miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work
no miracles. I? 'I am a Public Preacher;' appointed to preach this
doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really
from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world,
says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly 'a sign to
you,' if your eyes were open! This Earth, God made it for you:
'appointed paths in it;' you can live in it, go to and fro on it.--The
clouds in the dry country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very
wonderful: Great clouds, he says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper
Immensity, where do they come from! They hang there, the great black
monsters; pour-down their rain deluges 'to revive a dead earth,' and
grass springs, and tall leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters
hanging round. Is not that a sign?' Your cattle too,--Allah made them;
serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have
your clothing from them, very strange creatures; they come ranking
home at evening-time, 'and,' adds he, 'and are a credit to you!' Ships
also,--he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they
spread-out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there,
Heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie motionless, God has
withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! Miracles? cries
he; what miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves there? God
made _you_, 'shaped you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once; a
few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts,
'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and gray
hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again
are not. 'Ye have compassion on one another:' this struck me much:
Allah might have made you having no compassion on one another,--how
had it been then! This is a great direct thought, a glance at
first-hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic
genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A
strong untutored intellect: eyesight, heart; a strong wild man,--might
have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero.

To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous.
He sees what, as we said once before, all great thinkers, the rude
Scandinavians themselves, in one way or other, have contrived to see:
That this so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very deed,
Nothing; is a visual and tactual Manifestation