The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future LifeAlger, William Rounseville
Religion
The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
Alger, William Rounseville
Future life -- Christianity -- Bibliography; Future life -- Christianity -- History of doctrines
him, their wicked misbelief, is the evidence of their original
reprobation. As the Koran itself expresses it, salvation is for
"all who are willing to be warned; but they shall not be warned
unless God please:"5 "all who shall be willing to walk uprightly;
but they shall not be willing unless God willeth."6
But such fine drawn distinctions are easily lost from sight or
spurned in the eager affray of affairs and the imminent straits of
the soul. While in dogma and theory the profession of an orthodox
belief, together with scrupulous prayer, fasting, alms, and the
pilgrimage to Mecca, or the absence of these things, simply
denotes the foregone determinations of God in regard to the given
individuals, in practice and feeling the contrasted beliefs and
courses of conduct are held to obtain heaven and hell. And we
find, accordingly, that Mohammed spoke as if God's primeval
ordination had fixed all things forever, whenever he wished to
awaken in his followers reckless valor and implicit submission.
"Whole armies cannot slay him who is fated to die in his bed." On
the contrary, when he sought to win converts, to move his hearers
by threatenings and persuasions, he spoke as if every thing
pertaining to human weal and woe, present and future, rested on
conditions within the choice of men. Say, "'There is but one God,
and Mohammed is his prophet,' and heaven shall be your portion;
but cling to your delusive errors, and you shall be companions of
the infernal fire." Practically speaking, the essence of
propagandist Islam was a sentiment like this. All men who do not
follow Mohammed are accursed misbelievers. We are God's chosen
avengers, the commissioned instruments for reducing his foes to
submission. Engaged in that work, the hilts of all our scimitars
are in his hand. He snatches his servant martyr from the battle
field to heaven. Thus the weapons of the unbelievers send their
slain to paradise, while the weapons of the believers send their
slain to hell. Up, then, with the crescent banner, and, dripping
with idolatrous gore, let it gleam over mountain and plain till
our sickles have reaped the earth! "The sword is the key of heaven
and the key of hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of Allah, a
night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting
and prayer. Whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven. In the
day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion and
odoriferous as musk."7 An infuriated zeal against idolaters and
unbelievers inflamed the Moslem heart, a fierce martial enthusiasm
filled the Moslem soul, and tangible visions of paradise and hell
floated, illuminate, throughtheMoslem imagination. And so from the
Persian Gulf to the Caucasus, from Sierra Leone to the Pyrenees,
the polity of Mohammed overran the nations, with the Koran in its
left hand, the exterminating blade in its right, one thunder shout
still breaking from its awful lips: "Profess Islam, and live, with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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