which language has devised, whether in the East or the West, for uttering the unutterable * * * there is the same intention, the same striving, the same stammering, the same faith. Other lessons will follow, till in the end we shall be able to restore that ancient word which unites not only the East with the West, but with all the members of the human family, and may learn to understand what a Persian poet meant when he wrote many centuries ago:—'Diversity of worship has divided the human race into seventy-two nations. From all their dogmas I have selected one—the love of God.'"
By "the seventy-two[1] (seventy-three?) nations," are doubtless meant the number of sects into which Muhammad said Islám would be divided; but the learned Professor surely cannot be ignorant of the fact that the "love of God," selected by the Persian poet, as the dogma par excellence, is the ʾIshaq, or second
- ↑ Muhammad said that, as the Jews had been divided into seventy-one sects, and the Christians into seventy-two, the Muslims would be divided into seventy-three, that is seventy-two in addition to the "orthodox," or Nájíah sect, each sect, of course, claiming to be Nájíah.
