Never,
since the days when primitive Christianity startled the world from
its sleep, and waged a mortal combat with Heathenism, had men seen
the like arousing of spiritual life, the like faith that suffered
sacrifice and took joyfully the spoiling of goods for conscience
sake.

"From time beyond memory, Mecca and the whole Peninsula had been
steeped into spiritual torpor. The slight and transient influence
of Judaism, Christianity, or Philosophy upon the Arab mind, had
been but as the ruffling here and there the surface of a quiet
lake;--all remained still and motionless below. The people were
sunk in superstition, cruelty, and vice. It was a common practice
for the eldest son to marry his father's widows inherited as
property with the rest of the estate. Pride and poverty had
introduced among them, as it has among the Hindus, the crime of
female infanticide. Their religion consisted in gross idolatry, and
their faith was rather the dark superstitious dread of unseen
beings, whose goodwill they sought to propitiate, and to avert
their displeasure, than the belief in an over-ruling Providence.
The Life to come and Retribution of good and evil were, as motives
of action, practically unknown.

"Thirteen years before the Hegira, Mecca lay lifeless in this
debased state. What a change those thirteen years had now produced!
A band of several hundred persons had rejected idolatry, adopted
the worship of one great God, and surrendered themselves implicitly
to the guidance of what they believed a revelation from
Him;--praying to the Almighty with frequency and fervour, looking
for pardon through His mercy, and striving to follow after good
works, almsgiving, chastity and justice. They now lived under a
constant sense of the Omnipotent power of God, and of His
providential care over the minutest of their concerns. In all the
gifts of nature, in every relation of life, at each turn of their
affairs, individual or public, they saw His hand. And, above all,
the new spiritual existence in which they joyed and gloried, was
regarded as the mark of His especial grace, while the unbelief of
their blinded fellow-citizens was the hardening stamp of His
predestined reprobation. Mahomet was the minister of life to
them,--the source under God of their new-bor