Men trained in European ideas of religion have always found a difficulty in understanding the fascination which the Muslim faith has for so many minds in the East. ‘There is no god but God, and Moḥammad is His Prophet.’ There is nothing in this, they say, to move the heart. Yet this creed has stirred an enthusiasm that has never been surpassed. Islám has had its martyrs, its self-tormentors, its recluses, who have renounced all that life offered and have accepted death with a smile for the sake of the faith that was in them. It is idle to say the eternity of happiness will explain this. The truest martyrs of Islám, as well as of Christianity, did not die to gain paradise. And if they did, the belief in the promises of the creed must follow the hearty belief in the creed. Islám must have possessed a power of seizing men’s belief before it could have inspired them with such a love of its paradise. Moḥammad’s conception of God has, I think, been misunderstood, and its effect upon the people consequently under-estimated. The God of Islám is commonly represented as a pitiless tyrant, who plays with humanity as on a chessboard, and works out his game without regard to the sacrifice of the pieces; and there is a certain truth in the figure. There is more in Islám of the potter who shapes the clay than of the father pitying his children. Moḥammad conceived of God as the Semitic mind has always preferred to think of Him: his God is the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Just. Irresistible Power is the first attribute he thinks of: the Lord of the Worlds, the Author of the Heavens and the Earth, who hath created Life and Death, in whose hand is Dominion, who maketh the Dawn to appear and causeth the Night to cover the Day, the Great, All-Powerful Lord of the glorious Throne; the Thunder proclaimeth His perfection, the whole earth is His handful, and the Heavens shall be folded together in His right hand. And with the Power He conceives the Knowledge that directs it to right ends. God is the Wise, the Just, the True, the Swift in reckoning, who knoweth every ant’s weight of good and of ill that each man hath done, and who suffereth not the reward of the faithful to perish. ‘God! There is no God but He, the Ever-Living, the Ever-Subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, save by His permission? He knoweth the things that have gone before and the things that follow after, and men shall not compass aught of His knowledge, save what He willeth. His Throne comprehendeth the Heavens and the Earth, and the care of them burdeneth Him not. And He is the High, the Great.’—_Ḳur-án_, ii. 256.