Mohammed was born at the city of Mecca in the year 570; but he was brought up in the tents of the Bedouins, from whom he learnt simple manners and among whom he maintained a primitive purity of life. He was forty years of age before he was conscious of the first impulse to his mission. Then the great thought of One God, Creator and Ruler of All, dawned upon his mind as a revelation. Mohammedanism has been traced to Jewish and Christian sources combined with Arabian traditions. There can be no doubt that both the rival Monotheistic faiths indirectly affected the prophet. We meet with references to them in the Koran; and Bible characters and Hebrew legends have had a considerable part in its composition. But while we may recognise these materials as fuel for the sacrifice, we cannot discover in them the fire. It was the personality of Mohammed, his vision of truth gained through deep brooding and struggling of soul, that constituted him the founder of Islam. There can be no question of his sincerity at the beginning of his career, nor of the purity of his original motives; it is equally clear that he deteriorated in his later days, became at least a self -deceiver, fell into self-indulgent vices, and justified them with supposed visions and voices from heaven. The burden of his message was a stern protest against the prevalent idolatry of Arabia, and his enunciation of the unity, the spirituality, the supremacy of God as at once almighty and most merciful. The Mussulman cry—"Allah Akbar!—God is Great!"—is the root principle of Mohammedanism. The sublime truth burst on the desert like a revelation. Undoubtedly it introduced a purer faith than the gross heathenism that it supplanted.
This clear, vigorous new teaching braced the minds of its adherents with belief in an inflexible fixture of events which was not mere fatalism, as is commonly asserted, but the idea of a personal purpose in the dominant will of the merciful Allah. Further, with this creed was conjoined the doctrine of the equality of all male believers,
