[11] Published and sold by the Rationalistic Press, London for 6d.
[12] The translation of the Sura in this analysis is slightly different from that given in the succeeding page.—Ed.
[13] "It is strange": says Havelock Ellis, "men seek to be, or to seem, atheists, agnostics, cynics, pessimists; at the core of all these things lurks religion.... The men who have most finely felt the pulse of the world and have, in their turn, most effectively stirred its pulse, are religious men."—New Spirit, 228.
[14] The word "religion" also means a system of beliefs and rites pertaining to them. I do not use the word in that sense here.
[15] i.e., the world such as we perceive and conceive it.
[16] "I know that even the unaided reason, when correctly exercised, leads to a belief in God, in the immortality of the soul, and in a future retribution"—Cardinal Newman.
[17] Prof. Scott Elliot at the end of his book, Prehistoric Man (p. 381) writes thus: "It seems true that almost every race of man is not only capable of believing in a Supreme God but, so far as the evidence goes, did reverence one God who was often also thought of as the Creator of the Sky or of the World.... There is a very strong body of evidence showing that every race of mankind possessed quite early in its development a feeling of awe and reverence towards an Unknown God."
[18] There are at present three missionary religions in the world—religions which were intended and designed by their respective founders to unite all men without any distinction into a Universal Brotherhood.
(1) Buddhism asserts that God is Law or Wisdom.
(2) Islam teaches that God is Energy or Power.
(3) Christianity says that God is Father or Love.
But all these religions inculcate in fact one and the same Truth in its three aspects, as Muslim Sufis would say. I believe the gist of doctrines held by them is that God is Omnipotent Energy manifesting itself uniformly as Law and operating benevolently as Love.