THE DESCENT OF BOLSHEVISM
these snares. They would utterly destroy the foundation of all existing order, set men free from the despotism of all morals and laws and creeds, and re-establish their direct allegiance to God.
Some of these so-called high mysteries are entertained also by the Sufis of today. But Sufism does not prompt to action and rebellion. The Sufi detaches himself from the world and all its tyrannies and evils,—rises on the ladder to the vanishing point, so to speak, and stays there,—while the Karmathians, the Ismailites and other kindred sects, would fight to substitute the reign of Allah for the reign of man on earth. And the Arab is no where so well at home as in metaphysical abstractions and the desert. He is most credulous, is more believing, in fact, than religious. His deep sense of the possibilities that may be hidden in the depths of the unknown, induces in him a ready easy credence in any message supposedly divine. If one prophet, why not another? Mohammed has by no means closed the Arab nation's account
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