[FN#326] In his charming book, “India Revisited.”

[FN#327] This is the answer to those who contend with much truth that the moderns are by no means superior to the ancients of Europe:  they look at the results of only 3000 years instead of 30,000 or 300,000.

[FN#328] As a maxim the saying is attributed to the Duc de Levis, but it is much older.

[FN#329] There are a few, but only a few, frightful exceptions to this rule, especially in the case of Khalid bin Walid, the Sword of Allah, and his ferocious friend, Darar ibn al-Azwar.  But their cruel excesses were loudly blamed by the Moslems, and Caliph Omar only obeyed the popular voice in superseding the fierce and furious Khalid by the mild and merciful Abu Obaydah.

[FN#330] This too when St. Paul sends the Christian slave Onesimus back to his unbelieving (?) master, Philemon; which in Al-Islam would have created a scandal.

[FN#331] This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of “Eating and drinking at his table!” (Luke xxn. 29.) My notes have often touched upon this inveterate prejudice the result, like the soul-less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud.  “No soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in recompense for their works” (Koran xxxn. 17) is surely as “spiritual” as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9).  Some lies, however are very long-lived, especially those begotten by self interest.

[FN#332] I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which, however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East.  But progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity and it is favoured by events of most different nature.  In Egypt the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the constitution of Al-Islam throughout the nearer East.

[FN#333] Chapt. viii.  “Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia;” London, Macmillan, 1865.

[FN#334] The Soc.  Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the Order.

[FN#335] I especially allude to an able but most superficial book, the “Ten Great Religions” by James F. Clarke (Boston, Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false portraiture of Mr. Palgrave.  The writer’s admission that, “Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf,” clearly shows us the man we have to deal with and the “depths of his self-consciousness.”

[FN#336] But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as “La Il h illa All h” for “La ilaha (accus.) ill’ Allah”?

[FN#337] p. 996 “Muhammad” in vol. iii.  Dictionary of Christian Biography.  See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc., from Al-Ghazali introduced (pp. 72-77) into Bell and Sons’ “History of the Saracens” by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878).  I regret some Orientalist did not correct the proofs:  everybody will not detect “Al-Lauh al-Mahfuz” (the Guarded Tablet) in “Allauh ho’hnehphoud” (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a camel-load.