and the desire of happiness hereafter; and triumphant in himself and seconded by his followers, had transmitted a faith and an empire, that, at length, extended through Asia, Africa, Spain, and nearly through Europe itself; and had left in history a more memorable name, and on his fellow creatures a more wide and lasting impression, than had ever before been produced by the energies of a single mind. This individual was Mahomet.

We are invited to examine and estimate a revolution like this by many considerations. I will mention some of them. The learning of the disciples of Mahomet is at one particular period connected with the history of literature. The Saracens (for this is their general, but not very intelligible appellation) contended with the Franks and Greeks for Europe, with the Latins for the Holy Land, with the Visigoths for Spain. The Caliphs, or successors of the Arabian Prophet, were possessed of Syria, Persia, and Egypt, and through different eras of their power exhibited the most opposite prodigies of simplicity and magnificence; these are powerful claims on our attention. The Turks, who became converts to the religion of Mahomet, gradually swelled into a great nation, obtained a portion of Europe, and have materially influenced its history.

If we turn from the descendants of Mahomet to Mahomet himself, we must observe that his religion professed to be derived from divine inspiration; and is, from its very pretensions, entitled to the examination of every rational being. To be unacquainted with this religion, is to be ignorant of the faith of a large division of mankind. An inquiry into the rise and propagation of it will amplify our knowledge of human nature; and an attention to the life of the Prophet may enlarge our comprehension of the many particular varieties of the human character. The religion of Mahomet has, in the last place, been often compared with the religion of Christ; and the success of the Koran has been adduced to weaken the argument that is drawn from the propagation of the gospel.

If such, therefore, be the subject before us, it is evidently sufficient to awaken our curiosity, and we may be grateful to those meritorious scholars, who have saved us from the

necessity of pursuing our inquiries through the volumes of the original authors. The Arabic writers have been translated; and the interesting occupation of a few weeks, or even days, may now be sufficient to satisfy our mind on topics, that might otherwise have justly demanded the labour of years.

With respect then to the books, that are to be read, I would propose to you, in the first place, to turn to the work of Sale-Sale's Koran-read the preface and his preliminary dissertation, consulting, at the same time, his references to the Koran. Of the Koran you may afterwards read a few chapters, to form an idea of the whole. And, as it is a code. of jurisprudence to the Mussulman, as well as a theological creed, you may easily, by referring to the index, collect the opinions and precepts of Mahomet on all important points. You may then turn to the Life of Mahomet, by Prideaux; and on the same subject to the Modern Universal History; you may then read the fiftieth chapter of Mr. Gibbon, and close with the Bampton Lectures of Professor White.

Prideaux, and the authors of the Modern History, you will probably think, unreasonably eager to expose the faults of the prophet, and you will surely be attracted to a second consideration of the work of Sale by the candour, the reasonableness, and the great knowledge of the subject, which that excellent author appears every where to display.

These works, however, will but the better prepare you to discern the merit of the splendid and complete account which Mr. Gibbon has given of the Arabian legislator and prophet. The historian has descended on this magnificent subject in all the fulness of his strength. His fiftieth chapter is not without his characteristic faults, but it has all his merits: and to approach the account of Mahomet and the Caliphs, in Gibbon, after travelling through the same subject in the volumes of the Modern History, is to pass through the different regions of the country, whose heroes these authors have described; it is to turn from the one Arabia to the other; from the sands and rocks of the wilderness to the happy land of fertility and freshness, where every landscape is luxuriance, and every gale is odour.

The Bampton lectures have received very unqualified appro

F

bation from the public; and have won the more cold and limited, and therefore more decisive, praise of Mr. Gibbon. The estimate of the student will probably be found between the two, much beyond the latter, and much within the former. There is not all the information given, which the knowledge of Professor White might and ought to have afforded. The references to the Arabic authors should have been translated and produced. The whole is written, not in the spirit of a critic and a judge, but of an eloquent advocate rejoicing to run his course, from a confidence in the arguments which he displays. The style is always too full and sounding, and the argument itself is often robbed of its due effect from a want of that simplicity of statement, so natural, so favourable to the cause of truth. Yet these celebrated discourses cannot fail of accomplishing their end, of enforcing upon the reader the general evidence of his own faith, and of animating his mind with the contrast between the religion of the Koran and the Gospel, between Mahomet and Jesus; the contrast between falsehood and truth, between the fierce and polluted passions of the earth and the pure and perfect holiness of heaven.

I had intended to have briefly stated the leading points of the life and religion of Mahomet; but I had rather, that the guides I have mentioned should conduct you through the whole of a subject, which is in fact too interesting and important to be touched upon in a general or summary manner. The effect of inquiry will be materially to diminish the general impression of wonder, with which every reflecting mind must have originally surveyed a triumph of imposture so extensive as that of Mahomet. The causes of his success have been well explained by the authors I have mentioned. Yet gifted as he was with every mental and personal qualification, and highly assisted in his enterprise by the moral and political situation of his countrymen, the student cannot fail to observe, how slow and painful was the progress of his empire and religion. After becoming affluent at an early period of life, he continued fifteen years in habits of occasional solitude and meditation. He was three years in effecting the conversion of his wife, his slave, his cousin, and eleven others; he was ten years employed in extending

the number of his disciples within the walls of Mecca. This long interval (twenty-eight years) had elapsed, before the guardians of the established idolatry were duly alarmed, and proceeded, from opposition, at last to attempt his life. After flying from Mecca, and being received and protected at Medina, it was six years before he could again approach his native city; two more before he could establish there his sovereignty and his worship; and two more, before the various tribes of Arabia could be brought to acknowledge him for their prophet. On several occasions the fate of himself and of his religion hung on the most wavering and doubtful balance. It was not Mahomet, who conquered the east, but his successors; and had he not attached to his fortunes and faith a few men of singular virtues and extraordinary military talents, his name and his religion might have perished with him, and the Arabians at his death might have relapsed into their former habits of loose political association, and of blind, unthinking idolatry.

To Mahomet, indeed, his success must have appeared complete. Arabia must have been the natural boundary of his thoughts, and every thing in Arabia he had conquered, and it was his own: he was become the great chief of his nation, and he held a still dearer empire over their feelings and their faith he was the leader of an invincible army, but he was more than an earthly conqueror; he was considered as the prophet of God; mere humanity was below him. It was at this moment of his elevation, when he was preparing to extend his temporal and spiritual dominion to Syria, that the angel of death was at hand to close his eyes for ever on the prospects of human greatness, and to remove him to the presence of that awful Being whose laws he had violated, whose name he had abused, and whose creatures he had deceived.

That an enthusiast like Mahomet should arise in Arabia can be no matter of surprise: the nation itself was of a temperament highly impetuous and ardent, unaccustomed to the severer exercises of the understanding, the inquiries of science, and the acquisition of knowledge, devoted only to eloquence and poetry, the impulses of the passions, and the visions of the imagination. An enthusiast like himself had arisen and been destroyed a little before his death; another soon after.

In the time of the Caliphs, after an interval of two hundred and sixty years, appeared the Arabian preacher Carmath. He too, like Mahomet, made his converts, dispersed his apostles amongst the tribes of the desert, and they were every where successful. The Carmathians were sublimed into the same fanatical contempt of death and devotion to their chiefs, as had been before the followers of Mahomet. They overran Arabia, trampled upon Mecca, and were one of the effective causes of the decline and fall of the Caliphs.

More temperate climates, more civilized countries, than those of the east, even times improved like our own, have witnessed the rise, and to a certain degree success, of enthusiasts, who have made considerable approaches to the pretensions of Mahomet. The German Swedenburgh entirely equalled him in his claims on the credulity of mankind; he affirmed distinctly that he had a regular communication with heaven. Like other enthusiasts, he was unable to prove his mission; but he convinced himself, and had his converts in different parts of Europe.

Of Mahomet, as of others, it is often asked whether he was an enthusiast or an impostor. He was both. In men like him the characters are never long separated. It is the essence of enthusiasm to overrate its end, to overvalue its authority; all means are therefore easily sanctified, that can accomplish its purposes. Imposture is only one amongst others and as it is the nature of enthusiasm at the same time to overlook the distinctions of reason and propriety, what is, or what is not imposture, is not always discerned; nor would be long regarded, if it were.

The designs of Mahomet are often supposed to have originated early in life, and to have been formed from a long, comprehensive, and profound meditation on the situation of his countrymen, and the nations of the east.

It is not thus, that great changes in the affairs of men are produced; it is not thus, that the founders of dynasties, the authors of revolutions, and the conquerors of the world proceed men like these are formed not only by original temperament and genius, but by situation and by the occasion; their ideas open with their circumstances, their ambition expands with their fortune; they are gifted with the prophetic eye, that