of Khadija, a rich
widow; and he made journeys in her affairs to Syria and Palestine,
where he may have seen places famous in Jewish history and may also
have come in contact with Christianity. At the age of twenty-five he
married Khadija, who was fifteen years older than himself; the
marriage was a happy one, and there were several children. He is
described as a man of middle height, with a fair skin, a pleasant
countenance, and pleasing manners; and he had proved his ability in
business. Some years after his marriage he began to think deeply
about religious subjects. He came into connection apparently with
some of those Hanyfs or penitents, mentioned above, who, without
being formed into a sect, were at one in seeking for a more
satisfactory religious position. The religion to which they were
feeling their way was a monotheism, a service of the one God of
Abraham, but not that of Judaism with its exaltation of the Jewish
race, nor that of Christianity, in which God had a Son for his
companion. Submission to the one God was to them the essence of
religion. "Islam" means submission, and the "Moslem" is the person
who thus submits himself to the one sole God, whether he be Jew or
Christian or neither. The Hanyfs also held the belief of the
Christians in a coming judgment; and the effect of their beliefs on
their lives was that they practised austerities and often retired
from the world.

His Religious Impressions.--Mahomet at this part of his life began
also to withdraw himself, and to go apart to lonely spots for
meditation. What he meditated we see from his sayings and doings
afterwards. The contrast between the pure religion of Allah, as held
by the Hanyfs, and the popular religion of Mecca with which his birth
connected him, with its trade associations, its idols, its
unintelligible rites, was certainly a tremendous one; and if a
judgment was impending over all but the believers in Allah, it was a
terrible prospect. For many years, however, Mahomet was simply a
Hanyf. He was one who had surrendered himself, with a tender and
impressionable soul, to the divine will and guidance, and was filled
with the sense of Allah's presence and power, and of his own
accountability to him in the great and tremendous realities of life.
In addition to this, however, we have to mention a circumstance which
is generally thought to have had a determining influence in Mahomet's
production of Islam. He had a peculiar temperament; mental