Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/273

purposes. Every faith may claim to be judged by the best specimens of its adherents and the highest examples of its ritual and worship. And assuredly El Islam can point to countless followers, even among the very humblest, whose simple piety is day by day and quite unconsciously illustrated under conditions which absolutely exclude any possible element of religious vanity or Pharisaic display. No one can doubt it who has ever, himself unseen, beheld an Egyptian peasant alone between the desert and the river, at the sunset hour, prostrating himself before the Deity in whose sole presence he imagines himself to be, the One God who called his Prophet out of that Mecca towards which his worshipper devoutly turns. To look on this sight is to feel the spirit of human worship in its purest form; and a pious Moslem twitted with his howling and posturing dervishes might as confidently set "this picture" against that, as we Christians would bid him look, for instance, at the bowed heads and clasped