August 7.—My friends talked, as usual, much about what they call Divine love; but I do not very well comprehend what they mean. They love not the holy God, but the god of their own imagination—a god who will let them do as they please. I often remind Seyd Ali of one defect in his system, which is, that there is no one to stand between his sins and God. Knowing what I allude to, he says, ‘Well, if the death of Christ intervene, no harm; Soofi-ism can admit this too.’
August 14.—Returned to the city in a fever, which continued all the next day until the evening!
August 15.—Jani Khan, in rank corresponding to one of our Scottish dukes, as he is the head of all the military tribes of Persia, and chief of his own tribe, which consists of twenty thousand families, called on Jaffir Ali Khan with a message from the king. He asked me a great number of questions, and disputed a little. ‘I suppose,’ said he, ‘you consider us all as infidels!’ ‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘the whole of you.’ He was mightily pleased with my frankness, and mentioned it when he was going away.
August 22.—The copyist having shown my answer to Moodurris, called Moolla Akbar, he wrote on the margin with great acrimony but little sense. Seyd Ali having shown his remarks in some companies, they begged him not to show them to me, for fear I should disgrace them all through the folly of one man.
August 23.—Ruza Kooli Mirza, the great-grandson of Nadir Shah and Aga Mahommed Hasan, called. The prince’s nephew, hearing of my attack on Muhammad, observed that the proper answer to it was the sword; but the prince confessed that he began to have his doubts. On his inquiring what were the laws of Christianity—meaning the number of times of prayer, the different washings, &c.—I said that we had two commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy strength; and thy neighbour as thyself.’ He asked, ‘What could be better?’ and continued praising them.
The Moolla Aga Mahommed Hasan, himself a Moodurris, and a very sensible, candid man, asked a good deal about the European philosophy, particularly what we did in metaphysics; for instance, ‘how, or in what sense, the body of Christ ascended into heaven?’ He talked of free-will and fate, and reasoned high, and at last reconciled them according to the doctrines of the Soofis by saying, that ‘as all being is an emanation of the Deity, the will of every being is only the will of the Deity, so that therefore, in fact, free-will and fate are the same.’ He has nothing to find fault with in Christianity, except the Divinity of Christ. It is this doctrine that exposes me to the contempt of the learned Mahometans, in whom it is difficult to say whether pride or ignorance predominates. Their sneers are more difficult to bear than the brick-bats which the boys sometimes throw at me; however, both are an honour of which I am not worthy. How many times in the day have I occasion to repeat the words:
If on my face, for Thy dear name,
Shame and reproaches be,
All hail, reproach, and welcome, shame,
If Thou remember me.
The more they wish me to give up this one point—the Divinity of Christ—the more I seem to feel the necessity of it, and rejoice and glory in it. Indeed, I trust I would sooner give up my life than surrender it.
In the evening we went to pay a long-promised visit to Mirza Abulkasim, one of the most renowned Soofis in all Persia. We found several persons sitting in an open court, in which a few greens and flowers were placed; the master was in a corner. He was a very fresh-looking old man with a silver beard. I was surprised to observe the downcast and sorrowful looks of the assembly, and still more at the silence which reigned. After sitting some time in expectation, and being not at all disposed to waste my time in sitting there, I said softly to Seyd Ali, ‘What is this?’ He said, ‘It is the custom here to think much and speak little.’ ‘May I ask the master a question?’ said I. With some hesitation he consented to let me; so I begged Jaffir Ali to inquire, ‘Which is the way to be happy?’
This he did in his own manner; he began by observing that ‘there was a great deal of misery in the world, and that the learned shared as largely in it as the rest; that I wished therefore to know what we must do to escape it.’ The master replied that ‘for his part he did not know, but that it was usually said that the subjugation of the passions was the shortest way to happiness.’ After a considerable pause I ventured to ask, ‘What were his feelings at the prospect of death—hope, or fear, or neither?’ ‘Neither,’ said he, and that ‘pleasure and pain were both alike.’ I then perceived that the Stoics were Greek Soofis. I asked ‘whether he had attained this apathy.’ He said, ‘No.’ ‘Why do you think it attainable?’ He could not tell. ‘Why do you think that pleasure and pain are not the same?’ said Seyd Ali, taking his master’s part. ‘Because,’ said I, ‘I have the evidence of my senses for it. And you also act as if there was a difference. Why do you eat, but that you fear pain?’ These silent sages sat unmoved.