Christianity and Islam | Page 2

saint and increase from
generation to generation.
Yet more remarkable is the fact that his utterances, his logia, if we may
use the term, some few of which are certainly genuine, increase from
year to year and form a large collection which is critically sifted and
expounded. The aspirations of mankind attribute to him such words of
the New Testament and of Greek philosophers as were especially
popular or seemed worthy of Muhammed; the teaching also of the new
ecclesiastical schools was invariably expressed in the form of
proverbial utterances attributed to Muhammed, and these are now
without exception regarded as authentic by the modern Moslem. In this
way opinions often contradictory are covered by Muhummed's
authority.
The traditions concerning Jesus offer an analogy. Our Gospels, for
instance, relate the beautiful story of the plucking of the ears of corn on
the Sabbath, with its famous moral application, "The Sabbath was made
for man, and not man for the Sabbath." A Christian papyrus has been
discovered which represents Jesus as explaining the sanctity of the
Sabbath from the Judaeo-Christian point of view. "If ye keep not the
Sabbath holy, ye shall not see the Father," is the statement in an
uncanonical Gospel. In early Christian literature, contradictory sayings
of Jesus are also to be found. Doubtless here, as in Muhammedan
tradition, the problem originally was, what is to be my action in this or
that question of practical life: answer is given in accordance with the
religious attitude of the inquirer and Jesus and Muhammed are made to
lend their authority to the teaching. Traditional literary form is then
regarded as historical by later believers.
Examples of this kind might be multiplied, but enough has been said to
show that much and, to some extent, new light may be thrown upon the
development of Christian tradition, by an examination of
Muhammedanism which rose from similar soil but a few centuries later,
while its traditional developments have been much more completely
preserved.
Such analogies as these can be found, however, in any of the

world-religions, and we propose to devote our attention more
particularly to the influences which Christianity and Islam exerted
directly upon one another. While Muhammedanism has borrowed from
its hereditary foe, it has also repaid part of the debt. By the very fact of
its historical position Islam was at first indebted to Christianity; but in
the department of Christian philosophy, it has also exerted its own
influence. This influence cannot be compared with that of Greek or
Jewish thought upon Christian speculation: Christian philosophy, as a
metaphysical theory of existence, was however strongly influenced by
Arabian thought before the outset of the Reformation. On the other
hand the influence of Christianity upon Islam--and also upon
Muhammed, though he owed more to Jewish thought--was so extensive
that the coincidence of ideas upon the most important metaphysical
questions is positively amazing.
There is a widespread belief even at the present day that Islam was a
complete novelty and that the religion and culture of the Muhammedan
world were wholly alien to Western medievalism. Such views are
entirely false; during the Middle Ages Muhammedanism and Western
culture were inspired by the same spirit. The fact has been obscured by
the contrast between the two religions whose differences have been
constantly exaggerated and by dissimilarities of language and
nationality. To retrace in full detail the close connection which unites
Christianity and Islam would be the work of years. Within the scope of
the present volume, all that can be done is to explain the points of
contact between Christian and Muhammedan theories of life and
religion. Such is the object of the following pages. We shall first treat
of Muhammed personally, because his rise as a religious force will
explain the possibility of later developments.
This statement also explains the sense in which we shall use the term
Christianity. Muhammedanism has no connection with
post-Reformation Christianity and meets it only in the mission field.
Practical questions there arise which lie beyond the limits of our
subject, as we have already indicated. Our interests are concerned with
the mediaeval Church, when Christianity first imposed its ideas upon
Muhammedanism at the time of its rise in the East, and afterwards
received a material extension of its own horizon through the rapid
progress of its protégé. Our task is to analyse and explain these special

relations between the two systems of thought.
The religion now known as Islam is as near to the preaching of
Muhammed or as remote from it, as modern Catholicism or Protestant
Christianity is at variance or in harmony with the teaching of Jesus.
The simple beliefs of the prophet and his contemporaries are separated
by a long course of development from the complicated religious system
in its unity and diversity which