Page:Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din - The Strength of Islam.djvu/14

was revealed to me on many occasions in later life. It looks as though a spark of Islamic fire had been permitted to brighten up from the embers of forgotten or dormant truth; and it has sometimes seemed, to my possibly over-fanciful vision, as though a slender ray of light had shot through the rather heavy spiritual atmosphere of the Western world and proclaimed the receptivity of the West for Islamic truths. I am unable to account for the origin of these ideas of my early childhood, because none of my people—parents, uncles and aunts and others—were in the least degree Eastern or well-informed about Eastern affairs. They probably had a sort of rough idea that the Muslims were to be found somewhere amongst the "Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics" mentioned in one of the Christian collects; and the truths of the Muslim Faith, with its beautiful precepts of resignation and beneficence as expounded by our Holy Prophet, were unknown to them. I have never been able to quite understand why the Eastern Faith of Islam should be less acceptable than the Orthodox Greek Church, the Romish, or the Protestant Churches, all of which were equally from the East.