41. (4) The Koran seems fully aware of the danger of the precise and fixed system of positive precepts moulding and regulating every department of life. The danger is that the system of formalism in which men are tied down to the performance of certain religious functions, minutely and precisely fixed in respect to time, place and manner, so that neither less nor more is required of them, retains too tight a grip upon them, when the circumstances which justified it have changed or vanished away. The moral growth of those who live under such a system of minute and punctilious restraint is stunted and retarded. The tendency of mankind to formalism is so strong that they very commonly, though often unconsciously, fall into the error of imagining that there is a peculiar intrinsic merit and virtue in the mere discharge of those prescribed forms of duties and religious ceremonies. Morality is with them not in the abstract but in the concrete, as consisting of a mass of religious observances, rather than of a certain disposition of heart towards God and man. The Koran deals with vice and virtue as a whole as well as in fragmentary details. It treats of inward motives as much as of outward practice, of exhortations equally with precepts and commands. It holds up before man the hatefulness and ugliness of vice _as a whole_. It does not enclose the whole of the practical morality and piety within the narrow compass of a fixed number of precepts. It lays the foundation of that far-reaching charity which regards all men as equal in the sight of God, and recognizes no distinction of races and classes. 120. "And abandon the semblance of wickedness and wickedness itself. They, verily, whose _only_ acquirement is iniquity shall be repaid for what they have gained." 152. "Say: Come, I will rehearse what your Lord hath made binding on you, that ye assign not aught to Him as sharers of his Divine honour, and that ye be good to your parents; _and_ that ye slay not your children because of poverty, for them and for you will We provide; and that ye come not near to pollutions, outward or inward; and that ye slay not anyone whom God hath forbidden you, unless for a just cause. This hath He enjoined on you: haply ye will understand."--Sura VI. 31. "Say: Only hath my Lord forbidden filthy actions, whether open or secret, and iniquity, and unjust violence, and to associate with God that for which He hath sent down no warranty, and to speak of God that of which ye have no knowledge."--Sura VII. 33. "To those who avoid great crimes and scandals, but commit only lighter faults, verily, thy Lord will be rich in forgiveness. He well knew you when He produced you out of the earth, and when ye were embryos in your mothers' womb. Assert not then your own purity. He best knoweth who feareth him."--Sura LIII.