He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that.  Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him.  His powerful relations protected Mohammed himself; but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea.  The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mohammed to death with their own hands.  Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead.  Mohammed is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismallest.  He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life.  More than once it seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider’s horse taking fright or the like, whether Mohammed and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all.  But it was not to end so.

In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mohammed fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they now call Medina, or “Medinat al Nabi, the City of the Prophet,” from that circumstance.  It lay some 200 miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome.  The whole East dates its era from this Flight, Hegira as they name it:  the Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mohammed’s life.  He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one; his path desolate, encompassed with danger:  unless he could find hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless for him.  It is so with all men in the like case.  Hitherto Mohammed had professed to publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone.  But now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven’s-message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it,—­the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab.  If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it.  Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder:  well, let steel try it then!  Ten years more this Mohammed had; all of fighting, of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know.