Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of ReligionMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of Religion
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
No doubt, M. Renan might say that we ignored his problem, and that we
have not removed the difficulties which drove him to the admission of
a monotheistic instinct. How is the fact to be explained, he might
ask, that the three great religions of the world in which the unity of
the Deity forms the key-note, are of Semitic origin, and that the
Aryan nations, wherever they have been brought to a worship of the One
God, invoke Him with names borrowed from the Semitic languages?
But let us look more closely at the facts before we venture on
theories. Mohammedanism, no doubt, is a Semitic religion, and its very
core is monotheism. But did Mohammed invent monotheism? Did he invent
even a new name of God? (Renan, p. 23.) Not at all. His object was to
destroy the idolatry of the Semitic tribes of Arabia, to dethrone the
angels, the Jin, the sons and daughters who had been assigned to
Allah, and to restore the faith of Abraham in one God. (Renan, p. 37.)
And how is it with Christianity? Did Christ come to preach a faith in
a new God? Did He or His disciples invent a new name of God? No,
Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil; and the God whom He
preached was the God of Abraham.
And who is the God of Jeremiah, of Elijah, and of Moses? We answer
again, the God of Abraham.
Thus the faith in the One living God, which seemed to require the
admission of a monotheistic instinct, grafted in every member of the
Semitic family, is traced back to one man, to him 'in whom all
families of the earth shall be blessed' (Genesis xii. 3, Acts iii. 25,
Galatians iii. 8). If from our earliest childhood we have looked upon
Abraham, the friend of God, with love and veneration; if our first
impressions of a truly god-fearing life were taken from him, who left
the land of his fathers to live a stranger in the land whither God
had called him, who always listened to the voice of God, whether it
conveyed to him the promise of a son in his old age, or the command to
sacrifice that son, his only son Isaac, his venerable figure will
assume still more majestic proportions when we see in him the
life-spring of that faith which was to unite all the nations of the
earth, and the author of that blessing which was to come on the
Gentiles through Jesus Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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