The reason assigned for Mohammed’s having nine wives may be sound though we do not precisely comprehend its full meaning.
He states, those women are in a very dependent state, that to have more than four wives would “super induce oppression,” and to observe justice with regard to nine would be “next to impossible.”
Therefore, in conformity with the general mercies vouchsafed to the faithful, “none but the Prophet was allowed to have more than four. But as he was the paragon of all justice he was allowed to have nine.”
This reasoning, he proceeds, “might be supposed to forbid a plurality of wives;” but no, this would never suit the Mussulman; for “every sensible man must see that this reduction of the number of wives to one would also reduce men to difficulties. But let us see what he thinks of our law of marriage:
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“The law, however, now in the hands of Christians, is, as every man of sense knows, of a very different description; and, therefore, can never have come from God.
Their women too being allowed to take any man they may please, and whenever they please, cannot but super induce greater confusion in their tables of pedigrees, and must put an entire end to that chastity, which, everyone knows, is both necessary and proper.
In such a case no one can possibly know whose son he is. And then he reads a lecture to the Roman Catholics on the evils of monasticism and celibacy, which we recommend to their attention.
We shall quote but one passage more and that because we think it deserves attention. The Mirza denies that Mohammed ever intended to say that he could not work miracles:”to say, therefore, that he pretended to nothing more than merely to be the messenger of a revelation from above; and then to argue.
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That a contrary supposition would involve a manifest contradiction to his own declarations, is evidently unfair; and particularly so when applied to a period of time not less than three and twenty years.”(p. 255)
This objection should be allowed due weight: and in order to answer it satisfactorily, it would be useful to find out at what different times the commentators suppose these expressions were used which disclaim the power of working miracles; if they extended over the greater period of the prophet’s ministry, it would render our attack unanswerable.
Where all is excellent it is difficult to select; two short extracts however, will give some idea of the Doctor’s conclusive mode of treating his subject.
The Mirza had discarded the doctrine of the atonement with a contemptuous sneer; “the statement,” he says regarding H. Martyn’s notice of it, “is perhaps more surprising than the foregoing, and calculated to provoke the smile even of a child.
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For all might have been obviated by one sentence, which the angel Gabriel might have delivered and explained to any one of the Prophets;”-and thus, too, he would have swept away the whole system of sacrifices: alas!
The wisdom of God is foolishness with men. Dr. Lee calmly replies: “However this might have been done concerns not us to know. Our question is not, as to what might have been done, but what has been done.
If the Almighty had thought proper, he might have revealed his will in ways totally different from those which he has chosen; but as his will has been revealed, it is our duty to enquire what that is; and not to suggest what it might have been.”- (p. 560).