Roman, and to overthrow the hosts which had delivered Byzantium and had conquered Persia. But the Arabian Prophet, the Carthaginian hero, were no more among them. Heraclius, worn out with toils and triumphs, resigned the defence of Syria to weaker hands, and Mahomet in his tomb at Medina left the mightiest work of his prophetic mission to the sage policy of Abu-Bekr the Righteous and to the irresistible arm of Khaled the Sword of God.

Now, putting aside for the present the question of Mahomet's supposed imposture and assuming for the time his principle of propagating his religion by force, there is really but little to condemn in his character and conduct. According to the morality of his own age and nation, there was absolutely nothing to censure in his public and very little in his private life. Even judging him by a higher and severer standard, we may fairly say that few men have risen from a private station to sovereign power with so noble an end before them, and with so little of recorded crime. His early life appears to have been absolutely blameless; he won the esteem of many who did not admit his pretensions, and it is certainly in his favor that those who knew him best trusted him the most. No man, they tell us, is a hero to his valet-de-chambre. The simple life of the Arab admitted of no one in that exact capacity, but in the nearest approach to it, in his noble freedman Zeyd, Mahomet found one in whose eyes he was emphatically a hero. The confidence and affection of a wife to whom he owed his position, and one fifteen years older than himself; the constant confidence and affection of men of the noblest and at the

same time the most opposite characters, the calm Abu-Bekr, the chivalrous Ali, the fiery Omar,-certainly tend to show that the personal character of Mahomet in no way gave the lie to his lofty pretensions. To say with Prideaux that his early life was very wicked and licentious. is mere calumny without proof. Everything shows that-at least, during his residence at Mecca-Mahomet lived externally the life of a really good man according to his light. If he was a hypocrite, he was a hypocrite of the most consummate subtlety.

In the second period of his career it is impossible not to recognize a deterioration. From the moment of his appeal to the sword something of baser leaven seems to fasten itself upon his career. In that appeal there is, indeed, nothing wonderful. It is easy to argue, as persecutors have done in all ages, that toleration is soul-murder; that if we forbid the public dissemination of poison for the body, much more should we forbid the dissemination of poison for the soul. Yet this is a view which, if logically followed out, would lead to conclusions yet more sanguinary than those of Mahomet. No submission, no tribute, ought to be accepted; the accursed thing should be utterly put away. Mahomet had before him the example of Mosaic law, which preached a far more rigorous mandate of extermination against the guilty nations of Canaan. He had before him the practice of all surrounding powers, Christian, Jewish and heathen, though, from the disaffection of Syria and Egypt to the orthodox throne of Constantinople,* he might have learned how easily persecution defeats its own end. That the *Tophane, a suburb of Constantinople.

Almighty allows differences in religion to exist, and leaves the conversion of his erring creatures to the ordinary course of his providence, might well be deemed an argument against his servants resorting in his supposed behalf to violent and extraordinary means. But experience shows how slowly and with what difficulty the human mind is brought to embrace this truth.

Under Mahomet's circumstances, it is really no very great ground for condemnation that he did appeal to the sword. He did no more than follow the precedents of his own and every surrounding nation. Yet one might say that a man of such mighty genius as Mahomet must have been might have been fairly expected to rise superior to the trammels of prejudice and precedent. And it cannot be denied that from this moment we discern a certain taint upon his whole conduct-one which does not, indeed, affect the general righteousness of his career, but which comes out in individual errors from which he had previously been free. With his first appeal to the sword there appears to have come upon him a general unscrupulousness as to the means whereby his ends were to be compassed. Compared with most Oriental conquerors, Mahomet stands generally clear both of cruelty and perfidy. He did not, like even Baber, mark his triumphs by pyramids of skulls, nor did he, like the later Ottomans, enslave, impale or flay alive men who had surrendered upon an honorable capitulation; but, compared with the peaceful preacher of Mecca, the warrior of Medina may be called both cruel and perfidious. In his first campaign he caused his generals to attack his enemies in the sacred month, during which

the Arabs abstained from warfare; he then, like Elizabeth in the case of Davison, tried to throw the blame on his subordinate, and finally produced a revelation to abrogate the sacred month entirely. Surely this revelation should at least have been promulgated before it was acted upon. Again, in an instance to which I have already alluded, when the Jews of Koraidha agreed to surrender to the discretion of Saad, Mahomet openly applauded the decision by which that warrior sentenced them to a general destruction. Yet it is only fair to acknowledge that even this massacre was a trifle compared with the ordinary horrors of Oriental warfare, and that it stands alone in the career of Mahomet. Certainly, as a general rule, few Eastern victors of any time, few Western ones of that and many subsequent ages, kept their hands so clear from unnecessary bloodshed as Mahomet and his immediate followers.

The permission of polygamy has undoubtedly proved in its ultimate results one of the greatest and most fearful evils in the Mahometan system. But how far are we to consider it as a legitimate ground of personal blame to the prophet that he allowed and practised plurality of wives? It should not be forgotten that in this as in every other respect he was, in his own age and country, a reformer. For an utterly irregular profligacy Mahomet substituted a regulated polygamy which must then and there have seemed almost as heavy a yoke as his prohibition of the other Arab delights of strong drink and games of chance. Whatever Mahometans may choose to make their own practice, the law of the Prophet is express. Every man of the Faithful is to confine himself to four women, whether under the

state.

But, after all, comes the great question, Was the man who effected in his own day so great a reform an impostor? Was his whole career one of sheer hypocrisy? Was his divine mission a mere invention of his own of whose falsehood he was conscious throughout? Such was the notion of the elder controversialists, like Prideaux, but to an unprejudiced observer it carries its confutation with it on the face of it. Surely nothing but a consciousness of really righteous intentions could have carried Mahomet so steadily and consistently, without ever flinching or wavering, without ever betraying himself to his most intimate companions, from his first revelation to Khadijah to his last agony in the arms of Ayesha. If the whole was imposture, it was an imposture utterly without parallel, from its extraordinary subtlety and the wonderful long-sightedness and constancy which one must attribute to its author. Whether persecuted or triumphant, whether in the hour of victory at Beder or in the hour of defeat at Ohud, whether corresponding with the kings of the earth or with rivals of his own people, his lofty spirit never deserted him for a moment.

tors who appeared in imitation of him at the close of his career. Mahomet had no miracle but his Koran; Al Assouad, Tuleila and Moseilama deceived the senses of their followers by tricks of vulgar sleight-of-hand, while some of them relieved them from the heavy observances of prayer and fasting laid upon them by the ascetic of Mecca. Compare Moseilama and Mahomet. Compare their letters. "From Moseilama the Apostle of God to Mahomet the Apostle of God: Now let the earth be half mine and half thine." "From Mahomet the Apostle of God to Moseilama the Liar: The earth is God's; he giveth it for inheritance to such of his servants as he pleaseth, and the happy issue shall attend those that fear him." Surely in one we see the timid. bungling, doubting production of a conscious impostor, while the other displays the lofty confidence of one who fully believed in his own claims. Again, in the hour of death, amidst agony and delirium, not a word escapes him to betray any flaw or doubt in his pretensions. His last unconnected, half-inarticulate words still spoke of his hopes in Paradise, of his "fellow-citizens on high." Surely he was not playing the hypocrite at that awful moment.

That Mahomet in his early career was actuated by the noblest intentions and that he fully believed in his own mission is, I think, perfectly evident. That prosperity corrupted him, though it did not wholly turn him astray, is, I think, no less evident. That confidence in his own teaching followed him to the last is equally so. But this is by no means inconsistent with some alloy of conscious imposture during the