I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and
invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely
while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of
all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss
calculations; he is victorious while he cooeperates with that great
central Law, not victorious otherwise:--and surely his first chance of
cooeperating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with
his whole soul that it _is_; that it is good, and alone good! This is
the soul of Islam; it is properly the soul of Christianity;--for Islam
is definable as a confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not
been, neither had it been. Christianity also commands us, before all, to
be resigned to God. We are to take no counsel with flesh-and-blood; give
ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know that we know
nothing; that the worst and crudest to our eyes is not what it seems;
that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above,
and say, It is good and wise, God is great! "Though He slay me, yet will
I trust in Him." Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of
Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our
Earth.
Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this
wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling splendor as of life and Heaven, in
the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it revelation
and the angel Gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call it? It is
the "inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us understanding.
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