a kind of
'revelation;'--what we must call such for want of some other name? It
is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the
primal reality of things. God has made many revelations: but this man
too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The
'inspiration of the Almighty giveth _him_ understanding:' we must
listen before all to him.

This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and
Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive
him so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an
earnest confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not
false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery
mass of Life cast-up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To
_kindle_ the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can
the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such
were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about
him.

On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business
hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should
say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one
would think, might know better. Who is called there 'the man according
to God's own heart'? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins
enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the
unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's own
heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are
faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of
it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended
struggle of it, be forgotten? 'It is not in man that walketh to direct
his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most
divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious
consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so conscious is
divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is 'pure' as
dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for us in
those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of
a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will
ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul
towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled,
down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with
tears, repentance, true unconquerable pu