The Days of Mohammed | Page 6

succeeded in finding the parchment.
He handed it to the Persian. "I hope it may be of use to you, stranger.
Abraham the Jew knows little and cares less for religion, but he would
be sorry to see you bowing with yon heathen Arab herd at Mecca."
"Dog! Son of a dog!"
It was Musa. Able to restrain his passion no longer, he had sprung to

his feet and stood, with flashing eyes and drawn scimitar, in resentment
of the slur on his countrymen.
With a howl of fear, the little Jew sprang through the door and
disappeared in the darkness.
Musa laughed contemptuously.
"Ha, lack-brained cur!" he said, "I would not have hurt him, having
broken bread with him in mine own tent! Yet, friend Persian, one
cannot hear one's own people, and one's own temple, the temple of his
fathers, desecrated by the tongue of a lack-brained Jew trinket-vender."
"You know, then, of this Caaba--of the God they worship there?" asked
the priest.
Musa shook his head, and made a gesture of denial.
"Musa knows little of such things," he replied. "Yet the Caaba is a
name sacred in Arabian tradition, and as such, it suits me ill to hear it
on the tongue of a craven-hearted Jew. In sooth, the coward knave has
left his trumpery bundle all open as it is. I warrant me he will come
back for it in good time."
A dark-haired lad in a striped silk garment here passed through the tent.
"Hither, Kedar!" called the Sheikh. "Recite for our visitor the story of
Moses."
The lad at once began the story, reciting it in a sort of chant, and
accompanying his words with many a gesture. The company listened
breathlessly, now giving vent to deep groans as the persecution of the
children of Israel was described, now bowing their heads in reverence
at the revelation of the burning bush, now waving their arms in
excitement and starting forward with flashing eyes as the lad pictured
the passage of the Red Sea.
Yusuf had heard some vague account of the story before, but, with the

passionate nature of the Oriental, he was strangely moved as he listened
to the recital of how that great God whom he longed to feel and know
had led the children of Israel through all their wanderings and
sufferings to the promised land. He felt that he too was indeed a
wanderer, seeking the promised land. He was but an infant in the true
things of the Spirit. Like many another who longs vainly for a
revelation of the working of the Holy Spirit, his soul seemed to reach
out hopelessly.
But who can tell how tenderly the same All-wise Creator treasures up
every outreaching of the struggling soul! Not one throb of the loving
and longing heart is lost;--and Yusuf was yet, after trial, to rejoice in
the serene fullness of such light as may fall upon this terrestrial side of
death's dividing line.
Poor Yusuf, with all his Persian learning and wisdom, had, through all
his life, known only a religion tinctured with idolatry. Almost alone he
had broken from that idolatry, and realized the unity of God and his
separation from all connected with such worship; but he was yet to
understand the connection of God with man, and to taste the fullness of
God's love through Christ. He had not realized that the finger of God is
upon the life of every man who is willing to yield himself to Divine
direction, and that there is thus an inseparable link between the Creator
and the creature. He was not able to say, as said Carlyle in these later
days, "A divine decree or eternal regulation of the universe there verily
is, in regard to every conceivable procedure and affair of man;
faithfully following this, said procedure or affair will prosper.... Not
following this,... destruction and wreck are certain for every affair."
And what could be better? Divine love, not divine wrath, over all!
Yusuf had an idea of divine wrath, but he failed to see--because the
presentation of the never-failing Fatherhood of God had not yet
come--the infinite love that makes Jesus all in all to us, heaven
wherever he is, and hell wherever he is not.
Since leaving Persia, this was the first definite opportunity he had had
of listening to Bible truth.
"Kedar knows more of this than his father," explained Musa. "'Tis his

mother who teaches him. She was a Jewess, of the people of Jesus of
Nazareth, but I fear this roving life has caused my poor Lois to forget
much of the teaching of her people."
"You speak of Jesus of Nazareth. I have heard something of him. Tell
me more."
Musa shook his head slowly. "I know nothing," he said.