m, 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;
cooeperating 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 cooeperating 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 Mahomet 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 Mahometans 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 speculation and life: the message sent direct out of
Heaven, which this Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to
be read. Their Judges decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it,
seek in it for the light of their life. They have mosques where it is
all read daily; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get
through the whole each day. There, for twelve-hundred years, has the
voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and
the hearts of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors that had read
it seventy-thousand times!

Very curious: if one