igious systems in the
world, Buddhism and Christianity. The dogmatic structure of Islam
as a theology and its practical power as an experimental religion
offer a problem of the gravest interest. But we must hasten on to
give an exposition of merely those elements in it which are
connected with its doctrine of a future life.

It is a matter of entire notoriety that there is but the least
amount of originality in the tenets of the Mohammedan faith. The
blending together of those tenets was distinctive, the unifying
soul breathed into them was a new creation, and the great aim to
which the whole was subordinated was peculiar; but the component
doctrines themselves, with slight exception, existed before as
avowed principles in the various systems of belief and practice
that prevailed around. Mohammed adopted many of the notions and
customs of the pagan Arabs, the central dogma of the Jews as to
the unity of God, most of the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures,
innumerable fanciful conceits of the Rabbins,1 whole doctrines of
the Magians with their details, some views of the Gnostics, and
extensive portions of a corrupted Christianity, grouping them
together with many modifications of his own, and such additions as
his genius afforded and his exigencies required. The motley
strangely results in a compact and systematic working faith.

The Islamites are divided into two great sects, the Sunnees and
the Sheeahs. The Arabs, Tartars, and Turks are Sunnees, are
dominant in numbers and authority, are strict literalists, and are
commonly considered the orthodox believers. The Persians are
Sheeahs, are inferior in point of numbers, are somewhat freer in
certain interpretations, placing a mass of tradition, like the
Jewish Mischna, on a level with the Koran,2 and are usually
regarded as heretical. To apply our own ecclesiastical phraseology
to them, the latter are the Moslem Protestants, the former the
Moslem Catholics. Yet in relation to almost every thing which
should seem at all fundamental or vital they agree in their
teachings. Their differences in general are upon trivial opinions,
or especially upon ritual particulars. For instance, the Sheeahs
send all the Sunnees to hell because in their ablutions they wash
from the elbow to the finger tips; the Sunnees return the
compliment to their rival sectarists because they wash from the
finger tips to the elbow. Within these two grand denominations of
Sheeah and

1 Rabbi Abraham