Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. The

universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a
Splendor, and a Terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and

reality, in all things whatever">whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. What
a modern talks of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does

not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of
things, undivine enough,--salable, curious, good for propelling steamships!

With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt to forget the _divineness_,
in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well

forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, I
think were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;--a thistle

in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the dead
_timber_; it is not the growing tree and forest,--which gives ever-new

timber, among other things! Man cannot _know_ either, unless he can
_worship_ in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle,

otherwise.
Much has been said and written about the sensuality of Mahomet's Religion;

more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted,
were not of his appointment; he found them practiced, unquestioned from

immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, strict" target="_blank" title="vt.限制；限定；约束">restrict them,
not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one: with

rigorous fasts, lavations, strictcomplex formulas, prayers five times a
day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy

religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could
succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to

heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense,--sugar-plums of any
kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies

something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his
"honor of a soldier," different from drill-regulations and the shilling a

day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and
vindicate himself under God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest

son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest
day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be

seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the
_allurements_ that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life

of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. Not
happiness, but something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous

classes, with their "point of honor" and the like. Not by flattering our
appetites; no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can

any Religion gain followers.
Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual

man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary,
intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any kind. His

household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water:
sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They

record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own
cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men

toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than
_hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling

three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would
not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon

into quarrel, into all kinds of fiercesincerity; without right worth and
manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you

say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in
any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes;

fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen
what kind of a man he _was_, let him be _called_ what you like! No emperor

with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting.
During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a

veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself.
His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling up,

in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made
him _worse_; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous things are

recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in
his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to that of

Christians, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name
of the Lord." He answered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated

well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the
War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet

said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had now gone to
his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him

weeping over the body;--the old gray-haired man melting in tears! "What do
I see?" said she.--"You see a friend weeping over his friend."--He went out

for the last time into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he
had injured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any

man? A voice answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an
occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: "Better be in shame now," said

he, "than at the Day of Judgment."--You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by
Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us

all, brought visible through twelve centuries,--the veritable Son of our
common Mother.

Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant. He is a rough
self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not.

There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon
humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own

clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors,
what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, "the

respect due unto thee." In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel
things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity

and generositywanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of
the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each called for,

there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if the case
call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters! The War of Tabuc is a

thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that
occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he

can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will
become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was

hot; "but Hell will be hotter!" Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns up: He
says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at

that Great Day. They will be weighed out to you; ye shall not have short
weight!--Everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye; he _sees_ it: his

heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the greatness of it.
"Assuredly," he says: that word, in the Koran, is written down sometimes

as a sentence by itself: "Assuredly."
No _Dilettantism_ in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and

Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadlyearnest about
it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for

Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root
of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man

never having been _open_ to Truth;--"living in a vain show." Such a man
not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The

rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in
quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer

than the truths of such a man. He is the insincere man: smooth-polished,
respectable in some times and places; inoffensive, says nothing harsh to

anybody; most _cleanly_,--just as carbonic acid is, which is death and
poison.

We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always of the superfinest
sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to good in them;

that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what is just and
true. The sublimeforgiveness of Christianity, turning of the other cheek

when the one has been smitten, is not here: you _are_ to revenge yourself,
but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond justice. On the other

hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight into the essence of man, is
a perfect equalizer of men: the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly

kingships; all men, according to Islam too, are equal. Mahomet insists not
on the propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity of it: he marks down

by law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if you neglect.
The tenth part of a man's annualincome, whatever that may be, is the

_property_ of the poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. Good
all this: the natural voice of humanity, of pity and equitydwelling in

the heart of this wild Son of Nature speaks _so_.
Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; in the one and the

other there is enough that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are
to recollect that the Arabs already had it so; that Mahomet, in whatever he

changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst sensualities,
too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. In the Koran

there is really very little said about the joys of Paradise; they are
intimated rather than insisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest

joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure Presence of the Highest, this
shall infinitely" target="_blank" title="ad.无限地；无穷地">infinitely transcend all other joys. He says, "Your salutation shall

be, Peace." _Salam_, Have Peace!--the thing that all rational souls long