"Content is prosperity, Effendi."
"And we say that God helps those who help themselves."
"Aiwah." Abdul smiled. "Our rendering of the proverb is more beautiful—'God helps us so long as we help each other.' The Effendi showed much charity—he helps others rather than himself."
"My help was unworthy of mention, the merest human sympathy for the helpless and suffering. Who could have done less?"
"We consider sympathy the next best thing to a proper belief in God, sympathy for others." Abdul bowed. "The Effendi has much sympathy—he himself is not aware of how much."
"Thank you, Abdul, but I do believe in God. I believe in Him so fully and unreservedly that I often wonder why I am not a good man. Sometimes I am not so bad, or I think I am not, for I am very conscious of Him, He is very near to me. At other times the world is a wilderness and God is very far."
"We are never far from God, Effendi. We cannot be. He is closer to us than the hairs of our head, there is nothing nearer than God."
"I know that, Abdul, I know it, but yet these lapses come. I feel alone, abandoned, useless, my life purposeless, wasted."
"A man has no choice, Effendi, in settling the aims of his life. He does not enter the world or leave it as he desires. The true aim of his life consists in the knowing and worshipping of God and living for His sake. Our Holy Book says, 'Verily the religion which gives a true knowledge of God and directs in the most excellent way of His worship is Islam. Islam responds to and supplies the demands of human nature, and God has created man after the model of Islam and for Islam. He has willed it that man should devote his faculties to the love, obedience and worship of God, for it is for this reason that Almighty God has granted him faculties which are suited to Islam.'"
Michael listened with reverent attention. He knew that Abdul was conferring a special favour on him in that he was actually quoting the very words of the Holy Koran to a Christian. As a matter of fact, Abdul had ceased to think of Michael as a Christian—from his Moslem point of view, as an enemy of Islam. He rather considered his condition as that of one who was searching for the Light and would eventually enjoy the perfection of Islam. He knew that Michael did not divide the honours of the one and only God; he believed, as Moslems believe, that the Effendi Jesus was not the Son of God, but a prophet to whom God had revealed Himself.