in man that walketh to direct his steps.”  Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine?  The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;—­that is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead:  it is “pure” as dead dry sand is pure.  David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below.  All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best.  Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew.  Poor human nature!  Is not a man’s walking, in truth, always that:  “a succession of falls”?  Man can do no other.  In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards.  That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one:  that is the question of questions.  We will put-up with many sad details, if the soul of it were true.  Details by themselves will never teach us what it is.  I believe we misestimate Mohammed’s faults even as faults:  but the secret of him will never be got by dwelling there.  We will leave all this behind us; and assuring ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be.

These Arabs Mohammed was born among are certainly a notable people.  Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race.  Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure:  wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees.  Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable.  You are all alone there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars.  Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men.  There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character.  The Persians are called the French of the East; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians.  A gifted noble people; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these:  the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius.  The wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his way;—­and then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can.  In words too, as in action.  They are not a loquacious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted when