thoughts. Full of this feeling, of the awe and veneration innate in man and co-existent with the eternal ages, he bursts out in the second surah: “God! there is no God but He; the living, the self-subsisting: neither slumber nor sleep seizeth Him; to Him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him, but through His good pleasure? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come unto them, and they shall not comprehend anything of His knowledge, but so far as He pleaseth. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both is no burden unto Him. He is the high and mighty.”

As a natural outburst of emotions and convictions that had been pent up within his own inner consciousness, that were the offspring of some twenty years of journeyings to and fro across the deserts where “Amin” the faithful one was in direct and constant contact with Nature, and often in silent communion with the Infinite, these few words are truly magnificent and sublime; magnificent not only for the boldness and sublimity of their imagery and conception, but magnificent also with the intensity and profundity of true sincerity. Few, but all the more pithy for that, these words are from the heart and soul of the man—a man who speaks not unadvisedly with his lips, but who feels with every nerve and fibre of his intensely emotional being. They are (as he himself feels) the outpouring of an insignificant and impotent atom, yet of a sincere and earnest man approaching in all humility and veneration, and with the loyalty and allegiance of a true believer and servant, the great, invisible He, who holds him and all creatures in the hollow of His mighty hand.

In a conversation that Luther had one day with some friends at table, he spoke of the world as a vast and magnificent pack of cards composed of emperors, kings, princes and so forth. For several ages these had been vanquished by the Pope. Then God had come upon the scene, and chosen the “ace,” the very smallest card in the pack—himself, in a word—and overthrown this conqueror of worldly powers and principalities. Mohammed, as much as Luther, was one of “God’s Aces.” Seldom, indeed, in the history of the world, has so great a human river flowed from a source so puny. Never did the divine manifest itself in a single pip, so seemingly small and insignificant as a cause, yet so pre-eminently and consistently great as an effect!

“Men,” says Dumas in one of his historico-romantic masterpieces, “are visible, palpable, moral. You can meet, attack, subdue them; and when they are subdued you can subject them to trial and hang them. But ideas you cannot oppose in that way. They glide unseen; they penetrate; they hide themselves especially from the sight of those who would destroy them. Hidden in the depths of the soul, they there throw out deep roots. The more you cut off the branches which imprudently appear, the more powerful and inextirpable become the roots below.

“An idea is a young giant which must be watched night and day; for the idea which yesterday crawled at your feet, to-morrow will dispose of your head. An idea is a spark falling upon straw.” ... “For the mind of man is no inert receptacle of knowledge, but absorbs and incorporates into its own constitution the ideas which it receives.” Thus it was with Mohammed. God was the spark, the vital spark of spiritual flame, and this humble but honest Arab trader was the straw, that after twenty years of silent but tenacious smouldering God had set a light to.

The better, however, to understand his character and purpose, we must divide his life into two sections. The first when, as trader from the age of thirteen up to forty, first for his uncle and then for Khadija, he was the man of business. Yet synchronous with this the man of ideas and ideals that he kept to himself however; that he divulged to no one. For not until the time was ripe and the hour had come, not until he felt the call—felt, that is, that he was ready and able to begin—did he confide even in Khadija. The second section when, as the apostle of God, he worked with all the fiery fervour yet steady zeal of a true prophet, to put his ideas into practice. But there was this difference with regard to Mohammed as a theorist. He was not a man of many ideas. In reality one central idea alone inspired him. But great and magnificent as that was, it was equal to a multitude. It was a growing and a spreading giant which, like the prolific banyan tree, threw out branch and root with such extravagant luxuriance, that it completely overshadowed and predominated the entire expanse of his mental area. We know what this idea was. We know that round and out of the central stem of God’s overmastering unity Mohammed had determined to construct an Arabian nation—possibly something even greater. We know, too, that the one was but the offspring of the other. Or it may be that they were the twin offspring of all this profound and concentrated contemplation. But we do not know how this great idea first took root. Let us, however, try and trace it to its source as nearly as we can.

With still greater emphasis than Chrysostom, who asserted that “the true Shekinah is man,” Carlyle says: “the essence of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself ‘I,’ is a breath of heaven; the highest Being reveals Himself in man.” An idea such as this would never have occurred to Mohammed. The fatherhood of God in its accepted human sense was repugnant to him. The mere thought was sacrilege!

His conception of God was much too exalted, much too divine for this. God and humanity could have no possible connexion. God was the Creator—the Potter, who out of the clay or matter in chaos had made the world and all therein. Humanity was but a small part only of His creation. Men were but as clay in His hands—mere creatures of His. Beyond this hard and fast line there could be no relationship between God and man. Association was as impossible as comparison was objectionable. God, as supreme Creator and Director of the universe, was a Being altogether distinct and apart from His own creation. Yet as such He was the soul or spirit of it, the breath of life to all that lived, and of death to all that died. Man was as evil, as puny, and as weak as God was great and good and strong. God was too exalted and glorious for words. Incomprehensible and inscrutable, He was beyond the power of language, outside the narrow limitations of thought to imagine. Just as the heavens were divided from the earth by boundless space, so far apart was God from man. The endless immensity of everything was insufficient to express His omnipotence—fell far short of the unthinkable reality. Even the heavens and earth as His handiwork did not convey as completely as it might appear to do the capacity of the power that belonged to Him. To Mohammed, in every vibrating star an all-seeing eye and glory of the great Creator, God, was visible; in every tiny blade of grass, in every spring of water, He was manifest and tangible. So some eleven centuries after Mohammed was laid to rest, a poor, struggling, but undaunted artist-poet, looking from his mean London garret with the eyes of a dreamer-mystic into the great invisible above and beyond him (just as Amin the faithful one had done), yearned: