vision; the test of a sincere heart.

Mahomet can work no 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motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir!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