“Commentary would here be superfluous.  But in this we have before us the adequate idea of predestination, or, to give it a truer name, pre-damnation, held and taught in the school of the Koran.  Paradise and hell are at once totally independent of love and hatred on the part of the Deity, and of merits and demerits, of good or evil conduct, on the part of the creature; and, in the corresponding theory, rightly so, since the very actions which we call good or ill deserving, right or wrong, wicked or virtuous, are in their essence all one and of one, and accordingly merit neither praise nor blame, punishment nor recompense, except and simply after the arbitrary value which the all-regulating will of the great despot may choose to assign or impute to them.  In a word, he burns one individual through all eternity, amid red-hot chains and seas of molten fire, and seats another in the plenary enjoyment of an everlasting brothel, between forty celestial concubines, just and equally for his own good pleasure, and because he wills it.

“Men are thus all on one common level, here and hereafter, in their physical, social, and moral light,—­the level of slaves to one sole master, of tools to one universal agent.  But the equalizing process does not stop here:  beasts, birds, fishes, insects, all participate of the same honor or debasement; all are, like man, the slaves of God, the tools and automata of his will; and hence Mahomet is simply logical and self-consistent when in the Koran he informs his followers that birds, beasts, and the rest are ‘nations’ like themselves, nor does any intrinsic distinction exist between them and the human species, except what accidental diversity the ‘King,’ the ‘Proud One,’ the ‘Mighty,’ the ‘Giant,’ etc., as he styles his God, may have been pleased to make, just as he willed it, and so long as he may will it.”

“The Wahhabee reformer,” continues Mr. Palgrave, “formed the design of putting back the hour-hand of Islam to its starting-point; and so far he did well, for that hand was from the first meant to be fixed.  Islam is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain.  Sterile like its God, lifeless like its First Principle and Supreme Original, in all that constitutes true life,—­for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these the Koranic Deity has none,—­it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development.  To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the ‘written book’ is the ‘dead man’s hand,’ stiff and motionless; whatever savors of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.