r him," he
said; "in the Resurrection he also will gather a church around him."[97]

In spite of his maladies and the general delicacy of his nervous
organization, Mohammed evinced in early youth a degree of energy and
intellectual capacity which augured well for his future success in some
important sphere. Fortune also favored him in many ways. His success as
manager of the commercial caravans of a wealthy widow led to his
acceptance as her husband. She was fourteen years his senior, but she
seems to have entirely won his affections and to have proved
indispensable, not only as a patroness, but as a wise and faithful
counsellor. So long as she lived she was the good spirit who called
forth his better nature, and kept him from those low impulses which
subsequently wrought the ruin of his character, even in the midst of his
successes. On the one hand, it is an argument in favor of the sincerity
of Mohammed's prophetic claims, that this good and true woman was the
first to believe in him as a prophet of God; but, on the other hand, we
must remember that she was a loving wife, and that that charity which
thinketh no evil is sometimes utterly blind to evil when found in this
tender relation.

We have no reason to doubt that Mohammed was a sincere "Hanif." Having
means and leisure for study, and being of a bright and thoughtful mind,
he doubtless entered with enthusiasm into the work of reforming the
idolatrous customs of his countrymen. From this high standpoint, and
free from superstitious fear of a heathen priesthood, he was prepared to
estimate in their true enormity the degrading rites which he everywhere
witnessed under the abused name of religion. That hatred of idolatry
which became the main spring of his subsequent success, was thus
nourished and strengthened as an honest and abiding sentiment. He was,
moreover, of a contemplative--we may say, of a religious--turn of mind.
His maladies gave him a tinge of melancholy, and, like the Buddha, he
showed a characteristic thoughtfulness bordering upon the morbid.
Becoming more and more a reformer, he followed the example of many other
reformers by withdrawing at stated times to a place of solitude for
meditation; at least such is the statement of his followers, though
there are evidences that he took his family with him, and that he may
have been seeking refuge from the heat. However this may have been, the
place chosen was a neighboring cave, in whose cool shade he not o