(since he is said to have been characterized by the
possession of singular manly beauty and a most courteous demeanor)
charmed with his person. The female heart in all ages and countries is
the same. She caused a slave to intimate to him what was passing in her
mind, and, for the remaining twenty-four years of her life, Mohammed was
her faithful husband. In a land of polygamy, he never insulted her by
the presence of a rival. Many years subsequently, in the height of his
power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful women in Arabia, said
to him: "Was she not old? Did not God give you in me a better wife in
her place?" "No, by God!" exclaimed Mohammed, and with a burst of honest
gratitude, "there never can be a better. She believed in me when men
despised me, she relieved me when I was poor and persecuted by the
world."

His marriage with Chadizah placed him in circumstances of ease, and gave
him an opportunity of indulging his inclination to religious meditation.
It so happened that her cousin Waraka, who was a Jew, had turned
Christian. He was the first to translate the Bible into Arabic. By his
conversation Mohammed's detestation of idolatry was confirmed.

After the example of the Christian anchorites in their hermitages in
the desert, Mohammed retired to a grotto in Mount Hera, a few miles from
Mecca, giving himself up to meditation and prayer. In this seclusion,
contemplating the awful attributes of the Omnipotent and Eternal God, he
addressed to his conscience the solemn inquiry, whether he could adopt
the dogmas then held in Asiatic Christendom respecting the Trinity, the
sonship of Jesus as begotten by the Almighty, the character of Mary as
at once a virgin, a mother, and the queen of heaven, without incurring
the guilt and the peril of blasphemy.

By his solitary meditations in the grotto Mohammed was drawn to the
conclusion that, through the cloud of dogmas and disputations around
him, one great truth might be discerned--the unity of God. Leaning
against the stem of a palm-tree, he unfolded his views on this subject
to his neighbors and friends, and announced to them that he should
dedicate his life to the preaching of that truth. Again and again, in
his sermons and in the Koran, he declared: "I am nothing but a public
preacher.... I preach the oneness of God." Such was his own conception
of his so-called apostleship. Henceforth, to the day of his death, he
wore on his finger a seal-ring on which was engr