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measure of Christian and unchristian feeling , which pervades our generally confused notions respecting the separation of an order of nien for the purposes of conducting Christian worship in a congregation ? It appears to me that when this subject has been treated , it has generally been witb reference to the minister and not to the people . It has been spoken of as if the grand point was , that the one who leads should be
eminently qualified , while it has been forgotten that if the office were really shared by many in a congregation , the qualifications now centred in one , probably would be diffused over a larger
number , and worldly thoughts and Worldly habits might receive a great check . Professing myself to have only come to the conclusion that " much may be said on both sides , " I will subscribe myself AN OBSERVER .
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On the Character of Mohammad . To the Editor . Sir , So little is known of Mohammed by European Christians , that he is usually
stigmatized as an Impostor , and the Koran , the book which is accounted sacred amongst the followers of the prophet , is by those who are totally ignorant of its contents reviled as a farrago of gross absurdities .
Without considering the age and the country iii which he resided , without investigating his laudable efforts to convert the idolatrous people around him from their superstitious practices , without regarding the piety he inculcated , and the moral precepts he held forth , as
essential to the happiness of society in the present life , and to eternal happiness in the world to come ; the pulpit and the press have combined In reviling him for his aspiring to a predominance which his persecutors stimulated him to attempt in his self-defence .
Not content with calling his ardent zeal fanaticism , Christians in general have numbered him amongst the chief enemies of Christianity . Relying on that liberality of sentiment which your periodical publication displays , I request your permission to offer my opinion that Mohammed was a Christian , and that from his zealously inculcating the doctrine of the Divini : Unity , he eoFiclliafed the mind * of many Jews , and found zcnlous adhe-
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rents amongst those Unitarian Christians who sought refuge in Asia and Africa during the turbulent scenes between the Arians and Trinitarians in the reign of Constantine . Mohammed assents to both the Old and New Testameuts merely stating that neither Jews nor Christians had preserved their Scriptures free from interpolation .
Ignorance and bigotry have been fostered for ages , and the Monkish crusades excited an antipathy between those who were marshalled under the banner of the cross and those who assembled around the banner of the crescent . From the accordance between the New Testament and the Koran relative to the
Divine Unity , piety to God , and benevolence to mankind , Christians and Mohammedans might have lived together in harmouy . Many a fiction relative to Mohammed has been invented to supply matter for a Canterbury Tale and possibly some of your readers may have believed the religion of Mohammed to be a persecuting religion .
Is it rational and equitable to impute to the religion of Jesus Christ all the irrational and inequitable conduct of some professors of Christianity ? And by parity of reasoning we ought not to impute to the religion inculcated by Mo ~ hammed , any part of the conduct of its professors which is coutrary and inconsistent with the injunctions and precepts of the Koran .
The Koran says , " Let there be no violence in religion / ' This gives no sanction to that spirit of domination falsely called religious . Again , " Fight for the religion o / God against those who fight against you , but transgress not by attacking them first , for God lovet / i not the transgressor . " Although the latter quotation differs materially from the admonition of Jesus Christ , that when smote on one cheek
we should turn the other also , your readers will be aware that very few Christians have cultivated the spirit of forbearance recommeuded in the gospel , and that there are very few pages in Ecclesiastical History which do not evideuce a deficiency in that degree of moderation which the Koran enjoins . Not ouly hierarchies against sects , but sectarians against each other , from the time of Atkarumus to the commotions at
Ulster *—wlio have conformed even to the injunction of the Arabian Prophet ? Although burning at the . stake is no
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274 Miscellaneous Correspondence .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 274, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/58/
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