The opinion which formerly prevailed among Christians that Mohammed was an impostor, a false prophet, was bound up with the conception that God, to the exclusion of other nations, had revealed himself immediately and supernaturally first to Israel, and afterwards through Christ to all mankind. Hence it followed that Christianity was not prized as the highest religion, existing along with less developed forms of religion, but was opposed as the only true religion to all others, which were regarded as the fruit of imposture and error, an opinion to which the religious and political struggles in which Islam and Christendom have been involved also richly contributed. Mohammed was seer and prophet, filled with fiery zeal for religion, and, while he stands indeed in this respect, both personally and with regard to the contents of his preaching and the means by which he sought to gain admission for his doctrine, below the seers of Israel, and far below the founder of Christianity, yet, on the other hand, his monotheism, abstract as it is, must be regarded as a wholesome reaction against the ever-increasing polytheistical superstition to which in his time the Christian church of the East especially had sunk. Islamism stands, however, below original Christianity, the religion of Jesus and the Apostles, in that, by separating God, as the abstract one Supreme Being, from the world, it leaves no place for the doctrine of God's immanence, or the indwelling of the Spirit of God in man. Hence in Islamism the divine revelation remains purely mechanical, with no natural point of connection in man, and therefore there is no possibility of an enduring prophetism, which is the fundamental principle of Christianity. From this separation of God and man, the Mohammedan doctrine of predestination, in distinction from the Christian, acquires its abstract and fatalistic character, whereby man, instead of being regarded as a being in whose free activity God's power and life are glorified, is conceived as a passive instrument of a higher power. To true moral independence, therefore, the Moslem does not attain. His religion is legal and external, and therefore intolerant and exclusive; and when Islamism, led by excited passion and a heated imagination, disregarded the sanctity of marriage, and held up as a reward before the faithful Moslem a paradise characterized by sensual enjoyment, it missed at once the deep moral and spiritual character of Christianity. To these defects must be ascribed the fact that Islamism, adapted to the need of the East, and therefore spread over a large part of Asia and Africa, has not, with the exception of the empire of Turkey, and for a time also of Spain, penetrated Europe; and, overshadowed by a higher development of humanity, has reached its highest bloom, while Christianity, brought back to its original purity, remains the religion of the civilized world. FOOTNOTES: