The Scented Garden

14 Introduction (too closely to please most students of Eastern reli- gion) by his insistence on the doctrines of Sin and Grace, Freewill and Discipline ; but on the other hand, neither St. Francis nor Buddhaghosha can parallel his Devotion and his Phenomenalism. No doubt at times one is puzzled for a while : one picks up a loose word here and there : one doubts : one guesses : one is illumined in a mo- ment. One is rather reminded of the working of a helio- graph under unfavourable conditions. But (as with that instrument) by dint of repetition one gets the all-important message at last : and the situation is saved. It is undoubtedly the importance which he at- taches to Sin, Repentance, Penance, Grace, as the means of raising the old to the new Adam that cost el Haji so much pains in persecution by the more orthodox Muslim : possible the teaching of St. Paul had vaguely penetrated to the gulf with the mer- chant of Venice or Portugal, and their danger had been recognized by those who held to the simple grandeur of Islam. But clearly the belief in Evil — perhaps even a modified Manichaeism ;4 we must not forget that this heresy is a legacy from the Guebres with their Aormuzd and Ahriman—had impressed itself profoundly on the mind of the young Abdullah. Or he may have attached an ex- aggerated importance to that mystic phenomenon which Bulwer Lytton calls the ‘ Dweller of the Thre- shold ’, that moment of intensest agony which se- parates Work from Reward, and serves as a sure diagnostic5 to discriminate between the happy-go- lucky “ union with God ” of the mere church-goer — an emotional glow of pious exhilaration — and the splendid and illuminating Union which constitutes Samadhi. Never forget that this great doctrine in- forms almost the whole of so-called Christian lite- rature ; St. Paul’s apostrophe (I Thess. iv. 16) if