with the wind and the stars, and far from the bustle and the lights of Mecca. By his marriage with Kadijah, tradition informs us, Mahomet became acquainted with an Arab, named Waraka, the nephew of Kadijah, who in the course of an erratic career had passed successively through Judaism and Christianity, without having found a resting-place in either. What influence the conversation of this man, who is said to have been well acquainted with the Old and the New Testaments, may have exerted over Mahomet, cannot be determined; it is extremely probable, however, that the contact of so restless a spirit, bringing more home to Mahomet the fact of the religious anarchy of nat book opens, and in which, in fact, ore or less monotonously kept up out, serves, more particularly when in connection with the known state of at the time, as a kind of retrospective the speculative route that must have rsued in order to reach it. That is to ing the state of conviction promulgahe Koran as the goal that was ultireached by Mahomet, our knowledge an nature generally, and of the variments and tendencies at work in at the time, ought to enable us to with some certainty, by what sceptical y that goal was arrived at. first of all, it is clear Mahomet must en by nature of a profound and rev-prevailing among his countrymen, may have sposition, a man not capable of sett- determined him to follow out to the utterestions about the supernatural and most his own spiritual bent, with a view to destiny carelessly aside, or of perfunct- arrive at a conclusion capable of being stated scharging a few established rites, and and promulgated. If so, and indeed whethhrough life with ease: but incessant- er it were so or not, the first step that he ved by cravings after knowledge, and would feel it incumbent upon him to take, problems too high for human solu- would be to separate himself from the idolaEven among the Arabs, surcharged as trous portion of his countrymen, to protest emperament is with the tendency to- at least against that element of Arabian he ideal and the wonderful, Mahomet thought and practice. For, by whatever imhave been a recognized transcenden- pulse or at whatever point, the process nd dreamer. While a Polytheist, his mental change was begun, this, the negaism must have been abject and enthu- tion, namely, of the grosser portions of Polya hundred times more vehement than theism, would infallibly be its first considerhis fellows; and from the moment able result. In the following passage of the germ of doubt was implanted into Koran, where Mahomet narrates with evi1st of his till then implicit faith, his dent delight an old legend of Abraham's rees either to extirpate it or force it to volt from the faith of his idolatrous forefathlost manifestations, must have been ers, he may be supposed to picture retroand unceasing. This hypothesis of spectively his own state of mind at this cridinate earnestness and melancholy in sis of his change. racter of Mahomet from the first, is ely inevitable. During the whole pe"Remember when Abraham said unto his fathhis mental change, say his Arabic bier and his people, what are these images to ers, it was his custom frequently to swered, We found our fathers worshiping which ye are so entirely devoted?' They anw from Mecca, and to live days and them. He said. Verily both ye and your fathtogether in a cave in Mount Hara, ers have been in manifest error.' They said, ine miles from the town, spending the 'Dost thou seriously tell us the truth; or art prayer and meditation. In this there thou one who jestest with us?' He replied, no means, such eccentricity as would Verily your Lord is the Lord of the heavens and ied in similar behavior amongst ourthe earth; it is he who hath created them; and The practice of withdrawing into the God, I will surely devise a plot against your idols, I am one of those who bear witness thereof. By of the desert was doubtless common after ye shall have retired from them and shall among the devout Arabians, wheth- have turned your backs.' And in the people's stian or Pagan, as indeed it is con- absence he went into the temple where the idols with Eastern habits and with an East- stood, and he brake them all in pieces, except the nate; and probably all that was rebigest of them; that they might lay the blame le in Mahomet's case, was the extraupon that. And when they were returned and y extent to which he carried the prac-Who hath done this to our gods? He is cersaw the havoc which had been made, they said, The whole month of Ramadhan, which tainly an impious person.' And certain of th-- 6 They said, Bring him therefore before the eyes, of the people that they may bear witness against him.' And when he was brought before the assembly, they said unto him, Hast thou done this unto our gods, O Abraham? He answered, Nay, that biggest of them hath done it but ask them if they can speak.' They said, Verily thou knowest that they speak not.' Abraham answered, 'Do ye therefore worship, besides God, | that which cannot profit you at all, neither can it hurt you? Fie on you, and on that which ye worship besides God"--Koran (Sale's Translation,) chap. 21. At that moment of his life, whenever it was, when Mahomet had fully realized the feeling here described, and experienced the iconoclastic fury rise within him against the gods of the Kaaba, at that moment he had worked himself thoroughly clear of the preponderant element in the anarchy that Arabia then lay under, and placed himself, at least tacitly, on the side of the non-conforming factions. For, taking his stand, as he was obliged to do in this protest against idolatry, on that great Monotheistic principle, which, after all, did slumber vaguely in the minds of even the idolatrous Arabs, as in the minds of all men of the Shemitic race, he necessarily found himself at that moment on the same platform with the Arabic Jews and the Arabic Christians. Affirming the principle which both these sects of his countrymen inscribed so broadly and conspicuously on their respective banners, nay, borrowing their words in his own expressions of it, he could not but feel a sympathy with them of the strongest kind. Accordingly, never, even during his subsequent controversies with them, did he lose his respect for the "people of the book." But Mahomet did not rest in the first stage of his change. It was not decreed that he should be either a Jew or a Christian. For, from that slight and temporary hold which he had taken of the Monotheistic principle in his resolute antagonism to idolatry, a new flood of excitement was to carry him once more away into strange latitudes of unbelief; and although he did at length recover the principle, and cling to it as a standard, it was after such a course of tossing, and in the midst of such new circumstances, that he and Christianity stood forever dissociated. We have already pointed out that, in conjunction and intermixture with the Idolatry, the corrupt Judaism, and the debased Christianity that possessed the Arabian soil, there existed a large amount of positive and dogmatic Sadduceeism, disbelief of any effi tural. Thus, (to add another passage borative of the fact to those already qu we read, in the 23d chapter of the I these words:"The unbelieving Me say, as their predecessors said, they When we shall be dead, and shall ha come dust and bones, shall we real raised to life? We have already! threatened with this, and our fathers heretofore; this is nothing but fables ancients.' And again, in the same ter, the chiefs of the Meccans are ma say, "Doth he (Mahomet) threaten you after ye shall be dead, and shall becom and bones, ye shall be brought forth from your graves? Away, away, with that ye are threatened with! There other life beside our present life; we di we live, and we shall not be raised ag Nothing has struck us more in the than these and similar passages. They s as we have said before, that there has a vein, if not of literal and artic Atheism, at least of that Sadduceeism is akin to it, through all history; tha affirmation of "No data" respecting tions of the supernatural was rife even a the Shemitic Arabs, whose daily lang was actually viscid with nouns and adjec relating to the Deity and his doings; that this affirmation was deduced, as it ally is, by men who are fond of repeatin into a justification of practical immor and license. Now, it is evident, we think, that M met, in his recoil from the idolatry o mass of his countrymen, reached even the negative pole of Arabic opini reached it, at least, by a temporary eff intellect, so as to be able ever afterwar imagine life as it appeared when proj from that point of view. This we from the extraordinary clearness and jus of his delineations of what may be o the Shemitic variety of Atheistic n And from the strength and frequency o references to that mood, from the ince energy with which he does battle again we would infer, also, that it was out o portal of this virulent Arabian scepti more directly and immediately than o the portal of mere Polytheism and Ido that he issued finally in his charact Prophet. There was a sufficient ba Monotheistic feelings in the heart of Koreish itself from which to denounc absurdities of the Polytheistic worship that for which, according to Mahomet? ul enough antidote, was the inveterate | tinguished it in his own mind, and what a of Infidelity and Sadduceeism that blaze of Theistic enthusiasm he had enkined all, and lay beneath all. In Poly-dled there instead, is proved by the incesArabia then, as in Christian Europe sant iterations throughout the Koran of all he majority of men had absolutely forms and modes of the Theistic argument. en that God existed. Even that How strikingly, for example, are the omnist and most naked of all religious be- presence of God and His indissoluble inthe belief in a supernatural justice, timacy with the world 'He had made, prosome tremendous relation between it claimed in the following passage:— an-had died out and disappeared. as now, men were going about their s, rising in the morning and lying In the evening, ploughing, building, drinking, performing all the manifold ses and functions of life; yet denying while the very existence of the elever which they floated. As the sea nd a ship, so does the supernatural nd the present life; nay, as the very and idea of a ship is, that it may n the sea; so it is only with reference unseen and eternal that this life and angements can have any meaning. en, as now, men had forgotten this. as work and enjoy ourselves while we let us conduct ourselves according to cessities and relations of the life that ach, after their special Arabic form of , was the motto of the sceptical Arabs days of Mahomet, as it is of many of chers of our own generation. O worse olly! as in the principle of navionly according to the internal necesf the ship, sailors were to steer with-earth after it hath been dead: verily, herein are erence to the sea! 7 Mahomet discussed this question himself, and to what extent he may een indebted for the assurance of his sions to the influence of Christian docnd phraseology, cannot now be ascer; it is abundantly clear, however, that succeed in attaining to a firm and unle conviction in the great truth of Natheism the relation of man to a Suand Transcendent Justice. Probably Pagan soul that ever lived, was this so real, so rampant, as in that of MaIf ever he had acquiesced for a mon the Sadduceeism of his countrymen, cepted the cold hypothesis of the abless of the present life, ultimately, at he reached a point whence he looked upon that hypothesis as the most ed and damnable of human delusions. sail Sadduceeism, to laugh at it, to . le it under foot to bruise it out of men "Wherefore glorify God when the evening overtaketh you, and when ye rise in the morning; and unto Him be praise in heaven and earth; and He bringat sunset, and when ye rest at noon. eth forth the living out of the dead, and He bringeth forth the dead out of the living; and He quickeneth the earth after it had been dead and in like manner shall ye be brought forth from your graves. Of His signs, one is that He hath created you of dust; and behold, ye are become men spread over the face of the earth. And of His signs another is that He hath created for you out of yourselves wives that ye may live with them, and hath put love and compassion between you: verily, herein are signs unto people who consider. And of His signs are also the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the variety of your languages, and of your complexions: verily, herein are signs to men of understanding. And day, and your seeking to provide for yourselves of His signs are your sleeping by night and by of His abundance: verily, herein are signs unto men who hearken. Of His signs others are that He showeth you the lightning to strike terror and to give hope of rain, and that He sendeth down water from heaven, and quickeneth thereby the signs unto people who understand. And of His signs this also is one, namely, that the heaven and the earth stand firm at flis command: hereafter, when He shall call you out of the earth at one summons, behold, ye shall come forth.”Koran, (Sale's Translation,) chap. 30. Such, repeated a thousand times in the Koran, is Mahomet's summary of what he considered the evidence of Islamism. When asked for miracles in proof of his mission, he invariably made this or some similar enumeration of the signs of God in creation"these were signs to people that could understand." In short, recognizing as existing in his own day one peculiarly Arabic form of the eternal antagonism between belief and unbelief, between the theory of God everywhere and the theory of God nowhere, between the theory of everything miraculous and the theory of nothing miraculous, Mahomet resolutely flung himself into the battle on the side of "the faith " The following "We (God) created not the heavens and the earth and that which is between them by way of sport. If We had pleased to take diversion, verily We had taken it in that which beseemeth Us."Koran, (Sale's Translation,) chap. 21. "Thou shalt be engaged in no business, neither shalt thou be employed in meditating on any passage, nor shall do ye any action, but We will be witnesses over you when ye are employed therein. Nor is so much as the weight of an ant hidden from Thy Lord in earth or heaven; neither is there anything lesser than that or greater but it is written in the perspicuous book."-Ibid., chap. 10. "Dost thou not perceive that God knoweth whatever is in heaven or earth? There is no private discourse among three persons but He is the fourth of them; nor among five, but He is the sixth of them; neither among a smaller number than this nor a larger, but He is with them wheresoever they be and He will declare unto them that which they have done on the day of resurrection, for God knoweth all things."-Ibid., chap. 58. "The present life is no other than a toy and a plaything; but the future mansion of paradise is life indeed. If men knew this they would not prefer the former to the latter."--Ibid., chap. 29. "O men, verily the violence which ye commit against your own souls is for the enjoyment of the present life only; afterward unto Us shall ye return, and We will declare unto you that which ye have done. Verily the likeness of this present life is no other than as water which We send down from heaven, and wherewith the productions of the earth are mixed, of which men eat and cat | brought back unto your Lord.' If thou see when the wicked shall bow down thei before the Lord, saying, 'O Lord, we hav and have heard; suffer us, therefore, to into the world, and we will work that w right, since we are now certain of the t what hath been preached to us'-thou woul an amazing sight.-Ibid., chap. 32. "When the sun shall be folded up; and the stars shall fall; and when the mountain be made to pass away; and when the cam months gone with young shall be neglected when the wild beasts shall be gathered tog and when the seas shall boil; and when the shall be joined again to their bodies; and the girl who had been buried alive, shall be for what crime she was put to death; and the books shall be laid open; and when the h shall be removed; and when hell shall fiercely; and when paradise shall be brought then every soul shall know what it hath wrou Ibid., chap. 81. "Whoso chooseth the tillage of the 1 come, unto him will We give increase in lage; and whoso chooseth the tillage of world, We will give him the fruit thereof; b shall have no part in the life to come." chap. 42. 66 If it were not that mankind would have become one sect of infidels, verily We would given unto those who believe not in the Mer roofs of silver to their houses, and stairs of s by which they might ascend thereto, and doo silver to their houses, and couches of silve them to lean on, and ornaments of gold, fo this is the provision of the present life; but next life with thy Lord shall be for those fear Him."—Ibid., chap. 43. These were the fixed ideas in the min P tle also, until the earth receive its vesture, and be Mahomet. That there is a God, almig they shall remain therein chap. 10. They say, when we lie down in the earth, shall we be raised thence a new creature?' yea, they deny the meeting of their Lord at the resur inhabitants shall be summoned back to t s a wall of strength and peace. If we to select that phrase of the Koran in as we think, the whole substance of net's faith is most exactly expressed, ld be the phrase, God and the Last This phrase he iterates and reiterates; his phrase and the notion involved in alls back at every moment; the whole consists, in his view, of but two classes -those who believe in "God and the Day," and those who do not. It is a e, we think, to say, that the central in the religion of Mahomet, as conby himself, was the unity of God. entral notion of Mahomet's religion was the existence of God, His veritable and xistence, as distinguished from that f ideal and fictitious existence assigned n by the necessities of human, and, all, by the necessities of Shemitic ic-His veritable and real existence, e terrible relationship of men and this to Him and His laws. In other words, not primarily and expressly against lytheism and idolatry of the Arabians [ahomet, in his mature character as a al reformer, dashed himself and made that polytheism and idolatry he did, , incessantly denounce; but it was in ceeism, in unbelief itself, in want of h in any supernatural whatever, wheolytheistic, monotheistic, or any other as in this that, in his mature state of he saw the root of the whole evil. nen should believe an infinite and a fuas his first demand; "God and the Last was the standard he desired, in the stance, to raise. The great movement ade, indeed, the other collaterals were e in; God's unity was to be asserted y against the polytheists and against Christian sects in whose doctrines reg the nature of Christ he thought this ole was denied; and thus, as well as mere ethical and imaginative filling out system to adapt it to the wants of his was to receive its final precision. But and the Last Day" was the primary ndamental conception. v, up to the moment when Mahomet himself at rest in this conviction from -rsonal doubts and agitations, he is a cle that no one would or could regard vise than with interest and admiration. e this man of Mecca extricate himself ecisively from the false and profane neries in which he had been bred, and tian theology as came in his way, at a point of view so clear and elevated-were a sight that must delight all to whom such spiritual histories appear of any importance. And farther, to have seen the same man speak out to his countrymen the conclusions he had himself arrived at; to have seen him holding new theological conversations in Mecca, or walking, staff in hand, over Arabia, preaching everywhere, even with fury and thunder, the high though meagre theism he had excogitated or come to perceive, would also have been a heroic spectacle. Mahomet, in this case, would have taken his place in men's thoughts along with Socrates, Plato, and other celebrated teachers that have risen, in different situations, to high and serene conceptions of the world and its laws; and it would have been an interesting exercise, under such circumstances, to compare the rude and fierce sage of sun-scorched Mecca with the cultured and polite thinkers of blue-skied Athens. But the facts of the actual story have barred this easy and ordinary mode of treatment. Precisely at that point of Mahomet's life where the eye would have welcomed him as a sage emerging painfully, by his own toil, from Arabic darkness, he is seen to rush forward with a shout and a shriek, proclaiming that he has received a direct charge from the Almighty to assume the absolute guidance of men, and raising in the air the fiery standard of a prophet. And here it is, accordingly, that the mind begins to stagger in its conception of Mahomet, and to find that the rule of such cases as those of Socrates and Plato will not do so easily for the man of Mecca. We do not suppose that there is any person of culture now living that would be inclined to revive, with regard to Mahomet, the old hypothesis. of deceit and imposture. That hypothesis, against which Mr. Carlyle so valiantly did battle, has now no longer any professed existence amongst us, however it may linger in some corners of our literature. "Notwithstanding the vain reputation of high political ability which people have so strangely tried to build up for dissimulation, and even for hypocrisy, it is happily incontestable, both from universal experience, and from the profound study of human nature, that a really superior man has never been able to exercise any powerful influence over his fellows without being first intimately convinced himself,"-such, as expressed by a French writer, is a principle |