In Stanley’s History of the Eastern Church, pp. 369-377, we find a very beautiful and striking contrast drawn between the sacred book of Christians and that of Mohammedans—the Bible and the Koran. Many enemies of God’s word in these days affect to find a contrast between the Bible and other books which claim to be sacred, unfavorable to the former. A candid examination will every time show that their adverse decisions arise from the opposition of their unsanctified natures to the pure teaching and holy precepts of the Old and New Testaments. The more closely the subject is examined, the more striking does the superiority of our blessed Bible appear. What is true of the Bible as compared with the Koran, is true of it, in a general sense, as compared with all other so-called sacred books. It alone, as seen in the variety of its topics, the wide range of its subjects, the sublimity of its themes, the holiness of its teaching, the harmony of its different parts, though written by so many different men, and in so many different ages of the world, and its adaptability to all nations and to all time, bears the impress of the divine hand. Let us more fervently love, more cheerfully study, and more closely follow, this Book of books. Mr. S. says:— “The Koran has special claims on our attention as the sacred book of the world which can best be compared with our own, and which, by that comparison, furnishes not merely an evidence to the Divine supremacy of the Bible, but also brings into the strongest relief the true character of the contents and authority of the Scriptures, in contradistinction to the modern theories which have sometimes been formed concerning them. “But the contrasts are far greater than the resemblances. I do not speak of the acknowledged superiority of the Christian doctrine, morals, or philosophy. For this, let a single instance suffice. What is there in the Koran that can be named for a moment, as a proof of inspiration, in comparison with St. Paul’s description of charity? I confine myself to the contrast of form between the two books. The Koran shows us what the Bible would be if narrowed down to our puny measurements, and what in its own divine and universal excellence it actually is. In the comparison between the two we clearly see how the Koran is marked by those attributes which we sometimes falsely ascribe to the Bible; how the peculiarities which we are sometimes afraid of acknowledging in the Bible are exactly those excellences which most clearly distinguish it from the Koran. “The Koran is uniform in style and mode of expression. It is true, as I have just remarked, that when chronologically arranged it exhibits to us, though in an indistinct form, the phases through which the mind of that one person passed. It is, as Mahomet’s followers called it, ‘his character.’ It is, in this respect, as the Old Testament might be if it were composed of the writings of the single prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah, or the New Testament if it were composed of the writings of the single apostle St. Paul. It is what the Bible as a whole would be, if from its pages were excluded all individual personalities of its various writers, all differences of time and place and character. But the peculiarity both of the Hebrew and of the Christian Scriptures is, that they are not confined to one place, or time, or person. They abound in incidents, so varied as to give to the whole book that searching application to every condition and character of life which has been a principal source of its endless edification. The differences between the several prophets and historians of the Old Testament, between the several evangelists and apostles of the New Testament, are full of meaning. On the face of each book we see what each book was intended to be and to teach. In each portion of each book we see what is prose, and what is poetry; what is allegory, or parable, or drama, or vision, or prophecy; what is chronicle, or precept, or narrative. The Bible is in this way not only its own interpreter, but its own guide. The styles of Scripture are so many Heaven-planted sign-posts to set our feet in the right direction. There is no other book which, within so short a compass, contains such ‘many-colored [πολυποίκιλος] wisdom,’ such a variety of minds, characters and situations. “The Koran represents not merely one single person, but one single stage of society. It is, with a few exceptions, purely Arabian. It is what the Bible would be, if all external influences were obliterated, and it was wrapped up in a single phase of Jewish life. But in fact the Bible, though the older portion of it is strictly Oriental, and though the latest portion of it belongs not to the modern, but to the ancient, and now extinct, world, yet even in its outward forms contains within it the capacities for universal diffusion. Emanating from Palestine, the thoroughfare of the Asiatic and European nations, itself a country of the most diverse elements of life and nature; it contains allusions to all those general topics which find a response everywhere. Whilst the Koran (with a very few exceptions) notices no phenomena except those of the desert, no form of society except Arabian life, the Bible includes topics which come home to almost every condition of life and almost every climate. The sea, the mountains, the town; the pastoral, the civilized, the republican, the regal state; can all find their expression in its words. Women emerge from their Oriental seclusion and foreshadow the destinies of their sex in European Christendom. And not only so, but Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, Greece, Rome, all come into contact with its gradual formation; so that, alone of sacred books, it avowedly includes the words and thoughts of other religions than its own; alone of Oriental books, it has an affinity of aspect with the North and the West; alone almost, of religious books, its story is constantly traversing the haunts of men and cities. The Koran ‘stays at home.’ The Bible is the book of the world, the companion of every traveler; read even when not believed, necessary even when unwelcome. “The Koran claims a uniform completeness of materials. It incorporates, indeed, some of the earlier Jewish, Christian, and Arabian traditions, but it professes to be one book. It has no degrees of authority in its several chapters, except in the few instances of direct abrogation of precepts. With these exceptions, it is entirely stationary. It has no progress, and therefore no sequence, and no coherence. The Bible, in all these respects, stands on what some modern writers would deem a lower level, but on what is in fact a far higher one. Its composition extends over two thousand eventful years. In most of its books are imbedded fragments of some earlier work, which have served to keep alive and to exercise the industry and acuteness of critics. It is not one Testament, but two. It is not one book, but many. The very names by which it was called in early times indicate the plurality of its parts. The word ‘Bible,’ which by a happy solecism expresses the unity of its general design, is of far later date and lower authority than the words ‘Scriptures, The Books, Biblia Sacra,’ by which it was called for the first twelve centuries of the Christian era, and which expressed the still grander and bolder idea of its diversity. The most exact definition which it gives of its own inspiration is, that it is ‘of sundry times and in diverse manners.’ In the fact and in the recognition of this gradual, partial, progressive nature of the Biblical revelation, we find the best answer to most of its difficulties and the best guarantee of its perpetual endurance. “The Koran contains the whole religion of Mahomet. It is to the Mussulman, in one sense, far more than the Bible is to the Christian. It is his code of laws, his creed, and (to a great extent) his liturgy. The Bible, on the other hand, demands for its full effect, the institutions, the teaching, the art, the society of Christendom. It propagates itself by other means than the mere multiplication of its printed or written copies. Sacred pictures, as is often said, are the Bibles of the unlettered. Good men are living Bibles. Creeds are Bibles in miniature. Its truths are capable of expansion and progression, far beyond the mere letter of their statement. The lives and deeds, and, above all, the One Life and the One Work which it records, spread their influence almost irrespectively of the written words in which they were originally recorded. It is not in the close limitation of the stream to its parent spring, but in the wide overflow of its waters, that the true fountain of Biblical inspiration proves its divine abundance and vitality. “‘Mohammed’s truth lay in a holy book,
Christ’s in a Sacred Life. “‘So while the world rolls on from change to change,
And realms of thought expand,
The letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man’s hand. “‘While, as the life-blood fills the growing form,
The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read.’”