And, therefore, when Mohammed and his personal friends were
dead, the belief in a present divine teacher, on the whole, died with
them; and the Mussulmans began to put the Koran in the place of Him of
whom the Koran spoke. They began to worship the book--which after all
is not a book, but only an irregular collection of Mohammed's
meditations, and notes for sermons--with the most slavish and ridiculous
idolatry. They fell into a cabbalism, and a superstitious reverence for
the mere letters and words of the Koran, to which the cabbalism of the
old Rabbis was moderate and rational. They surrounded it, and the
history of Mohammed, with all ridiculous myths, and prodigies, and lying
wonders, whereof the book itself contained not a word; and which
Mohammed, during his existence, had denied and repudiated, saying that
he worked no miracles, and that none were needed; because only reason
was required to show a man the hand of a good God in all human affairs.
Nevertheless, these later Mussulmans found the miracles necessary to
confirm their faith: and why? Because they had lost the sense of a
present God, a God of order; and therefore hankered, as men in such a
mood always will, after prodigious and unnatural proofs of His having
been once present with their founder Mohammed.
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