Page:Akbar and the Rise of the Mughal Empire.djvu/170

Rh the creed, to perform circumcision, or to be prostrate on the ground from the dread of kingly power, can avail nothing in the sight of God:

Obedience is not in prostration on the earth: Practice sincerity, for righteousness is not borne upon the brow!

Whatever we may think of this discussion, of the test of fire proposed by the Christian priest, we may at least welcome it as showing the complete toleration of discussion permitted at the Ibádat-Khána, and, above all, as indicating the tendency of the mind of Akbar. He had, in fact, reasoned himself out of belief in all dogmas and in all accepted creeds. Instead of those dogmas and those creeds he simply recognised the Almighty Maker of the world, and himself, the chiefest in authority in his world as the representative in it of God, to carry out his beneficent decrees of toleration, equal justice, and perfect liberty of conscience, so far as such liberty of conscience did not endanger the lives of others. He was very severe with the Muhammadans, because he recognised that the professors of the faith of the dominant party are always inclined to persecution. But he listened to all, and recognising in all the same pernicious feature, viz., the broad, generous, far-reaching, universal qualities attributed to the Almighty distorted in each case by an interested priesthood, he prostrated himself before the God of all, discarding the priesthood of all.

He has been called a Zoroastrian, because he recognised in the sun the sign of the presence of the Almighty. And there can be no doubt but that the