Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/148



F all the places of worship I know,—and I have lugged my unshrived soul and my weary limbs into many a foreign temple,—the mosque has always impressed me as being by far the most democratic and the most unstinted in its varied hospitalities. There is nothing in it or in its economy to flatter the rich, or oft end the poor, to repel the weary, or distract the devout. The welcome it extends is not of the two-by-two pew order; the solace it affords is no bread-and-cheese affair. And the Friday sermon, if you should care to hear it, is often taken bodily from the Koran and is, therefore, never extraneous;—a ringing and harmless bit of eloquence that charms the ear and lulls the senses in celestial revery. The mosque is always big enough to hold the declaiming preacher and the sleeping worshipper in an incommunicable vacuity; for the pulpit is never