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RECONCILIATION.
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Mahomed was frightened, and ran home in great fear and excitement. Perspiration broke out in great beads on his forehead, and be covered himself ụp with the wrapper of Khadijah. She knew something of the meditation her husband was in the habit of practising, and comforted him with the idea that the vision was not a nightmare. For three years the husband and wife waited in patience for the recurrence of the vision, and at last were rewarded by the sight of the angel once more. During this long interval of time, the mind of the Prophet was all the time filled with the noblest of expectations. Many a problem of religious philosophy must have occurred to him during this period. He had had no philosophical training in the strict sense of the term, but knowledge does not depend on study in schools; it is stored up in the soul. He must have come across teachers of different sects also, and must have discussed many of the problems with them. In the midst of the confusion which prevailed in the religious circles in his country, in the medley of theories and dogmas and doctrines which were perplexing him, truth at last flashed on his mind, like a ray of sunshine in the midst of winter clouds. He clearly perceived that the truth of truths, the quintessence of philosophy, the kernel of religion, was the rock of the Unity of the Essence of God whom he describes as 'that which seeth and heareth,' Mystic, as he was, in his tendencies, he
to believe in the existence of the arch-angel, holding that when the Prophet said that an angel bad appeared unto him, he meant nothing more or less than the simple fact that an unknown person had met him.-(The Philosophy of Islam, p. 54).
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