hers, one's lovers and friends, are a hindrance and
botheration. We are nothing, nothing: God is everything. God is the
only reality. And in God alone is my refuge. That is my story in
brief. If I did not like you, I would not have told it, and so freely.
Meditate upon it, and on the insignificance and evanescence of human
life. The world is a snare, and a bad snare, at that. For it can not
hold us long enough in it to learn to like it. It is a cobbler's
snare. The world is full of cobblers, O Khalid. Come away from it; be
an ideal craftsman--be an extremist--be a purist--come live with me.
Let us join our souls in devotion, and our hearts in love. Come, let
us till and cultivate this vineyard together.'

"And taking me by the hand, he shows me a cell furnished with a
hair-mat, a _masnad_ (leaning pillow), and a chair. 'This cell,' says
he, 'was occupied by the Bishop when he came here for a spiritual
exercise of three weeks. It shall be yours if you come; it's the best
cell in the Hermitage. Now, let us visit the chapel.' I go in with
him, and as we are coming out, I ask him child-like for a wafer. He
brings the box straightway, begs me to take as much as I desire, and
placing his hand on my shoulder, encircles me with one of his
benignant glances, saying, 'Allah illumine thy heart, O Khalid.'
'Allah hear thy prayer,' I reply. And we part in tears."

Here Khalid bursts in ecstasy about the higher spiritual kingdom, and
chops a little logic about the I and the not-I, the Reality and the
non-Reality.--"God," says the Hermit. "Thought," says the Idealist,
"that is the only Reality." And what is Thought, and what is God, and
what is Matter, and what is Spirit? They are the mysterious vessels of
Life, which are always being filled by Love and emptied by Logic. "The
external world," says the Materialist--"Does not exist," says the
Idealist. "'Tis immaterial if it does or not," says the Hermit. And
what if the three are wrong? The Universe, knowable and unknowable,
will it be affected a whit by it? If the German Professor's Chair of
Logic and Philosophy were set up in the Hermitage, would anything be
gained or lost? Let the _I_ deny the stars, and they will nevertheless
roll in silence above it. Let the not-I crush this I, this "thinking
reed," and the higher universal I, rising above the stars and flooding
the sidereal heavens with light, will warm, remold, and regenerate the
world.

"I can conceive of a power," writes Kh