European Mysticism has produced the Omphalopsychi or navelgazing monks of Mount Athos, the Jansenist "Convulsionaries," the Anabaptists of Munster, and the Shakers. Finally, to complete the parallel, both systems have a tendency to Pantheism, and both use similar sensuous figures to express their visions and raptures. The Pantheism of the Gulshan i Raz has its counterpart in that of Eckart, the "Doctor Ecstaticus," and much of its sensuous imagery might be matched by the erotic language of St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the wonderful effusions of St. Theresa, and the mystical hymns of St. Alphonso Liguori and others."

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At first sight it is difficult to see how a subjective emotional religious system like Sufiism could have originated from the rigid formalism of the Koran, and still more how orthodox Mussulmans can possibly reconcile its Pantheism, as many of them do, with the uncompromising Monotheism taught by Muhammad. The answer would seem to be that the Koran, and still more the Hadis, in one department of their language, contain the germs of this line of religious thought. They in fact use a double language. At one time they represent Allah as having created the world once for all, and as now removed to His seat in the 'arsh or highest heaven, having left His creatures to work out their own salvation or condemnation by

1 See an account of the curious phenomena which sometimes followed the preaching of Wesley, Whitfield, and Newton. Leslie Stephen's English Thought, ii. 417. And a missionary account of the "gracious visitations of the Holy Spirit at Vewa," one of the Fiji Islands. H. Spencer, Essays, i. 444.

'See Vaughan, "Hours with the Mystics," i. 119, ii. 125; and "Hymns and Verses of St. Alphonso," translated by Coffin, pp. 80 to 116.

"Eam enim doctrinam ex arido atque exili Muhammadanismi solo tam cito esse enatam, res est per se admiratione digna, quæque desiderium illud menti humanæ ingenitum diserte attestatur, quo extra se proripitur et cum Deo rursus conjungi necessitate quadam naturæ vehementer cupit."-Dr. Pusey, in Nicoll's Catalogue of Bodleian MSS.

The Musnavi is commonly said to be the Koran of Persia (Hughes, "Notes on Muhammadanism," p. 231); Khaja 'Ayni, an orthodox Sunni doctor, in a work published at Constantinople in 1834, warmly commends both the Musnavi and the Gulshan i Raz.-Hammer. Imam Shafei and Hanbal, two of the great jurisconsults, speak in the highest terms of the Sufis' "knowledge of God."-Tholuck, Ssufismus, 58.

their own free will, according to the lights given them by His prophets; at another time they represent Him as the Subtile' Being, immanent and ever working in His creatures, the sum of all existence, the 'fulness of life,' whereby all things move, act and exist, omnipresent, not only predestinating but actually originating all action, dwelling in and directly influencing and communing with each individual soul. The Sufis, being men of an emotional mystical temperament, or, as they called themselves, men of heart,' 'men looking behind the veil,' 'interior men,'1 naturally caught at all expressions of this kind which seemed to bring the divine mysterious object of their religious emotion nearer to them, and, as theologians are prone to do, dwelt on the texts that fell in with their own view, to the exclusion of passages of the opposite tendency. This view they developed with the aid of the Greek and especially the Neoplatonic metaphysics, which had been popularised by the Arabian philosophers Farabi, Ghazzali, Ibn Roshd and Ibn Sina. Under these influences they identified the Allah of the Koran with the Neoplatonic Being, the One, the Necessary Being, the only Reality, "The Truth," the Infinite, which includes all actual being, good and evil, the First Cause, source of all action, good and evil alike. The world of phenomena and man-every thing else in fact but Allah-they identified with Not being,-absolute nonentity, which like a mirror reflects Being, and by thus borrowing particles of Being rises to the rank of Contingent being, a kind of being which, as Plato says, is and is not, and partakes both of existence and nonexistence. This Not being is a sort of Manichæan Ahriman, which solves all practical difficulties attaching to their speculative system. According to their theory the Infinite includes all being, evil included; but as this is not consistent with the goodness of the Allah of the

1 "While some (men of externals) believe that there is nothing in existence but what is visible to sight and reason, others (interior men) hold that much is veiled from sight which can only be seen through a nearer approach to the Divine Creator and a close spiritual communion with His omnipresent spirit."-Fasus ul Hakim.

Al Hakk, das Seiende, the Sat of the Upanishads.-M. Müller, Upanishads, I., xxxii.

Koran, evil is said to proceed from Not being. Again, according to their theory the spark of real being-divinæ particula auræ-in man is identical with the Infinite Being, and hence man would seem to be above laws and creeds; but as this would lead to Antinomianism, it is said that, while man remains in the intermediate state of Contingent being, he is as it were weighed down and held apart from Being by the element of Not being, and that in this probationary state laws and creeds are needed to restrain his evil tendencies. Thus, by the aid of this convenient Not being,' which is something while it is wanted, and relapses into nothing directly it is no longer needed, the Sufis avoid all the immoral and irreligious consequences of their theory. Hence it is clear that the Pantheism of the Sufis, at any rate as expounded in the Gulshan i Raz, must not be confounded with the European Pantheism of the present day-that Pantheism which in the words of Bossuet, "makes every thing God except God himself." In the Gulshan i Raz we find a different species of Pantheism— one held conjointly with a theory of divine personality, and the obligations of morality. Mahmud's Pantheism is an amplification rather than a minimification of the idea of the Divinity, infinite, omnipresent and omnipotent. He felt the sense of his own existence and his own freedom passing away and becoming absorbed in the sense of absolute dependence on this Infinite Being. Compared with this omnipresent, infinite, unseen Power underlying all the phenomena of the universe, dominating man's will, striving in man's heart,

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Warming in the sun, refreshing in the breeze,

Glowing in the stars, and blossoming in the trees,

all outward existences and agencies, whether in man or in the world,

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Similarly St. Augustine said evil was a negation. The fact that he could find no better way of reconciling these "antinomies of religious thought," ought to make us lenient critics of the Sufis.

The same feeling is expressed by many Christian poets, e.g. Dante, Paradiso, iii. 86:

"In la Sua volonta è nostra pace:

Ella è quel mare, al qual tutto si muove,

Ciò, ch' Ella cria, o che natura face."

Mr. Herbert Spencer, "First Principles," p. 99, says: "We are obliged to regar

seemed to sink into utter nothingness. In point of fact Mahmud's Pantheism is only the corollary of the Muhammadan doctrine of Jabr, usually translated predestination, but, more exactly, the compulsion to carry out the Divine will, the universal action of Allah. The same sense and conviction of this irresistible divine impulse and compulsion which, according to their temperaments, drives some men into furious. and fanatical action,' and makes others sit down and cry Kismat,' impels men of a logical turn of mind to regard not only all the action but also all the existence in the universe as the direct outcome or manifestation of the Divine energy.

The whole Sufi system follows as a logical consequence from this fundamental assumption. Sense and reason cannot transcend phenomena, or see the real Being which underlies them all; so sense and reason must be ignored and superseded in favour of the inner light,' the inspiration or divine illumination in the heart, which is the only faculty whereby men perceive the Infinite. Thus enlightened, men see that the whole external phenomenal world, including man's 'self,' is an illusion, non-existent in itself, and, in so far as it is non-existent, evil, because a departure from the one real Being. Man's only duty is to shake off this illusion, this clog of Not being, to efface and die to self, and to be united with and live eternally in the one real Being-"The Truth." In this progress to union external observances and outward forms profit little, because they keep alive the illusion of duality, of man's self-righteousness, of his personal agency and personal merit, whereas the true course is to ignore all reference to self-to be passive, that God may work-and then the Divine light and grace will enter the chamber of man's heart and

every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted on, and though omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of any limits to the diffusion of this power, while the criticisms of science teach us that this power is incomprehensible." Mahmud would agree that it is incomprehensible by reason, but would add that it is cognisable by spiritual illumination-the clairvoyance of the heart.

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Thus with us, the same theory of divine action upon the world which led the Puritans to action, led the Quakers to resignation, and 'quietism.' In popular parlance, "Quaker" signifies just the same sort of mild non-resisting character that "Sufi Sahib" does in India.

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operate in him without impediment, and draw him to "The Truth," and unite him with "The One."

The manner in which these ruling ideas are worked out and connected, by means of allegorical interpretation, with the teaching of the Koran and the Hadis will be best explained by an outline of the poem.

After an exordium laying down the fundamental principle of the sole existence of the one real Being, and of the illusive non-real nature of all phenomenal being, and a short account of the composition of the poem, Mahmud proceeds to inquire how men are to gain this essential knowledge of God. The answer commonly given is, by thought. But thought is of two kinds, one logical reasoning, the other spiritual illumination. The first method is inapplicable, because sense and reason cannot transcend phenomena, and work up to the invisible and incomprehensible Being underlying them. They are powerless to shake off the illusion of the apparent reality of the sensible world. From this original defect of mental eyesight, whatever philosophers and theologians say of God only proves their own incapacity to apprehend Him.2

II. Reason, looking at the Light of lights, is blinded by excess of light, like a bat by the sun. This annihilation of the mental vision caused by its proximity to the Light of lights-this consciousness of its own nothingness caused by its approach to Being-is the highest degree of perception which contingent being can attain. When the contingent seer attains this state of annihilation of his phenomenal self, the true light is revealed to him, as a spiritual illumination streaming in on his soul.

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The phenomenal world is in itself Not being, wherein are reflected, as in a mirror, the various attributes of Being. By a species of radiation or effluxion of waves of light from Being, each atom of Not being becomes a reflection of some one divine attribute. These

Here is the germ of the modern doctrine of the Relativity of knowledge, and consequent limits of thought.

2 Cognoscitur non secundum sui vim sed secundum cognoscentium facultatem.Boethius. Hamilton, Metaphysics, i. 61.

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Compare St. Augustine: "Deum potius ignorantia quam scientia attingi."