d the only important thing, was very natural. That
Providence had unspeakably honored him by revealing it, saving him from
death and darkness; that he therefore was bound to make known the same
to all creatures: this is what was meant by "Mahomet is the Prophet of
God;" this too is not without its true meaning.--

The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt:
at length she answered: Yes, it was true this that he said. One can
fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the
kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling
word he now spoke was the greatest. "It is certain," says Novalis, "my
Conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in
it." It is a boundless favor.--He never forgot this good Kadijah.
Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favorite wife, a woman who indeed
distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities,
through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day,
questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow;
old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did
her?"--"No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed
in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one
friend, and she was that!"--Seid, his Slave, also believed in him;
these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first
converts.

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it
with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained
but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement
to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such
a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty
of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up and told
them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate
abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which
of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all,
young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started
up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would!
The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be
unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly
man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all
mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke up in l