shall infinitely transcend all other joys. He says, "Your salutation shall
be, Peace." _Salam_, Have Peace!--the thing that all rational souls long
for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one blessing. "Ye shall sit on
seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your
hearts." All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for each of you,
in the eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven enough!

In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and Mahomet's sensuality, the
sorest chapter of all for us, there were many things to be said; which it
is not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I shall make, and
therewith leave it to your candor. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it
is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In one of
his Delineations, in _Meister's Travels_ it is, the hero comes upon a
Society of men with very strange ways, one of which was this: "We
require," says the Master, "that each of our people shall restrict himself
in one direction," shall go right against his desire in one matter, and
_make_ himself do the thing he does not wish, "should we allow him the
greater latitude on all other sides." There seems to me a great justness
in this. Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is
the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is. Let a man
assert withal that he is king over his habitudes; that he could and would
shake them off, on cause shown: this is an excellent law. The Month
Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Mahomet's Religion, much in his own Life,
bears in that direction; if not by forethought, or clear purpose of moral
improvement on his part, then by a certain healthy manful instinct, which
is as good.

But there is another thing to be said about the Mahometan Heaven and Hell.
This namely, that, however gross and material they may be, they are an
emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere.