HKB
deaf to each distracting sound, In ritual language God adore, In spirit to his presence soar, And in the pauses of the prayer, Rest, as if rapt in glory there."
"There are of course formalists and hypocrites in Islam as well as in religions of which we have more experience. The uniformity and regularity of their prostrations resemble the movements of a well-drilled company of soldiers or of machines, but the Koran denounces "woe upon those who pray, but in their prayers are careless, who make a show of devotion, but refuse to help the needy;" while nowhere is formalism more pungently ridiculed than in the common Arabic proverb, "His head is towards the Kibleh, but his heels among the weeds." We could almost excuse a touch of formalism for the sake of securing that absolute stillness and outward decorum in worship which deceives the stranger as he enters a crowded mosque into the belief that it is quite empty. Persons who hold themselves excused from the duty of worship by every slight obstacle might do worse than get infected with the sublime formalism of Cais, son of Sad, who would not shift his head an inch from the place of his prostration, though a huge serpent lifted its fangs close to his face and finally coiled itself round his neck. And if some are formal, certainly many are very much in earnest."[157]
[Sidenote: Ablutions.]
The ablutions have not been imposed as burdens, or as having any mysterious merit, but merely as a measure of cleanliness.
"God desireth not to lay a burden upon you, but he desireth to purify you."
[Footnote 156: The institution of pilgrimage is a harmless one, and conducive to unity in religion for Arabs, and gives moreover an impetus to trade at large.]
[Footnote 157: Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, by Marcus Dods, D.D., pp. 30-1.]
[Sidenote: Koran both abstract and concrete in morals.]
(4) The Koran seems fully aware of the danger of the precise and fixed system of positive precepts moulding and regulating every department of life. The danger is that the system of formalism in which men are tied down to the performance of certain religious functions, minutely and precisely fixed in respect to time, place and manner, so that neither less nor more is required of them, retains too tight a grip upon them, when the circumstances which justified it have changed or vanished away. The moral growth of those who live under such a system of minute and punctilious restraint is stunted and retarded. The tendency of mankind to formalism is so strong that they very commonly, though often unconsciously, fall into the error of imagining that there is a peculiar intrinsic merit and virtue in the mere discharge of those prescribed forms of duties and religious ceremonies. Morality is with them not in the abstract but in the concrete, as consisting of a mass of religious observances, rather than of a certain disposition of heart towards God and man. The Koran deals with vice and virtue as a whole as well as in fragmentary details. It treats of inward motives as much as of outward practice, of exhortations equally with precepts and commands. It holds up before man the hatefulness and ugliness of vice as a whole. It does not enclose the whole of the practical morality and piety within the narrow compass of a fixed number of precepts. It lays the foundation of that far-reaching charity which regards all men as equal in the sight of God, and recognizes no distinction of races and classes.
"And abandon the semblance of wickedness and wickedness itself. They, verily, whose only acquirement is iniquity shall be repaid for what they have gained."