or flat Plate of ground, the mountains are set on that to _steady_ it. At
the Last Day they shall disappear "like clouds;" the whole Earth shall go
spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and as dust and vapor vanish in the
Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. The
universal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an unspeakable Power, a
Splendor, and a Terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and
reality, in all things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. What
a modern talks of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does
not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of
things, undivine enough,--salable, curious, good for propelling steamships!
With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt to forget the _divineness_,
in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once well
forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, I
think were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty;--a thistle
in late autumn. The best science, without this, is but as the dead
_timber_; it is not the growing tree and forest,--which gives ever-new
timber, among other things! Man cannot _know_ either, unless he can
_worship_ in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle,
otherwise.

Much has been said and written about the sensuality of Mahomet's Religion;
more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted,
were not of his appointment; he found them practiced, unquestioned from
immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them,
not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one: with
rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a
day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy
religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could
succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to
heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense,--sugar-plums of any