under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several:  herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all:  held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration;—­held mainly by the inward indissoluble bond of a common blood and language.  In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world.  Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them.  Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there.

It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mohammed was born.  He was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country.  Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense:  he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old.  A good old man:  Mohammed’s Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favorite son.  He saw in Mohammed, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah.  He loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say they must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he.  At his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house.  By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything betokens, Mohammed was brought-up in the best Arab way.

Mohammed, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on trading journeys and suchlike; in his eighteenth year one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in war.  But perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is one we find noted as of some years’ earlier date:  a journey to the Fairs of Syria.  The young man here first came in contact with a quite foreign world,—­with one foreign element of endless moment to him:  the Christian Religion.  I know not what to make of that “Sergius, the Nestorian Monk,” whom Abu Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could have taught one still so young.  Probably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk.  Mohammed was only fourteen; had no language but his own:  much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him.  But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day.  These journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mohammed.