wn personality and
say:--"Praise to me, is there any greater than myself? I am the Truth."

The following verse of the Quran is quoted by Sufis in support of their
favourite dogma--the attaining to the knowledge of God: "When God said to
the angels, 'I am about to place a viceregent on the earth,' they said:
'Wilt Thou place therein one who shall commit abomination and shed blood?
Nay; we celebrate Thy praise and holiness.' God answered them, 'Verily I
know that ye wot not of.'" (Sura ii. 28.) It is said that this verse proves
that, though the great mass of mankind would commit abomination, some would
receive the divine light and attain to a knowledge of God. A Tradition
states that David said: "'Oh Lord! why hast Thou created mankind?' God
replied, 'I am a hidden treasure, and I would fain become known.'" The
business of the mystic is to find this treasure, to attain to the Divine
light and the true knowledge of God.

The earlier Muhammadan mystics sought to impart life to a rigid and formal
ritual, and though the seeds of Pantheism were planted in their system from
the first, they maintained that they were orthodox. "Our system of
doctrine," says Al-Junaid, "is firmly bound up with the dogmas of the
faith, the Quran and the Traditions." There was a moral earnestness about
many of these men which frequently restrained the arm of unrighteous power,
and their sayings, often full of beauty, show that they had the power of
appreciating the spiritual side of life. Some of these sentences are worthy
of any age. "As neither meat nor drink," says one, "profit the diseased
body, so no warning avails {90} to touch the heart full of the love of this
world." "The work of a holy man doth not consist in this, that he eats
grain, and clothes himself in wool, but in the knowledge of God and
submission to His will." "Thou deservest not the name of a learned man till
thy heart is emptied of the love of this world." "Hide thy good deeds as
closely as thou wouldst hide thy sins." A famous mystic was brought into
the presence of the Khalif Harun-ur-Rashid who said to him: "How great is
thy abnegation?" He replied, "Thine is greater." "How so?" said the Khalif.
"Because I make abnegation of this world, and thou makest abnegation of the
next." The same man also said: "The display of devotional works to please
men is hypocrisy, and acts of devotion done to please men are acts of
polytheism."

But towards the close of the second century of th