id believe this, and with their
fiery hearts lay hold of it to do it, in what form soever it came to
them, I say it was well worthy of being believed. In one form or the
other, I say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed by all
men. Man does hereby become the high-priest of this Temple of a
World. He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World;
cooperating with them, not vainly withstanding them: I know, to this
day, no better definition of Duty than that same. All that is _right_
includes itself in this of co-operating with the real Tendency of the
World: you succeed by this (the World's Tendency will succeed), you are
good, and in the right course there. _Homoiousion_, _Homoousion_, vain
logical jangle, then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out,
and go whither and how it likes: this is the _thing_ it all struggles to
mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this,
it means nothing. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be
correctly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete Sons of Adam
do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all
these vain jangling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was
a Reality, direct from the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab
idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go
up in flame,--mere dead _fuel_, in various senses, for this which was
_fire_.

It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after
the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book,
which they name _Koran_, or _Reading_, "Thing to be read." This is the
Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is not
that a miracle? The Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which
few Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted every where as
the standard of all law and all practice; the thing to be gone upon in
speculation and life; the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this
Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges
decide by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light
of their life. They have mosques where it is all read daily; thirty
relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each
day. There, for twelve hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all
moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men.
We hear of Mahometan Doctors t