is no such thing as a Mohammedan sceptic, that is to say, a Moslem who does not believe in the divine mission of Mohammed.  He may neglect every duty of his profession, be guilty of every crime, have broken every law—­he may be the worst and the most depraved of men—­or, on the other hand, he may have adopted the language and to a certain extent the tone of thought of Europe, and, a thing far more rare, he may be even a scoffer and blasphemer;—­still I do not imagine that in his heart he any the less firmly believes that the Koran is the book of truth, or that at the day of judgment he shall be found with those who have escaped Jehannem through their professed acknowledgment of God and of His apostle.

I have heard strange stories in corroboration of this from persons whom I could not doubt, and about persons whom all the world knew.  Thus, one who was with Fuad Pasha, the most European of Ottoman diplomatists, in his last days at Nice, assures me that his whole time was spent in a recitation of the Koran, learning it by heart.  Another, who was called the Voltaire of Islam, performed his prayers and prostrations with scrupulous regularity whenever he found himself in private; and a third, equally notorious as a sceptic, died of religious mania.  All, too, who have mingled much with Mussulmans, must have been struck with the profound resignation with which even thoughtless and irreligious men bear the ills of life, and the fortitude with which they usually meet their end—­with the large proportion that they see of men who habitually pray and fast, and who on occasion, at great risk and sacrifice, make the pilgrimage, and with the general absence of profanity, and the fact that an avowal of religion is never proffered apologetically as with us, nor met in any society with derision.  These things are, perhaps, not in themselves evidence of belief, for hypocrites have everywhere their reward, but the fact even of hypocrisy proves the general spirit to be one of avowed belief.

The truly devout are doubtless rare, but where we find them it is evident that their belief pervades their lives in as strict a sense as it does devout persons among ourselves.  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.