ahomet is
not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was
one of the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly
hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than
once it seemed all over with him; more than once it turned on a straw,
some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his
Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was
not to end so.

In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded
against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take
his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer,
Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some
adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "_Medinat al Nabi_, the
City of the Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred
miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in
such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The
whole East dates its era from this Flight, _hegira_ as they name it: the
Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's
life. He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one
by one; his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find
hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless
for him. It is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had
professed to publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion
alone. But now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust
men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, the deep
cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking
it,--the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man
and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings,
felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen
to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder:
well, let steel try it then! Ten years more this Mahomet had; all of
fighting of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we
know.

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword.
It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian
Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching
and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth
or falsehood of a religion