They obeyed, and on their return they found their master lifeless. By the side of the corpse lay a paper, on which were inscribed the following lines. It is impossible not to be struck with the spirit breathing through the poetry, which appears not to be Mohammedan, but Christian. Some of the ideas seem actually to be gleaned from the writings of the apostles; there is St. Paul's sublime view of death, St. John's lofty revelation of God as love, though there is no allusion to the great doctrine of justification by faith. As the religion of Christ prevailed in early ages in the islands of the Persian Gulf, we cannot but think that it left traces behind, as the "garden flower grows wild" where it once was carefully cultivated, springing up in congenial soil, though no longer tended by man. These are the lines by which the dead Ahmed el Ghazalee spake, as if from the realm of spirits: "Tell my friends who behold me dead, Weeping and mourning my loss awhile, Think not this corpse before you myself; That corpse is mine, but it is not I. I am undying life, and this is but my body, Many years my house, and my garment of change. I am a bird, and this body was my cage; I have winged my flight elsewhere, and left it for a token. I am a pearl, and this my shell Broken open and abandoned to worthlessness. I am a treasure; this was a spell Thrown over me, till the treasure was released in truth. Thanks be to God who has delivered me, And has assigned me a lasting abode in the highest. There am I now the day conversing with the happy, And beholding face to face unveiled Deity; Contemplating the Mirror wherein I see and read Past and present, and whatever remains to be." * * * * "I have journeyed on, and left you behind; How could I make an abode of your halting-place? Ruin then my house, and break my cage in pieces, And let the shell go perish with kindred illusions; Tear my garment, the veil once thrown over me, Then bury all these, and leave them alike forgotten. "Deem not death—death, for it is in truth Life of lives, and goal of all our longings. Think lovingly of a God whose name is Love, Who joys in rewarding, and come on secure of fear: Whence I am I behold you, undying spirits like myself, And see that our lot is one, and you as I." [Illustration] [Illustration] XXVIII. Jonah's Gourd. WE look on a dry and withered thing, killed by the worm, shrivelled by the heat. Not so appeared the plant when its broad leaves, full of life and beauty, afforded a cool green shade to the prophet Jonah. The gourd formed a kind of bower, under the shadow of which the weary could rest, and was thus a beautiful emblem of that charity which "covereth a multitude of sins."