiends, watching for the opportunity of destroying each other.

The same learned and eloquent historian, with

* Decline and Fall, chap. 1.

It

characteristic malignity against revealed religion, associates Mahomet with Moses and the judges and kings of Israel. "The military laws," he says, "of the Hebrews are still more rigorous than those of the Arabian legislator," an allegation which we apprehend he would find it difficult to maintain but if it were so, in the one case there was divine authority for the proceeding, which was wanting in the other. Unless the fanatical, unconnected, and rabid enthusiasm of the Koran be entitled to equal respect with the sober, chastened, and sanctifying revelations of the Bible, we must take away from the former that solemn sanction, that explicit direction which distinguished the latter. Moses, Joshua, and the prophets, demonstrated their commission, Mahomet affirmed, but could never give proof of his. will not be denied, that there is some similarity in the proceedings taken in the two cases; but it must be observed, that the wars of Mahomet were professedly in support of his religion; those of the Israelites never contemplated making converts: the one were general, against all unbelievers, admitting of no exception; the other, under divine direction, contemplated the punishment and overthrow of particular nations only: to the one, men were incited by every appeal that could be made to their cupidity, their revenge, or their lust; to the other, the incentive was simply obedience to the divine command. The wars in which the Israelites engaged, were as obviously a punishment upon certain idolatrous and guilty nations, as the various plagues had been upon the Egyptians, or the destruction of the Pentapolis upon their illfated inhabitants; and none will dispute the right

of the author of our being to punish crimes against himself in such manner as to him may seem best. An observation of Dr. Paley on the Israelitish wars is exceedingly philosophical and just. "In reading the Old Testament account of the Jewish wars and conquests in Canaan, and the terrible destruction brought upon the inhabitants thereof, we are constantly to bear in our minds that we are reading the execution of a dreadful but just sentence, pronounced by God against the intolerable and incorrigible crimes of these nations; that they were intended to be made an example to the whole world of God's avenging wrath against sins of this magnitude and this kind,-sins which, if they had been suffered to continue, might have polluted the whole ancient world, and which could only be checked by the signal and public overthrow of nations notoriously addicted to them, and so addicted as to have incorporated them even into their religion and their public institutions; that the miseries inflicted upon the nations by the invasion of the Jews, were expressly declared to be inflicted on account of their abominable sins: that God had borne with them long: that God did not proceed to execute his judgments till their wickedness was full: that the Israelites were mere instruments in the hands of a righteous Providence, for effectuating the extermination of a people of whom it was necessary to make a public example to the rest of mankind: that this extermination, which might have been accomplished by a pestilence, by fire, by earthquakes, was appointed to be done by the hands of the Israelites, as being the clearest and most intelligible method of displaying the power and righteousness of the

God of Israel-his power over the pretended gods of other nations, and his righteous hatred of the crimes into which they were fallen."*

Similar arguments cannot be urged in favour of the wars undertaken by Mahomet, whose history shows that he sanctioned fraud, perfidy, cruelty, and injustice, for the propagation of his faith, whose character was stained by the deliberate murder of fugitives not yielding the required submission, and whose numerous other vices are by no means compensated by those personal and social virtues which he deemed necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet, among his fol lowers and friends.

CHAPTER VII.

Mahomet draws the sword contrary to his early professionsProclaims war against the Koreish.-Battle of Bedr.-Victory attributed to God.-Policy as well as piety of this.-Caravan surprised and taken at Nejed.-Dispute about spoils.-Reverse of Ohod.-War of the ditch or nations.-Mahomet guilty of cold-blooded murder.-His wars against the Jews of the families of Kainoka, Nadir, and Khoraida.-Reduction of Khaibar.Motives inducing these wars.

HITHERTO Mahomet had confined himself to a war of words. At Mecca he had used only the milder forms of persuasion and argument in propagating his religion. "Warn thy people," had been the direction given to him, "for thou art a warner only, thou art not empowered to act with authority over them." + Up to the period of his Koran, ch. 88.

Paley's Sermons; Serm. 29.

K