essity had ordered was the
wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic
pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of
a brain; to know that it _had_ verily, though deep beyond his
soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;--that his part in
it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence
follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.

I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and
invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely
while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of
all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss
calculations; he is victorious while he cooeperates with that great
central Law, not victorious otherwise:--and surely his first chance of
cooeperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with
his whole soul that it _is_; that it is good, and alone good! This is
the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;--for Islam
is definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not
been, neither had it been. Christianity also commands us, before all,
to be resigned to God. We are to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood;
give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know that we
know nothing; that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it
seems; that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God
above, and say, It is good and wise, God is great! "Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him." Islam means in its way Denial of Self,
Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has
revealed to our Earth.

Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this
wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling, splendour as of life and Heaven,
in the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it
revelation and the angel Gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call
it? It is the 'inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us
understanding.' To _know_; to get into the truth of anything, is ever
a mystic act,--of which the best Logics can but babble on the surface.
'Is not Belief the true god-announcing Miracle?' says Novalis.--That
Mahomet's whole soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed
him, should feel as if it were important and the only important thing,
was very natural. That Providence had unspeakably honoured _him_ by
revealing it, savi