2. The first five lectures dealt with Mahometanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, the “defunct religions” (Persian, Egyptian, etc.), and
then (in pt. 2) with the “Relations of Mahometism to Christianity”; the last three are on the relations of Hinduism and Buddhism
to Christianity, and “How Christianity Assailed the defunct Systems.”
3. In the pref. Maurice refers at length to TC's “Lecture on Mahomet in his Hero Worship,” to which he objected when it was first given (see TC to MAC, 9 May 1840): “Some persons may have been led by that Lecture to identify Mahometanism with reverence for the person of Mahomet; they
will strongly object to the sentiments which I have expressed in one passage of this book. But I do not anticipate any such
objection from Mr. Carlyle himself. No writer has more distinctly recognised the Islamite principle of subjection to an absolute
Will, as the vital one in this faith; or has exhibited a more earnest, I had nearly said a more exclusive, veneration for
that principle” (viii). It is not clear exactly what passage Maurice had in mind. Naturally he affirms the truth of the Christian
revelation, which TC does not; and he writes of raising questions which “may never present themselves to a dilettante admirer
of Carlyle,” while “those whom his writings have really moved and who regard him with hearty, though perhaps silent gratitude
and affection, are, I know, haunted by them continually. If these Lectures should lead any one such questioner even to hope
for an answer, they will do the work for which I especially designed them” (ix–x).
