e East dates its era, in
the fifty-third year of the Prophet's life. In this city he was
cordially welcomed, and he soon found himself surrounded with
enthusiastic followers. He built a mosque, and openly performed the
rites of the new religion.

At this era a new phase appears in the Prophet's life and teachings.
Thus far, until his flight, it would seem that he propagated his
doctrines by moral force alone, and that these doctrines, in the main,
were elevated. He had earnestly declared his great idea of the unity of
God. He had pronounced the worship of images to be idolatrous. He held
idolatry of all kinds in supreme abhorrence. He enjoined charity,
justice, and forbearance. He denounced all falsehood and all deception,
especially in trade. He declared that humility, benevolence, and
self-abnegation were the greatest virtues. He commanded his disciples to
return good for evil, to restrain the passions, to bridle the tongue, to
be patient under injuries, to be submissive to God. He enjoined prayer,
fastings, and meditation as a means of grace. He laid down the necessity
of rest on the seventh day. He copied the precepts of the Bible in many
of their essential features, and recognized its greatest teachers as
inspired prophets.

It was during these thirteen years at Mecca, amid persecution and
ridicule, and with few outward successes, that he probably wrote the
Koran,--a book without beginning and without end, _disjecta membra_,
regardless of all rules of art, full of repetitions, and yet full of
lofty precepts and noble truths of morality evidently borrowed from the
Jewish Scriptures,--in which his great ideas stand out with singular
eloquence and impressiveness: the unity of God, His divine sovereignty,
the necessity of prayer, the soul's immortality, future rewards and
punishments. His own private life had been blameless. It was plain and
simple. For a whole month he did not light a fire to cook his food. He
swept his chamber himself and mended his own clothes. His life was that
of an ascetic enthusiast, profoundly impressed with the greatness and
dignity of his mission. Thus far his greatest error and fault was in the
supposition that he was inspired in the same sense as the ancient Jewish
prophets were inspired,--to declare the will and the truth of God. Any
man leading such a life of contemplative asceticism and retirement is
prone to fall into the belief of special divine illumination. It
characterized George