words, put into the mouth of Mohammed: "My community will never agree in an
error." In terms more familiar to us, this means that the Mohammedan Church
taken as a whole is infallible; that all the decisions on matters practical
or theoretical, on which it is agreed, are binding upon its members.
Nowhere else is the catholic instinct of Islâm more clearly expressed.

A faithful Mohammedan student, after having struggled through a handbook of
law, may be vexed by a doubt as to whether these endless casuistic precepts
have been rightly deduced from the Qorân and the Sacred Tradition. His
doubt, however, will at once be silenced, if he bears in mind that Allah
speaks more plainly to him by this infallible Agreement (_Ijmâ'_) of the
Community than through Qorân and Tradition; nay, that the contents of both
those sacred sources, without this perfect intermediary, would be to a
great extent unintelligible to him. Even the differences between the
schools of law may be based on this theory of the Ijmâ'; for, does not the
infallible Agreement of the Community teach us that a certain diversity
of opinion is a merciful gift of God? It was through the Agreement that
dogmatic speculations as well as minute discussions about points of law
became legitimate. The stamp of Ijmâ' was essential to every rule of faith
and life, to all manners and customs.

All sorts of religious ideas and practices, which could not possibly be
deduced from Mohammed's message, entered the Moslim world by the permission
of Ijmâ'. Here we need think only of mysticism and of the cult of saints.

Some passages of the Qorân may perhaps be interpreted in such a way that we
hear the subtler strings of religious emotion vibrating in them. The chief
impression that Mohammed's Allah makes before the Hijrah is that of awful
majesty, at which men tremble from afar; they fear His punishment, dare
hardly be sure of His reward, and hope much from His mercy. This impression