illusions which are perhaps sublime realities.” But to Mohammed, God was not even “the Great Illusion,” but a stern as well as a sublime reality! To him the desert and lone places were God’s dwelling-place--as far away from the busy hum and haunts of men as He could get. But only because of the delightful charm of golden silence and solitude--only because in the midst thereof, as in the heavenly paradise, God dwelt there. The one fair spirit that he dwelt and communed with--not in close proximity however, but with a great gulf fixed between--was the one and only God, who had at last constituted him His minister and apostle, because of his great love and devotion to Him. It was for this that Mohammed sought the desert. It was there under the stars--the flashing forget-me-nots of God’s great power--that alone with Nature and his own thoughts, he sought God. Who is there of us can say that he did or did not find Him? Can we, or can we not, by searching find God? Whether we can or no, however, is not the question--is not for us to decide! But one fact is certain--one fact is obvious. It was in the core and centre of the eternal silence and solitude of mountain fastnesses and desert expanses that the spirit of Islam had its origin. It was there, as it were under the myriad eyes of the great and infinite God, under the fiery blaze of the burning sun, under the cooler and more clinging glamour of the mellow moon, under the dimmer gloom and mystery of darkness, there with his face to the red-hot furnace blasts and suffocation of the simoom, that the message came to him. Alone with his thoughts: “Alone, alone, all all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea!” No mere saint, but God Himself, “took pity on” his “soul in agony.” He was not alone, for God was with him. This self-communion of Mohammed with his thoughts, was to him none other than communion with God, because his thoughts were concentrated on Him with all the soul and strength he was humanly capable of. The power of persuasion does not always lie in the flow and eloquence of speech. The strongest are often the most silent. God never speaks but in the still small voice of consciousness, that comes to every man in the dark watches of the night, when the hum and movement of life is hushed into the silence of sleep!