"I am a Christian, too."

And he relates of the Buha when he was on trial in Rhodes. "Of what
religion are you," asks the Judge. "I am neither a Camel-driver nor a
Carpenter," replies the Buha, alluding thereby to Mohammad and
Christ. "If you ask me the same question," Khalid continues--"but
I see you are uncomfortable." And he takes up the cushion which
had fallen behind the divan, and places it under her arm. He then
lights a cigarette and holds it up to her inquiringly. Yes? He,
therefore, lights another for himself, and continues. "If you ask me
the same question that was asked the Buha, I would not hesitate in
saying that I am both a Camel-driver and Carpenter. I might also be
a Buhaist in a certain sense. I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be
the guise it assumes; and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.
Indeed, every religion is good and true, if it serves the high
purpose of its founder. And they are false, all of them, when they
serve the low purpose of their high priests. Take the lowest of the
Arab tribes, for instance, and you will find in their truculent
spirit a strain of faith sublime, though it is only evinced at times.
The Beduins, rovers and raveners, manslayers and thieves, are in
their house of moe-hair the kindest hosts, the noblest and most
generous of men. They receive the wayfarer, though he be an enemy,
and he eats and drinks and sleeps with them under the same root, in
the assurance of Allah. If a religion makes a savage so good, so kind,
it has well served its purpose. As for me, I admire the grand
passion in both the Camel-driver and the Carpenter: the barbaric
grandeur, the magnanimity and fidelity of the Arab as well as the
sublime spirituality, the divine beauty, of the Nazarene, I deeply
reverence. And in one sense, the one is the complement of the
other: the two combined are _my_ ideal of a Divinity."

And now we descend from the chariot of the empyrean where we are
riding with gods and apostles, and enter into one drawn by mortal
coursers. We go out for a drive, and alight from the carriage in the
poplar grove, to meander in its shades, along its streams. But
digressing from one path into another, we enter unaware the eternal
vista of love. There, on a boulder washed by the murmuring current, in
the shade of the silver-tufted poplars, Khalid and Mrs. Gotfry sit
down for a rest.

"Everything in life must always resolve itself into love," said
Khalid, as he stood on the rock holdi