The Reconciliation of Races and Religions | Page 7

of the earlier Sufism
was profoundly ethical. Count Gobineau, however, assures us that the
Sufism which he knew was both enervating and immoral. Certainly the
later Sufi poets were inclined to overpress symbolism, and the luscious
sweetness of the poetry may have been unwholesome for some--both
for poets and for readers. Still I question whether, for properly trained
readers, this evil result should follow. The doctrine of the
impermanence of all that is not God and that love between two human
hearts is but a type of the love between God and His human creatures,
and that the supreme happiness is that of identification with God, has
never been more alluringly expressed than by the Sufi poets.
The Sufis, then, are true forerunners of the Bab and his successors.
There are also two men, Muslims but no Sufis, who have a claim to the
same title. But I must first of all do honour to an Indian Sufi.
INAYAT KHAN
The message of this noble company has been lately brought to the West.
[Footnote: _Message Soufi de la Liberté Spirituelle_ (Paris, 1913).]
The bearer, who is in the fulness of youthful strength, is Inayat Khan, a
member of the Sufi Order, a practised speaker, and also devoted to the
traditional sacred music of India. His own teacher on his death-bed
gave him this affecting charge: 'Goest thou abroad into the world,
harmonize the East and the West with thy music; spread the knowledge
of Sufism, for thou art gifted by Allah, the Most Merciful and
Compassionate.' So, then, Vivekananda, Abdu'l Baha, and Inayat Khan,
not to mention here several Buddhist monks, are all missionaries of
Eastern religious culture to Western, and two of these specially
represent Persia. We cannot do otherwise than thank God for the
concordant voice of Bahaite and Sufite. Both announce the Evangel of
the essential oneness of humanity which will one day--and sooner than
non-religious politicians expect--be translated into fact, and, as the first
step towards this 'desire of all nations,' they embrace every opportunity
of teaching the essential unity of religions:

Pagodas, just as mosques, are homes of prayer, 'Tis prayer that
church-bells chime unto the air; Yea, Church and Ka'ba, Rosary and
Cross, Are all but divers tongues of world-wide prayer. [a]
[Footnote a: Whinfield's translation of the quatrains of Omar Khayyám,
No. 22 (34).]
So writes a poet (Omar Khayyám) whom Inayat Khan claims as a Sufi,
and who at any rate seems to have had Sufi intervals. Unmixed spiritual
prayer may indeed be uncommon, but we may hope that prayer with no
spiritual elements at all is still more rare. It is the object of prophets to
awaken the consciousness of the people to its spiritual needs. Of this
class of men Inayat Khan speaks thus,--
'The prophetic mission was to bring into the world the Divine Wisdom,
to apportion it to the world according to that world's comprehension, to
adapt it to its degree of mental evolution as well as to dissimilar
countries and periods. It is by this adaptability that the many religions
which have emanated from the same moral principle differ the one
from the other, and it is by this that they exist. In fact, each prophet had
for his mission to prepare the world for the teaching of the prophet who
was to succeed him, and each of them foretold the coming of his
successor down to Mahomet, the last messenger of the divine Wisdom,
and as it were the look-out point in which all the prophetic cycle was
centred. For Mahomet resumed the divine Wisdom in this proclamation,
"Nothing exists, God alone is,"--the final message whither the whole
line of the prophets tended, and where the boundaries of religions and
philosophies took their start. With this message prophetic interventions
are henceforth useless.
'The Sufi has no prejudice against any prophet, and, contrary to those
who only love one to hate the other, the Sufi regards them all as the
highest attribute of God, as Wisdom herself, present under the
appearance of names and forms. He loves them with all his worship, for
the lover worships the Beloved in all Her garments.... It is thus that the
Sufis contemplate their Well-beloved, Divine Wisdom, in all her robes,
in her different ages, and under all the names that she bears,--Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, Mahomet.' [Footnote: _Message Soufi de la Liberté_

(Paris, 1913), pp. 34, 35.]
The idea of the equality of the members of the world-wide prophethood,
the whole body of prophets being the unique personality of Divine
Wisdom, is, in my judgment, far superior to the corresponding theory
of the exclusive Muhammadan orthodoxy. That theory is that each
prophet represents an advance on his predecessor, whom he therefore
supersedes. Now, that Muhammad as a prophet was well adapted to the