is sudden success. The caravan
returned to its native city, and there remained little for Mahomet to do
except to wait for the arrival of next year's pilgrims, and to keep
shining and ambient the flame of his religious fervour. He remained in
Mecca virtually on sufferance, and rapidly recognised the uselessness of
attempting any further conversions. His hopes were now definitely set on
Medina, and to this end he seems to devoted himself more than ever to the
perusal and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.

The portion of the Kuran written at this time contains little else than
Bible stories told and retold to the point of weariness. Lot, of course,
is the characteristic figure; but we also have the life stories of
Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Joseph, and many others. The style has suffered a
marked diminution in poetic qualities. It has become reiterative and even
laboured. He continues his practice of alluding to current events, which
at Medina he was to pursue to the extent of making the Kuran a kind of
spasmodic history of his time, as well as an elementary text-book of law
and morality. In one of the suras--"The Cow"--Mahomet makes first mention
of that comfortable doctrine of "cancelling," by which later verses of
the Kuran cancel all previous revelations dealing with the same subject
if these prove contradictory: "Whatever verses we cancel or cause thee to
forget, we bring a better or its like; knowest thou not that God hath
power over all things?"

There is not much record in the Kuran of the influence of Christian
thought upon Islam. We have a few stories of Elizabeth and Mary, and
scattered allusions to the despised "Prophet of the Jews." But the great
body of Christian thought, its central dogmas of Incarnation and
Redemption, passed Mahomet entirely by, for his mind was practical and
not speculative, and indeed to himself no less than to his followers the
fundamentals of Christianity were of necessity too philosophic to be
realised with any intensity of belief. The Christian virtues of meekness
and resignation, too, might be respected in the abstract--passages in the
Kuran and tradition assure us they were--but they were so utterly
antagonistic to the fierce, free nature of the Arab that they never
entered into his religious life. Mahomet revered the Founder of
Christianity, and placed Him with John in the second Heaven of his
Immortals, but though He is secure among the teachers of the world, He
can never co