advantages there from to Islam were inestimable. Ali was no statesman,
but he was an indomitable fighter, with whose aid Mahomet founded his
religion of the sword.

In such quiet manner Mahomet passed the years immediately preceding the
discovery of his mission, and as religious doubts and fears alternated in
him with fervour and hopefulness, so signs were not wanting of a spirit
of inquiry found abroad in Arabia, discontented with the old religions,
seeking for a clearer enthusiasm and withheld from its goal. Legends
gather round the figures of four inquirers who are reputed to have come
to Mahomet for enlightenment, and the story is but the primitive device
of rendering concrete and material all those vague stirrings of the
communal spirit towards a more convincing conception of the world--
legends that embody ideas in personalities, mainly because their language
has no words for the expression of the abstract, and also that, clothed
in living garments, they may capture the hearts of men. The time for the
coming of a prophet and a teacher could not be long delayed, and a
foreboding of his imperious destiny, dark with war and aflame with God's
judgment, had already begun to steal across Mahomet's hesitant soul.




CHAPTER V


INSPIRATION


"Recite thou in the name of thy Lord who created,