hat not a step can be made
in advance without the torch of proof. That course only can be
beneficial which we select with clear judgment. To repeat the words
of {163} the creed, to perform circumcision, or to be prostrate on
the ground from the dread of kingly power, can avail nothing in the
sight of God:

Obedience is not in prostration on the earth:
Practice sincerity, for righteousness is not borne upon the brow!"'

Whatever we may think of this discussion, of the test of fire
proposed by the Christian priest, we may at least welcome it as
showing the complete toleration of discussion permitted at the
Ibadat-Khana, and, above all, as indicating the tendency of the mind
of Akbar. He had, in fact, reasoned himself out of belief in all
dogmas and in all accepted creeds. Instead of those dogmas and those
creeds he simply recognised the Almighty Maker of the world, and
himself, the chiefest in authority in his world as the representative
in it of God, to carry out his beneficent decrees of toleration,
equal justice, and perfect liberty of conscience, so far as such
liberty of conscience did not endanger the lives of others. He was
very severe with the Muhammadans, because he recognised that the
professors of the faith of the dominant party are always inclined to
persecution. But he listened to all, and recognising in all the same
pernicious feature, viz., the broad, generous, far-reaching,
universal qualities attributed to the Almighty distorted in each case
by an interested priesthood, he prostrated himself before the God of
all, discarding the priesthood of all.

He has been called a Zoroastrian, because he recognised in the sun
the sign of the presence of the Almighty. And there can be no doubt
but that the {164} simplicity of the system of the Parsis had a great
attraction for him. In his own scheme there was no priesthood.
Regarding himself as the representative in his world of the Almighty,
he culled from each religion its best part, so as to make religion
itself a helpful agency for all rather than an agency for the
persecution of others. The broad spirit of his scheme was as much
raised above the general comprehension of the people of his age, as
were his broad political ideas. To bring round the world to his views
it was necessary that 'an Amurath should succeed an Amurath.' That
was and ever will be impossible. The result was that his political
system gradually drifted after his death into the old narrow