Mohammed fought with all his might and main. In exact proportion to his labour he has prevailed. Prevailed over the issues of life and death. Death had no terrors for him. Life alone was full of terror--i.e. of the fear of God. In death there was no sting. In the grave there was no victory. Death but killed the mortal part of him. The spiritual it has increased and multiplied out of all proportion. The present soul of Islam is the spirit of Mohammed. Only when this exhausts itself will Islam wither and die! To this day he is, and for many æons to come he will be in spirit, the ruler and judge over Islam. In spite of sects and theological speculators, as long as Islam lasts, his spirit will continue to preside over its destinies. His spirit lives in the spirit of the creed that he bequeathed as a divine legacy to humanity--i.e. to those sections of it which have been nurtured in the system and adoration of the Patriarch. For though the material part of him is dead, the spiritual still speaks with a voice that is myriad-tongued. As God’s word, there is a sanctity in the Koran for every Moslem that exceeds the reverence of the Christian for the Bible, as much as the fiery splendour of the sun surpasses the cold pale glamour of the moon--which is but a shadow, a pale reflection of the substance and reality. There is, in fact, on the part of the Moslem a veneration accorded to the Koran that practically equals the veneration of the African or the Irish for their land. Compatible with this, there is for the Moslem but one Prophet. As God’s chosen agent for the dissemination of His word, Mohammed stands alone and aloof on a pinnacle that is humanly unapproachable. Many faults have been imputed to him, many charges brought against him. To the average, indeed even to the educated Christian, Mohammed is nothing but the very strangest compound of right and wrong, of error and truth, the abolisher of superstition according to his own showing, yet a believer in charms, dreams, omens, and jinns. But what of all this? Does not reasoning such as this itself prove how very inconsequent and inconsistent is man, even though he be a European and a Christian? Is not superstition of the same kind as rife at this very moment in Europe, nay in the very centres and strongholds of Christendom? What about the ikons, the charms, the amulets, the sacred relics and the images of the Greek and Romish Churches? Is not this but a form of materialism which itself is a phase or part--a very large part--of Nature? Did not superstition (derived from “super,” above or beyond measure, and “sto,” to stand) originally imply excess of scruple, or of ceremonial observances in religion? Did it not describe a superfluity of worship that exceeded what was either enjoined or fitting? What does Cicero say of it in his treatise on _The Nature of the Gods_? (I quote from an old translation): “Not only Philosophers, but all our forefathers dydde ever separate _superstition_ from true religion.