_January 21._--Aga Boozong, the most magisterial of the Soofis, stayed most of the day with Mirza Seyd Ali and Jaffir Ali Khan in my room. His speech as usual--all things are only so many forms of God; paint as many figures as you will on a wall, it is still but the same wall. Tired of constantly hearing this same vapid truism, I asked him, 'What then? With the reality of things we have nothing to do, as we know nothing about them.' These forms, if he will have it that they are but forms, affect us with pleasure and pain, just as if they were more real. He said we were at present in a dream; in a dream we think visionary things real--when we wake we discover the delusion. I asked him how did he know but that this dream might continue for ever. But he was not at all disposed to answer objections, and was rather vexed at my proposing them. So I let him alone to dissent as he pleased. Mirza Seyd Ali read him some verses of St. Paul, which he condescended to praise, but in such a way as to be more offensive to me than if he had treated it with contempt. He repeated again how much he was pleased with the sentiments of Paul, as if his being pleased with them would be a matter of exultation to me. He said they were excellent precepts for the people of the world. The parts Mirza Seyd Ali read were Titus iii. and Hebrews viii. On the latter Mirza Seyd Ali observed that he (Paul) had not written ill, but something like a good reasoner. Thus they sit in judgment on God's Word, never dreaming that they are to be judged by it. On the contrary, they regard the best parts, as they call them, as approaching only towards the heights of Soofi-ism. Aga Boozong finally observed that as for the Gospels he had not seen much in them, but the Epistles he was persuaded would make the book soon well known. There is another circumstance that gained Paul importance in the eyes of Mirza Seyd Ali, which is, that he speaks of Mark and Luke as his servants.