Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Mohdy himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting, because a more rational, reform.

But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such deus ex machina as an inspired guide to point her out her road.  Her reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a reactionary spirit.  This only can be the true one, for it is a law of nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones—­to greater knowledge, not to less—­to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement.  Nor is there anything in the true principles of Islam to make such progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.

Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs.  If we examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this.  The Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans live.  At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and the revelation of God’s claims on man.  Psalms, many of them sublime, occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly be classed as law.  Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident that to it, and not to the Koran’s dogmatic theology, Islam owed its great and long career of triumph in the world.

Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from heaven.  At first it was little more than a confirmation of the common custom of Arabia, supplemented indeed and corrected by revelation, but based upon existing rules of right and wrong.  When, however, Islam emerged from Arabia in the first decade of her existence, and embracing a foreign civilization found herself face to face with new conditions of life, mere custom ceased to be a sufficient guide; and, the voice of direct revelation having ceased, the faithful were thrown upon their reason to direct