“The vision and the faculty divine.”[182]
Such was the prophetic gift of Muhammed, and as long as they adhere to his sayings, they are the orthodox Súfis, whom I have already mentioned.
2. Another order endeavor to comprehend, to fix, and to explain the attributes of God; the holy object sanctifies their efforts; unattainable, it exalts their souls above themselves; incomprehensibility yields to the sacred power of self-intuition; mysterious darkness to celestial light; their intellect, no more terrestrial, “knows its own sun and its own stars;”[183] by continual mental excitement they produce in themselves (according to their own phraseology) a state of intoxication; in the full enjoyment of their liberty, they approach the Supreme Being, and finally fancy an intimate union with their Creator. These are the mystic Sufis.
Man, to express his most fervent adoration of the Divinity, uses the expressions by which he is wont to address the object of his most tender affections; he has but the fire of earth to kindle in sacrifice to heaven; and to elevate his soul to the Supreme Being, he makes wings of the most lively sentiments which he ever experienced, and can excite in himself. The intensity of inward feeling breaks loose in outward demonstrations, gesture, song, and dance—
“Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere
Of planets, and of fix’d, in all her wheels
Resembles nearest, mazes intricate,
Eccentric, intervolv’d, yet regular,
Then most, when most irregular they seem.”[184]