This article form an extract from Thomas Carlyle’s famous work ‘On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History.’
Having no knowledge in Arabic, he formed his judgment on the Quran from the translations available to him assuming them to be fair and sufficient. Carlyle’s presentation of the life of Prophet Muhammad (salla-llaahu alayhi wa-sallam) in a very positive way stands as a very clear, concise, knowledgeable and fair account. For him the Prophet was a genuine man of insight, a great leader, a devout and humble man, yet the truth of his religion was ‘embedded in a portentous error and falsehood.’ But Carlyle gave Islam the highest accolade when he went so far as to state that Islam was ‘properly the soul of Christianity.’
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was highly influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher, but while at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.
The Hero As Prophet. Mahomet: Islam.
May 8, 1840. Lecture II.
“A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men! The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet.”---
“Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a
scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere
mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to anyone. The
lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to
ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that
story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an
angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really
time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance
now of a hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These
hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of
God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any other word
whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual
legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died
by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most
things sooner than that.
One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here. Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else be works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway.”---
“I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine
sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the
sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed;
—a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The
Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of:
nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk
accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast
himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I
would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help
being sincere!”---One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here. Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else be works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway.”---
“It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. God has made many revelations: but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The "inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:" we must listen before all to him.”---
“...an earnest confused voice from the unknown deep. The man's words were not false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To kindle the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one.”---
“The Koreish were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut asunder by deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration; —held mainly by the inward indissoluble bond of a common blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there.”---
“It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense: he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old. A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favorite son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he.
At his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet was brought up in the best Arab way.”---
“One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mahomet never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumour of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him.”---
“But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful
man. His companions named him "Al Amin, The Faithful."
A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought.
They noted that he always meant something. A man rather taciturn in
speech; silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere,
when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only sort
of speech worth speaking! Through life we find him to have been regarded
as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincere character;
yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even; —a good laugh in him withal:
there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who cannot
laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious honest face, brown
florid complexion, beaming black eyes;...., It was a kind of feature in the
Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent,
as would appear.
A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone.”----
“A silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot but
be in earnest; whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere. While others
walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man could
not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the reality
of things. The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in upon him, with
its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact,
"Here am I!" Such sincerity, as we named it, has in very truth
something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature's own
Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to nothing else; —all else is wind in
comparison. From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and
wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable
Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am
I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai,
the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent
overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The
man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer! It is
the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which we too have to ask, and
answer. This wild man felt it to be of infinite moment; all other things
of no moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects,
vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry: there was no
answer in these.”--- A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone.”----
“What could all Arabia do for this man; with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all crowns in the Earth; —what could they all do for him? It was not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would they in a few brief years be? To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into your hand, —will that be one's salvation? I decidedly think, not. We will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us.
Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month
Ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab custom; a
praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and
useful. Communing with his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself
silent; open to the "small still voices:" it was a right natural
custom! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern in
Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, and
meditation on those great questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, who with
his household was with him or near him this year, That by the unspeakable
special favour of Heaven he had now found it all out; was in doubt and darkness
no longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols and Formulas were nothing,
miserable bits of wood; that there was One God in and over all; and we must
leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God is great; and that there is nothing
else great! He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are not real; He is real. He made
us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a
transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendour. "Allah akbar,
God is great;" —and then also "Islam," That we
must submit to God. That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him.”---"Mahomet is the Prophet of God;" this too is not without its true meaning. —The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: Yes, it was true this that he said. One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest.”---
“It is a boundless favour. —He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did her?" —" No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that!" —Seid, his Slave, also believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts.
He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious thing!
As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at Bagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: he said, If the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon the Assassin; but if it did, then they must slay him straightway, that so they two in the same hour might appear before God, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one! Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two men of influence had joined him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading.
Naturally he gave offence to everybody: Who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood! Abu Thaleb the good Uncle spoke with him: Could he not be silent about all that; believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking of it? Mahomet answered: If the Sun stood on his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he could not obey! No: there was something in this Truth he had got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had made. It would speak itself there, so long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all Koreish and all men and things. It must do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so; and, they say, "burst into tears." Burst into tears: he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got was no soft, but a stern and great one. He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that.
Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life.
More than once it seemed all over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was not to end so. In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "Medinat al Nabi, the City of the Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome.
Ten years more this Mahomet had; all of fighting of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know. Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him.”---
“Here however, in reference to much that there is in Mahomet
and his success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness,
composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into
the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn
sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the
kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, —the whole rubbish she silently absorbs,
shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing
there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, —has silently turned all
the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in
Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in
her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she
will protect it if so; will not, if not so.”---
“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?”---“It is true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it than we. Mahomet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, on shoulder blades of mutton, flung pell-mell into a chest: and they published it, without any discoverable order as to time or otherwise; —merely trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original.”---
“Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently:
I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to
preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really
from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is
it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your
eyes were open! This Earth, God made it for you; "appointed paths in it;"
you can live in it, go to and fro on it. —The clouds in the dry country of
Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful: Great clouds, he says, born in the
deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they come from! They hang there,
the great black monsters; pour down their rain-deluges "to revive a dead
earth," and grass springs, and "tall leafy palm-trees with their
date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a sign?" Your cattle too, —Allah
made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you
have your clothing from them, very strange creatures; they come ranking home at
evening-time, "and," adds he, "and are a credit to you!"
Ships also, —he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they spread out
their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind driving
them; anon they lie motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and
cannot stir! Miracles? cries he: What miracle would you have? Are not you
yourselves there? God made you, "shaped you out of a little clay." Ye
were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength,
thoughts, "ye have compassion on one another." Old age comes on you,
and gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again
are not. "Ye have compassion on one another:" this struck me much:
Allah might have made you having no compassion on one another, —how had it been
then!
This is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man, —might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous.”---
“Much has been said and written about the sensuality of
Mahomet's Religion; more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which
he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practiced,
unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them,
restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one:
with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a
day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy
religion.”---This is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man, —might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous.”---
“Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, —nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth.
They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than hunger of any sort, —or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be called what you like!
No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself. His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made him worse; it made him better; good, not bad.
Generous things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He answered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the body; —the old gray-haired man melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she. —"You see a friend weeping over his friend." —
He went out for the last time into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the Day of Judgment." You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries, —the veritable Son of our common Mother. Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant.
He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, "the respect due unto thee." In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each called for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters!
The War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was hot; "but Hell will be hotter!" Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at that Great Day. They will be weighed out to you; ye shall not have short weight! —“
"There is no God but God." Allah akbar, Islam, sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters; —displacing what is worse, nothing that is better or good. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; —glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, —is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.”
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