most celebrated teachers
have been famed for knowledge and devotion. The Persians are a poetic
people, and the very genius of Sooffeeism is poetry. Its raptures are
the raptures of inspiration; its hopes are those of a highly sensitive
and excited imagination; its writers in the sweetest strains celebrate
the Divine love, which pervades all nature: everything, from the very
highest to the lowest, seeking and tending towards union with Deity as
its object of supreme desire. They inculcate forbearance,
abstemiousness, and {291} universal benevolence. They are unqualified
predestinarians. The emanating principle, or the soul, proceeding from
God, can do nothing, they say, without his will, nor refuse to do
anything which he instigates. Some of them, consequently, deny the
existence of evil; and the doctrine of rewards and punishments is
superseded by their idea of re-absorption into the Divine essence. The
free opinions of this class of enthusiasts subvert the doctrines of
Islamism, yet they pay an outward respect to them; they unsettle the
existing belief, without providing an intelligible substitute; they
admit the divine mission of the Prophet, but explain away the dogmas he
uttered; and while they affect to yield him honour as a person raised
up by God, to induce moral order in the world, they boast their own
direct and familiar intercourse with Deity, and claim, on that account,
unqualified obedience in all that relates to spiritual interests.

The similarity of Sooffeeism to the ancient Pythagorean and Platonic
doctrines will occur to every one at all acquainted with the religion
and philosophy of antiquity. It as closely resembles some of the
distinguishing tenets of the Brahminical faith. In fact, it seems as
if designed, in conjunction with the refined theology of ancient, and
the sublime visions of modern idolaters, to teach us that, without
Divine guidance, the loftiest human {292} conceptions on subjects
connected with God and religion invariably err; the ignorant and the
instructed are equally wrong; "the world by wisdom knows not God."

The Wahabees are a modern sect of Mohammedan reformers, whose efforts
have considerably changed the aspect of the religion of the Prophet.
Perhaps to them may be owing much of that rigid adherence to Mohammedan
doctrine and practice which prevails in those parts where their
influence has been felt. They are the followers of Abdol Wahab, who
commenced his career in t