’No doubt, Nawab Sahib, these were very powerful arguments for those who saw them, or believed them to have been seen; and those who doubt the divinity of your prophets mission are those who doubt their ever having been seen.’

’The whole army saw and attested them, sir, and that is evidence enough for us; and those who saw them, and were not satisfied, must have had their hearts hardened to unbelief.’

’And you think, Nawab Sahib, that a man is not master of his own belief or disbelief in religions matters; though he is rewarded by an eternity of bliss in paradise for the one, and punished by an eternity of scorching in hell for the other?

’I do, sir, faith is a matter of feeling; and over our feelings we have no control.  All that we can do is to prevent their influencing our actions, when these actions would be mischievous.  I have a desire to stretch out this arm, and crush that fly on the table, I can control the act, and do so; but the desire is not under my control.’

’True, Nawab Sahib; and in this life we punish men not for their feelings, which are beyond their control, but for their acts, over which they have no control; and we are apt to think that the Deity will do the same.’

‘There are, sir,’ continued the Nawab, ’three kinds of certainty—­the moral certainty, the mathematical, and the religious certainty, which we hold to be the greatest of all—­the one in which the mind feels entire repose.  This repose I feel in everything that is written in the Koran, in the Bible, and, with the few known exceptions, in the New Testament.[67] We do not believe that Christ was the son of God, though we believe him to have been a great prophet sent down to enlighten mankind; nor do we believe that he was crucified.  We believe that the wicked Jews got hold of a thief, and crucified him in the belief that he was the Christ; but the real Christ was, we think, taken up into heaven, and not suffered to be crucified.’

’But, Nawab Sahib, the Sikhs have their book, in which they have the same faith.’

’True, sir, but the Sikhs are unlettered, ignorant brutes; and you do not, I hope, call their “Granth” a book—­a thing written only the other day, and full of nonsense.  No “book” has appeared since the Koran came down from heaven; nor will any other come till the day of judgement.  And how’, said the Nawab, ’have people in modern days made all the discoveries you speak of in astronomy?’

’Chiefly, Nawab Sahib, by means of the telescope, which is an instrument of modern invention.’

’And do you suppose, sir, that I would put the evidence of your “durbins” (telescopes) in opposition to that of the holy prophet?  No, sir, depend upon it that there is much fallacy in a telescope—­it is not to be relied upon.  I have conversed with many excellent European gentlemen, and their great fault appears to me to be in the implicit faith they put in these telescopes—­they