so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest
confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not false, nor
his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of Life
cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ the world; the
world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections,
insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against
him, shake this primary fact about him.

On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide
the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is
to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think,
might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own
heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest
crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and
ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say,
seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward
details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations,
true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? "It is not
in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of all acts, is not, for a man,
_repentance_ the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same
supercilious consciousness of no sin;--that is death; the heart so
conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and fact; is dead: it is
"pure" as dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as written for
us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of
a man's moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever
discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what
is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into
entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance,
true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! Is not a man's
walking, in truth, always that: "a succession of falls"? Man can do no