and ascetic habits induced dreams and ecstasies, such as marked
primitive monks, and Loyala in his Manresan cave. He became a
visionary man, but most intensely earnest, for his convictions were
overwhelming. He fancied himself the ambassador of this God, as the
ancient Jewish prophets were; that he was even greater than they,
his mission being to remove idolatry,--to his mind the greatest evil
under the sun, since it was the root of all vices and follies.
Idolatry is either a defiance or a forgetfulness of God,--high
treason to the majesty of Heaven, entailing the direst calamities.

At last, one day, in his fortieth year, after he had been shut up a
whole month in solitude, so that his soul was filled with ecstasy
and enthusiasm, he declared to Cadijeh that the night before, while
wrapped in his mantle, absorbed in reverie, a form of divine
beauty, in a flood of light, appeared to him, and, in the name of
the Almighty who created the heavens and the earth, thus spake: "O,
Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of God, and I am his
angel Gabriel." "This," says Carlyle, "is the soul of Islam. This
is what Mohammed felt and now declared to be of infinite moment,
that idols and formulas were nothing; that the jargon of
argumentative Greek sects, the vague traditions of Jews, the stupid
routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery and a delusion; that there
is but one God; that we must let idols alone and look to Him. He
alone is reality; He made us and sustains us. Our whole strength
lies in submission to Him. The thing He sends us, be it death
even, is good, is the best. We resign ourselves to Him."

Such were the truths which Mohammed, with preternatural
earnestness, now declared,--doctrines which would revolutionize
Arabia. And why not? They are the same substantially which Moses