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the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it revelation
and the angel Gabriel;--who of us yet can know what to call it? It is
the "inspiration of the Almighty that giveth us understanding." To
_know_; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act,--of
which the best Logics can but babble on the surface. "Is not Belief the
true god-announcing Miracle?" says Novalis.--That Mohammed's whole soul,
set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if it
were important and the only important thing, was very natural. That
Providence had unspeakably honored _him_ by revealing it, saving him
from death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the
same to all creatures: this is what was meant by "Mohammed is the
Prophet of God"; this too is not without its true meaning.--

The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt:
at length she answered: Yes, it was _true_ this that he said. One can
fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mohammed; and how of all the
kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling
word he now spoke was the greatest. "It is certain," says Novalis, "my
Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in
it." It is a boundless favor.--He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long
afterwards, Ayesha his young favorite wife, a woman who indeed
distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities,
through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day,
questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow;
old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did her?"--"No,
by Allah!" answered Mohammed: "No, by Allah! She believed in me when
none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and
she was that!"--Seid, his Slave, also belie ed in him; these with his
young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts.

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it
with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained
but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement
to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such
a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty
of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood-up and told
them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate
abroad to all men; that i