It would probably be difficult
to point out in Europe men who in the world--I do not speak of
ecclesiastics or persons in religious orders--lead more transparently
religious lives than do the pious Moslems of the better class whom one
may find in almost any oriental town, or men who more closely follow
the ideal which their creed sets before them. To doubt the sincerity and
even, in a certain sense, the sanctity of such persons, would be to
doubt all religion. In any case it is notorious that the faith of Mecca
is still the living belief of a vast number of the human race, the rule
of their lives, and the explanation to them of their whole existence.
There is no sign as yet that it has ceased to be a living faith.
Neither in considering its future is it easy for a candid English mind
to escape the admission that, for all purposes of argument, the
Mohammedan creed must be treated as no vain superstition but a true
religion, true inasmuch as it is a form of the worship of that one true
God in whom Europe, in spite of her modern reason, still believes. As
such it is entitled to whatever credit we may give true religions of
prolonged vitality; and while admitting the eternal truth of
Christianity for ourselves, we may be tempted to believe that in the
Arabian mind, if in no other, Islam too will prove eternal.
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