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 Mohammed, 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. What are faults,
what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the
remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it,
be forgotten? "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of
all acts, is not, for a man, _repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest
sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that
is death; the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility,
and fact; is dead: it is "pure" as dead dry sand is pure.
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