You mention a few other points of orthodoxy; the cut of one's hair, the length of one's trousers. Dr. Khaja Hussain told me that he once saw a Muhammadan Street aroused to frenzy and riot by the appearance of a true believer in Feringhi (or Kafir) boots. It is all of a piece. Muhammadans have concentrated their attention on these ready-made rules for getting to heaven; their prophet found no such easy road to bliss. I do not imagine that it would ever have occurred to his great soul to claim any particular merit in that he did not drink wine, in that he repeated prayers (he at least understood these prayers) five times a day, in that he did not let his wives roam the country a prey to any marauder of those wild times. After all any one can obey these regulations with very little trouble to himself; it is not quite so easy to adopt the spirit that guided Muhammad's life. Sir Afsur, I do not doubt, will tell you that it is an advisable thing for a soldier to drill smartly, to keep his arms and accoutrements clean, and that with a little trouble it is not difficult for a soldier to do all this. But he will tell you, I feel sure, that this is far from being all; the supreme duty of a soldier is to be brave in battle--an affair of much more difficulty. A soldier may be smart and clean, but if he fails in battle his smartness and cleanness are worth nothing--he is a bad soldier. Muhammadanism has lost touch with life; it contents itself with the letter of the Prophet's teaching and shuts its eyes to, does not search for, the indwelling spirit. It is a small kernel rattling in a very big shell, as Charles Kingsley said in "Yeast" of the Church service at St. Paul's in the fifties of the last century. _Religion has been divorced from life, and so the followers of Islam as nations have decayed._ It is the same with the other religions that I have mentioned. The old time Brahmin called himself such because he was educated, intelligent, sanitary in his habits, upright; he did not claim to be all this simply because he was the son of his father. The great obstacle to progress down here is the fact that people imagine it is sufficient to follow in a mechanical unintelligent way the letter, while totally disregarding the spirit, of some old and after all not very important rules. Ireland is said to have been an "Isle of Saints", I have my doubts on the subject, but suppose it so. It is now full of fine churches and religious establishments; no people in the world go to church with greater regularity, abstain more thoroughly from meat on Fridays, etc. etc. But with the mechanical observances they are, I fear, too well satisfied. Drunkenness, idleness, utter disregard for truth, are rampant in Southern Ireland, and therefore Southern Ireland is what it is. Formal devotion is no substitute whether in the daily battle of the world, or (I believe) in the ultimate judgment of God, for the proper ordering of one's every day actions.