ss to feed,
In a crowd of asses you would take the lead;
Those who follow Jesus, win to wisdom's ranks;
Those who fatten asses get a kick for thanks.
Pity keep for Jesus, pity not the ass,
Let not fleshly impulse intellect surpass.
If an ass could somewhat catch of Jesus' mind,
Classed among the sages he himself would find;
Though because of Jesus you may suffer woe,
Still from Him comes healing, never let Him go.

In another place, speaking of the importance of controlling the tongue
because of the general sensitiveness of human nature, he says:--

In each human spirit is a Christ concealed,
To be helped or hindered, to be hurt or healed;
If from any human soul you lift the veil
You will find a Christ there hidden without fail;
Woe, then, to blind tyrants whose vindictive ire,
Venting words of fury, sets the world on fire.

But though he speaks with reverence of Christ, he shares the common
Mohammedan animus against St. Paul. As a matter of fact St. Paul is
rarely mentioned in Mohammedan writings, but Jalaluddin spent most of
his life at Iconium, where, probably, owing to the tenacity of Oriental
tradition, traces of St. Paul's teaching lingered. In the first book of
the Masnavi a curious story is told of an early corrupter of
Christianity who wrote letters containing contradictory doctrines to the
various leaders of their Church, and brought the religion into
confusion. In this case Jalaluddin seems to have neglected the
importance of distinguishing between second-hand opinion and first-hand
knowledge, on which he elsewhere lays stress:--

Knowledge hath two wings, Opinion hath but one,
And opinion soon fails in its orphan flight;
The bird with one wing soon droops its head and falls,
But give it two wings and it gains its desire.
The bird of Opinion flies, rising and falling,
On its wing in vain hope of its rest;
But when it escapes from Opinion and Knowledge receives it,
It gains its two wings and spreads them wide to heaven;
On its two wings it flies like Gabriel
Without doubt or conjecture, and without speech or voice.
Though the whole world should shout beneath it,
'Thou art in the road to God and the perfect faith,'
It would not become warmer at their speech,
And its lonely soul would not mate with theirs;
And though they should shout to it, 'Thou hast lost thy way;
And thinkest thyself a mountain and art but