Christian Romans were united powers? Surely, if questions like these arose in the minds of Mohammed and other Arab patriots, it was very natural; and if religion was looked upon by them as one of the strongest bonds of union, they only gave proof of a just appreciation of facts.

As by birth Mohammed belonged to a family which was at once the Chief representative of political power and the principal exponent of the traditional religion; So by marriage he had become the husband of an able and high-minded wife, old enough to be his mother, and exercising a controlling influence over his whole life. She not only herself entertained strong leanings towards the reform movement that had lately sprung up, but also cultivated familiar intercourse with near relatives and friends who took a leading part in the new religious fraternity. If Mohammed was not yet a Hanifite before his marriage, he surely soon became one, either openly or secretly, under the dominant conjugal influence of Khadija, and through the encouraging example of her esteemed kinsmen and acquaintances. For he was of a plastic nature and easily influenced by those to whom he felt attached. The Hanifites, though primarily a religious sect of Deists, in opposition to Polytheism, were mostly also warm patriots, intent on promoting the political union and well-being of their nation. One of their number, Khadija's cousin Othman, sought to establish a strong central government in Mecca, with the aid and under the prestige of the Roman Emperor, and, doubtless, in the hope of thus eventually securing for his country the inestimable blessings of Christianity, to which Hanifism was only a Sort of midway-station, or stepping-stone, as indeed it had proved in his own case. But Othman completely failed with his scheme, and, after a very brief rule, had to save his life by a precipitate flight from the fury of his countrymen, who looked on his mild government as an intolerable yoke.

This very failure of Othman, through his relying on the aid and religion of a foreign country, plainly conveyed the lesson to the Hanifite friends whom he had left behind him in Mecca, that an entire dependence on their own people, the recognition, to a certain extent, of the ancient central sanctuary, and the preservation of a strictly national charac-

ter, might form a surer and a safer road to the goal after which they aspired. They had had a proof before their very eyes that to put forward the Christian religion as a shibboleth implied, in the estimation of the public, a reliance on the foreign States of Abyssinia and Rome and was sure to evoke all the national jealousies and animosities of the proud and sensitive Arabs. The religion prevailing in Mecca, notwithstanding its tolerant and comprehensive character, had no less failed as a rallying-point and uniting force to bring about the desired national union and national strength. For though the Kaaba enjoyed a wide reputation and included a great number of idols, yet different towns and districts possessed images and tutelary deities of their own to which they fondly clung, and which they were not prepared to give up or degrade in favour of others. Moreover, belief in the polytheistic shrine of Mecca had become greatly undermined by a widespread monotheistic ferment, the outcome of Judaism and Christianity. The Hanifites had indeed personally risen above the national idol-worship: they had clearly discerned that its time was fast passing away, that the spirit of the age demanded progress, and that a religion was needed more in keeping with the higher aspirations of man and with the truer ideas of the sacred writings by which the Jews and the Christians were raised So far above the benighted Pagans. But to be guided exclusively by the spiritual interests of pure religion might most seriously conflict with their much cherished political plans; and to yield to the latter the paramount importance they seemed to demand, might fatally interfere with the supreme interests of the revealed religion to which their consciences had become more or less awakened.

It is clear, then, that in this critical state two courses still presented themselves as possible to the partisans of Hanifism. Some of them might conscientiously subordinate their political aspirations and worldly plans to the deepest cravings of their God-seeking heart and openly embrace the religion of revelation and salvation, regardless of temporal consequences. Others might remain entangled in national political schemes and seek to find out a middle path. These would endeavour to unite the superior religious truths which had