Still, both of these systems leave God outside of the world; above all as its Creator and Ruler, above all as its Judge; but not through all and in all.  The idea of an Infinite Love must be added and made supreme, in order to give us a Being who is not only above all, but also through all and in all.  This is the Christian monotheism.

Mohammed teaches not only the unity but also the spirituality of God, but his idea of the divine Unity is of a numeric unity, not a moral unity; and so his idea of divine spirituality is that of an abstract spirituality,—­God abstracted from matter, and so not to be represented by pictures and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above all,—­in a total separation.

Judaism also opposed idolatry and idol-worship, and taught that God was above all, and the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as with man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets, judges, kings; also with his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their tabernacle and temple.  Their spirituality was not quite as abstract then as that of the Mohammedans.

But Christianity, as soon as it became the religion of a non-Semitic race, as soon as it had converted the Greeks and Romans, not only imparted to them its monotheism, but received from them their strong tendencies to pantheism.  They added to the God “above all,” and the God “with all,” the God “in us all.”  True, this is also to be found in original Christianity as proceeding from the life of Jesus.  The New Testament is full of this kind of pantheism,—­God in man, as well as God with man.  Jesus made the step forward from God with man to God in man,—­“I in them, thou in me.”  The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God who is not only will and power, not only wisdom and law, but also love; of a God who desires communion and intercourse with his children, so coming and dwelling in them.  Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and God in us.

According to this view, Mohammedanism is a relapse.  It is going back to a lower level.  It is returning from the complex idea to the simple idea.  But the complex is higher than the simple.  The seed-germ, and the germ-cell, out of which organic life comes, is lower than the organizations which are developed out of it.  The Mollusks are more complex and so are higher than the Radiata, the Vertebrata are more complex than the Mollusks.  Man is the most complex of all, in soul as well as body.  The complex idea of God, including will, thought, and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than the simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches.  But the higher ought to come out of and conquer the lower.  How, then, did Mohammedanism come out of Christianity and Judaism?