immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail
them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not
an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas,
prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed
by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding
of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that
they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure,
recompense,--sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the
meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier,
hired to be shot, has his "honor of a soldier," different from
drill-regulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet
things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under
God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly
longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles
into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease.
Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the _allurements_ that act
on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a
flame that burns-up all lower considerations. Not happiness, but
something higher: one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with
their "point of honor" and the like. Not by flattering our appetites;
no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any
Religion gain followers.

Mohammed himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a
sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common
voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments,--nay on enjoyments of any
kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread
and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his
hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes,
patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of
what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better
in him than _hunger_ of any sort,--or these wild Arab men, fighting and
jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him
always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting
ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without
right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called
him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare,
not enshri