But, though they were irreconcilable in matters of faith, there was one point in which all these sects agreed —­ferocious hatred and persecution of each other.  Arabia, an unconquered land of liberty, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Desert of Syria, gave them all, as the tide of fortune successively turned, a refuge.  It had been so from the old times.  Thither, after the Roman conquest of Palestine, vast numbers of Jews escaped; thither, immediately after his conversion, St. Paul tells the Galatians that he retired.  The deserts were now filled with Christian anchorites, and among the chief tribes of the Arabs many proselytes had been made.  Here and there churches had been built.  The Christian princes of Abyssinia, who were Nestorians, held the southern province of Arabia—­Yemen—­in possession.

By the monk Bahira, in the convent at Bozrah, Mohammed was taught the tenets of the Nestorians; from them the young Arab learned the story of their persecutions.  It was these interviews which engendered in him a hatred of the idolatrous practices of the Eastern Church, and indeed of all idolatry; that taught him, in his wonderful career, never to speak of Jesus as the Son of God, but always as “Jesus, the son of Mary.”  His untutored but active mind could not fail to be profoundly impressed not only with the religious but also with the philosophical ideas of his instructors, who gloried in being the living representatives of Aristotelian science.  His subsequent career shows how completely their religious thoughts had taken possession of him, and repeated acts manifest his affectionate regard for them.  His own life was devoted to the expansion and extension of their theological doctrine, and, that once effectually established, his successors energetically adopted and diffused their scientific, their Aristotelian opinions.

As Mohammed grew to manhood, he made other expeditions to Syria.  Perhaps, we may suppose, that on these occasions the convent and its hospitable in mates were not forgotten.  He had a mysterious reverence for that country.  A wealthy Meccan widow Chadizah, had intrusted him with the care of her Syrian trade.  She was charmed with his capacity and fidelity, and (since he is said to have been characterized by the possession of singular manly beauty and a most courteous demeanor) charmed with his person.  The female heart in all ages and countries is the same.  She caused a slave to intimate to him what was passing in her mind, and, for the remaining twenty-four years of her life, Mohammed was her faithful husband.  In a land of polygamy, he never insulted her by the presence of a rival.  Many years subsequently, in the height of his power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful women in Arabia, said to him:  “Was she not old?  Did not God give you in me a better wife in her place?” “No, by God!” exclaimed Mohammed, and with a burst of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better.  She believed in me when men despised me, she relieved me when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”