a plain
message, and those who disregarded it were infallibly doomed. He saw
himself in the forefront as the man who knew God, and strove to win his
countrymen to right ways of life; he did not see himself at the head of
earthly armies, controlling the nucleus of a mighty and united Arabia,
and until his flight from Mecca to Medina he regarded himself merely as a
religious teacher, the political side of his mission growing out of the
exigencies of circumstance, almost without his own volition.

His exaltation upon the mountain of light soon faded into uncertainty and
fearfulness before the influence of the world's harsh wisdom. Mahomet
entered upon a period of hesitation and dreariness, doubtful of himself,
of his vision, and of the divine favour. His soul voyaged on dark and
troubled seas and gazed into abysmal spaces. At one time he would receive
the light of the seven Heavens within his mind, and feel upon him the
fervour of the Hebrew prophets of old, and again he would call in vain
upon God, and, and seeking, would be flung back upon a darkness of doubt
more terrible than the lightnings of divine wrath.

In all those exaltations and glooms Khadijah had part; she comforted his
distress and shared his elation until the sorrowful period of the
Fattrah, the pause in the revelation, was past. The period is variously
estimated by the chroniclers, and there are many nebulous and spurious
legends attaching to it, but whatever its length it seems certain that
Mahomet gained within it a fuller knowledge of Jewish and Christian
tenets, probably through Zeid, the Christian slave in his household, and
most accounts agree that the Fattrah was ended by the revelation of the
sura entitled "The Enwrapped," the mandate of the angel Gabriel:

"O thou enwrapped in thy mantle,
Arise and warn!"

The explanation of the term "enwrapped in thy mantle" shows the
prevailing belief in good and evil spirits characteristic of Mahomet's
time. Wandering on the mountain, he saw in a vision the angel Gabriel
seated on a throne between heaven and earth, and afraid before so much
glory, ran to Khadijah, beseeching her to cover him with his mantle that
the evil spirits whom he felt so near him might be avoided. Thereupon
Gabriel came down to earth and revealed the Sura of Admonition. This
supernatural command would appear to be the translation into the
imaginative world of the peace of mind that descended upon Mahomet, and
the conviction as to