on them,"--these are wood, I
tell you! They can do nothing for you; they are an impotent blasphemous
pretence; a horror and abomination, if ye knew them. God alone is; God
alone has power; He made us, He can kill us and keep us alive: "_Allah
akbar_, God is great." Understand that His will is the best for you;
that howsoever sore to flesh-and-blood, you will find it the wisest,
best: you are bound to take it so; in this world and in the next, you
have no other thing that you can do!

And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe this, and with their
fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to
them, I say it was well worthy of being believed. In one form or the
other, I say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed by all
men. Man does hereby become the high-priest of this Temple of a World.
He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World;
cooperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: I know, to this
day, no better definition of Duty than that same. All that is _right_
includes itself in this of cooperating with the real Tendency of the
World: you succeed by this (the World's Tendency will succeed), you are
good, and in the right course there. _Homoiousion, Homoousion_, vain
logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out,
and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to
mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this,
it means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be
correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete Sons of Adam
do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all
these vain jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was a
Reality, direct from the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab
idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go
up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was
_fire_.

It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after
the Flight to Mecca, that Mohammed dictated at intervals his Sacred
Book, which they name _Koran_, or _Reading_, "Thing to be read." This is
the Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is
not that a miracle? The Mohammedans regard their Koran with a reverence
which few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted everywhere
as the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone-upon
in specula