failures nor the chastisement of his god
have ever shaken the faith of a first-class prophet in himself or, as he
would doubtless prefer to say, in his Divinity. Arabia, broken,
unorganized, inglorious, idolistic Arabia, obviously lacked one Supreme
Being whose prerogative was greater than all other Supreme Beings, and
that Being, in turn, needed a messenger to exploit His supremacy. The
messengers who had served Jehovah had certainly prospered well; but
Jehovah Himself appeared to be on the decline. His Unity was steadily
disintegrating into a paradoxical Trinity. Why, therefore, not give
Allah, the leading icon in Arabia, an opportunity? Such considerations
quite probably never entered the head of Mohammed with any definiteness;
yet his behavior for the rest of his days seems to indicate that these,
or similar conceptions, were subconsciously egging him on.

Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had
little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and
capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of
conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with
many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a mass of highly
valuable matter. In these ways he had learned both the strength and the
weakness of the Jews and Christians; their fanatical enthusiasm and
despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the
widespread defection from their faiths. "Since his conception of
religion was largely personal, for he looked upon Moses, Jesus, and the
rest of the prophets as merely capable men who had founded and
promulgated religions; and since Arabia had no pre-eminent ruler, why
should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition
of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how
fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping
only what was best of the Arabic faith, the Kaaba and the Black Stone,
and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas which lay
imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code
that would supersede all others, and then might dictate to all Arabs
alike. What prophets had done, he would also do and do better."
(_Mohammed--R. F. Dibble._)

Such are the thoughts of a charlatan and _a_ demagogue. If Mohammed
actually had such ideas, we can never know; but a study of his further
actions and conquests surely shows that he must have had s