therefore a deeply religious man, to him God was also a Dayyan (one of the ninety-nine epithets of God), i.e. “A weigher of good and evil”; One who computed and settled accounts; the holder of the even balance and scales of justice, the Judge and Arbiter of all mankind. But apart from these functions, the power and sublimity of the Supreme Being, as he saw it expressed in the silent grandeur of the desert, the death-like stillness of the sandy sea, the frowning ruggedness and majesty of the mountains, the immense universality of Nature, was always before his eyes and in all his thoughts. Full of this feeling, of the awe and veneration innate in man and co-existent with the eternal ages, he bursts out in the second surah: “God! there is no God but He; the living, the self-subsisting: neither slumber nor sleep seizeth Him; to Him _belongeth_ whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can intercede with Him, but through His good pleasure? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come unto them, and they shall not comprehend anything of His knowledge, but so far as He pleaseth. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both is no burden unto Him. He is the high and mighty.” As a natural outburst of emotions and convictions that had been pent up within his own inner consciousness, that were the offspring of some twenty years of journeyings to and fro across the deserts where “Amin” the faithful one was in direct and constant contact with Nature, and often in silent communion with the Infinite, these few words are truly magnificent and sublime; magnificent not only for the boldness and sublimity of their imagery and conception, but magnificent also with the intensity and profundity of true sincerity. Few, but all the more pithy for that, these words are from the heart and soul of the man--a man who speaks not unadvisedly with his lips, but who feels with every nerve and fibre of his intensely emotional being. They are (as he himself feels) the outpouring of an insignificant and impotent atom, yet of a sincere and earnest man approaching in all humility and veneration, and with the loyalty and allegiance of a true believer and servant, the great, invisible He, who holds him and all creatures in the hollow of His mighty hand.