I say, this is yet the only true morality known.  A man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations; he is victorious while he cooeperates with that great central Law, not victorious otherwise:—­and surely his first chance of cooeperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with his whole soul that it is; that it is good, and alone good!  This is the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;—­for Islam is definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not been, neither had it been.  Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned to God.  We are to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes:  to know that we know nothing; that the worst and crudest to our eyes is not what it seems; that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, It is good and wise, God is great!  “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self.  This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth.

Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this wild Arab soul.  A confused dazzling splendor as of life and Heaven, in the great darkness which threatened to be death:  he called it revelation and the angel Gabriel;—­who of us yet can know what to call it?  It is the “inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us understanding.”  To know; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,—­of which the best Logics can but babble on the surface.  “Is not Belief the true god-announcing Miracle?” says Novalis.—­That Mohammed’s whole soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if it were important and the only important thing, was very natural.  That Providence had unspeakably honored him by revealing it, saving him from death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the same to all creatures:  this is what was meant by “Mohammed is the Prophet of God”; this too is not without its true meaning.—­

The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt:  at length she answered:  Yes, it was true this that he said.  One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mohammed; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest.  “It is certain,” says Novalis, “my Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.”  It is a boundless favor.—­He never forgot this good Kadijah.  Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favorite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him:  “Now am