on,
Of wielding, moulding, gathering, welding, banding,
The hearts of thousands till they moved as one."

Sec. 3. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira.

But it was not as a soldier or ambitious conqueror that Mohammed began his
career. The first forty years of his life were passed in the quiet
pursuits of trade, or taking care of the property of Khadijah. Serious,
thoughtful, devout, he made friends of all about him. His youth was
unstained by vice, and his honorable character early obtained for him the
title, given him by common consent, of Al Amin, "the faithful." At one
time he tended sheep and goats on the hills near Mecca. At Medina, after
he became distinguished he referred to this, saying, "Pick me the blackest
of those berries; they are such as I used to gather when I fed the flocks
at Mecca. Verily, no prophet has been raised up who has not performed the
work of a shepherd." When twenty-five years of age, he entered into the
service of Khadijah, a rich widow, as her agent, to take charge of her
merchandise and to sell it at Damascus. When the caravan returned, and his
adventure had proved successful, Khadijah, then forty years old, became
interested in the young man; she was wise, virtuous, and attractive; they
were married, and, till her death, Mohammed was a kind and loving husband.
Khadijah sympathized with her husband in his religious tendencies, and was
his first convert. His habit was to retire to a cave on Mount Hira to pray
and to meditate. Sadness came over him in view of the evils in the world.
One of the Suras of the Koran, supposed to belong to this period, is as
follows:--

_Sura 103._

"By the declining day I swear!
Verily, man is in the way of ruin;
Excepting such as possess faith,
And do the things which be right,
And stir up one another to truth and steadfastness."

About this time he began to have his visions of angels, especially of
Gabriel. He saw a light, and heard a voice, and had sentences like the
above put into his mind. These communications were accompanied by strong
convulsions (epilepsy, says Weil), in which he would fall to the ground
and foam at the mouth. Sprenger considers it to have been a form of
hysteria, with a mental origin, perhaps accompanied with catalepsy. The
prophet himself said: "Inspiration descends on me in two ways. Sometimes
Gabriel cometh and communicateth the revelation, as one man to another.
This is easy. But som