south, or the centre, it is obvious that the underlying motive for most, if not all, of his social customs is inspired by that personal or religious instinct which is so closely allied to the primary instincts of all. Out of such fundamental material did Mohammed emerge! Nevertheless, with all its drawbacks, there is about the desert, only in a different degree, the pleasure of the pathless woods, the rapture of the lonely shore. Just as by the deep and rolling sea whose very roar is music, there is a society where none intrudes, so with the desert. Right in the very core and centre of its silence and solitude, the man whose ears and eyes are open to receive impressions, finds himself in the presence of that invisible but omniscient power of Nature. The power that, while it causes the earnest thinker to pause and reflect, makes the average human being yearn for the companionship of his own kind. But it was not so with Mohammed. Mohammed was not as other men are. He was a thought leader. Not a deep thinker by any means; but profoundly in earnest. Few men in the world’s history--judging at least by results--have been more in earnest than he was. In Hannibal there is the same earnest fixity of purpose, only different in kind, the same unquenchable ardour, and the same iron will that kept him faithful to the sacred vow of undying vengeance against the Romans, that his father exacted from him on the altar of their ancestral gods. In William the Silent too, but also in another direction, we find the same relentless purpose and the same inflexible sincerity to attain the independence and autonomy of the United Provinces. Cromwell likewise gave his life and his services--all that was best in him in fact--in the firm and sincere conviction that he was God’s chosen instrument. But in none of these men, not even in the great and heroic Ironside, was there the same fervent godliness, i.e. the fear and veneration of God. It was Luther most of all who approached Mohammed in the sincerity of his purpose, i.e. of his religion. For although Luther was essentially a priest, and did not found a new creed, his sincerity showed itself as a Protestant and Reformer. In his whole life the fear and veneration of God as the motive factor of his existence was manifest. It is, of course, just possible, as Tennyson surmises, that: “... Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.”