[5]. Dr. Johnson’s contribution to this vexed question is perhaps as good as any other: “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “we know the will is free, there’s an end on’t.”
[6]. Les Religions de l’Asie Centrale.
[7]. Cf. St. Paul, who is scarcely more explicit: “Work out your own salvation; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil. ii. 12).
[8]. Dabistan.
[9]. Hallaj lived in the ninth century. He was believed by some to be a sorcerer, and by others a holy worker of miracles. He was condemned to death with horrible tortures by the Khalif of Baghdad in 919, and his ashes were thrown into the Tigris. It is said that a Sufi once asked God why he suffered his servant Hallaj to fall into the Khalif’s hands, and was answered, “Thus the revealers of secrets are punished.”
[10]. Gulshen-i-Raz.
[11]. Yusuf and Zuleikha.
[12]. “A Year among the Persians.” Browne.
[13]. Sayyed Ahmed of Isfahan.
[14]. Listen to the advice of an Afghan singer who wrote his Ars Poetica in the mountains south of Peshawar about the middle of the seventeenth century:—