"A God who showeth to man the thing which he knew not." That idea gave
might to Islam, because it was a real idea, an eternal fact; the result
of a true insight into the character of God. And that idea alone,
believe me, will give conquering might either to creed, philosophy, or
heart of man. Each will be strong, each will endure, in proportion as
it believes that God is one who shows to man the thing which he knew
not: as it believes, in short, in that Logos of which Saint John wrote,
that He was the light who lightens every man who comes into the world.
In a word, the wild Koreish had discovered, more or less clearly, that
end and object of all metaphysic whereof I have already spoken so often;
that external and imperishable beauty for which Plato sought of old; and
had seen that its name was righteousness, and that it dwelt absolutely
in an absolutely righteous person; and moreover, that this person was no
careless self-contented epicurean deity; but that He was, as they loved
to call Him, the most merciful God; that He cared for men; that He
desired to make men righteous. Of that they could not doubt. The fact
was palpable, historic, present. To them the degraded Koreish of the
desert, who as they believed, and I think believed rightly, had fallen
from the old Monotheism of their forefathers Abraham and Ismael, into
the lowest fetishism, and with that into the lowest brutality and
wretchedness--to them, while they were making idols of wood and stone;
eating dead carcases; and burying their daughters alive; careless of
chastity, of justice, of property; sunk in unnatural crimes, dead in
trespasses and sins; hateful and hating one another--a man, one of their
own people had come, saying: "I have a message from the one righteous
God.
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