But why allow shallow curiosity to weaken one's faith in the great spiritual principle which underlies all such beliefs? Attach all such pious tales to the Oriental's foundation belief that all good comes from God, and they become intelligible and acceptable. His intellectual { 387} explanations are faint attempts to grasp the great mystery of divine providence, to explain the ways of the Great Giver. If you do not attempt to make an infallible creed of these spiritual imaginings, they will serve as well as any intellectual devices to urge upon the mind the truth that ultimately "every good and every perfect gift cometh from above." Whether the resources were a few loaves and fishes, or thousands of loaves and fishes, it was God who fed the "five thousand," and it is he who feeds all the millions of his children through the annual miracle of increase in all the fields and vineyards of the world.
In his heart-stirring prayer, which begins with, "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord," the writer of the one hundred and thirtieth Psalm says, "My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say more than they that watch for the morning." The Revised Version's rendering, "More than watchmen wait for the { 388} morning," limits the sense of the text, and, consequently, fails to express fully the phase of Eastern thought to which the Psalmist alludes. I have no doubt that the ancient poet meant that his longing for the manifestation of God was as keen as the longing of _el-mûtesehhid_ for the dawn. This term comes from _sûhad_ (sleeplessness). Eastern poetry is full of references to the _sûhad_, either from fear or other intense feelings like sorrow or love. In a land of tribal feuds and where wild beasts abound, the night is full of terror. _El-mûtesehhid_ "wrestles" with the night, keenly observes the stars which mark the night watches, and restlessly watches for the advent of the day to dispell his haunting fears. The Arabian poet exclaims, "Oh, the night's curtains which are like the waves of the sea are fallen upon me, to afflict me with every type of anxiety. It seems that the Pleiades [which marked the march of the night] have been arrested in their course by being tied with hemp ropes to an adamant!"