"Assuredly," he says; that word, in the Koran, is
written-down sometimes as a sentence by itself: "Assuredly."
No _Dilettanteism_ in this Mohammed; it is a business of Reprobation and
Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about
it! Dilettanteism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for
Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The
root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of
the man never having been _open_ to Truth;--"living in a vain show."
Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but _is_ himself a
falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk
deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of
Mohammed are truer than the truths of such a man. He is the insincere
man: smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places; inoffensive,
says nothing harsh to anybody; most _cleanly_,--just as carbonic acid
is, which is death and poison.
We will not praise Mohammed's moral precepts as always of the
superfinest sort; yet it can be said that there is always a tendency to
good in them; that they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards
what is just and true. The sublime forgiveness of Christianity, turning
of the other cheek when the one has been smitten, is not here: you _are_
to revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond
justice.
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