three years!  How sickened must have been his enthusiastic soul!  His worldly relatives urged him to silence.  Why attack idols; why quarrel with his own interests; why destroy his popularity?  Then exclaimed that great hero:  “If the sun stood on my right hand, and the moon on my left, ordering me to hold my peace, I would still declare there is but one God,”—­a speech rivalled only by Luther at the Diet of Worms.  Why urge a great man to be silent on the very thing which makes him great?  He cannot be silent.  His truth—­from which he cannot be separated—­is greater than life or death, or principalities or powers.

Buffeted and ridiculed, still Mohammed persevered.  He used at first only moral means.  He appealed only to the minds and hearts of the people, encouraged by his few believers and sustained by the fancied voice of that angel who appeared to him in his retreat.  But his earnest voice was drowned by discordant noises.  He was regarded as a lunatic, a demented man, because he professed to believe in a personal God.  The angry mob covered his clothes with dust and ashes.  They demanded miracles.  But at this time he had only truths to declare,—­those saving truths which are perpetual miracles.  At last hostilities began.  He was threatened and he was persecuted.  They laid plots to take his life.  He sought shelter in the castle of his uncle, Abu Taleh; but he died.  Then Mohammed’s wife Cadijeh died.  The priests of an idolatrous religion became furious.  He had laid his hands on their idols.  He was regarded as a disorganizer, an innovator, a most dangerous man.  His fortunes became darker and darker; he was hated, persecuted, and alone.

Thus thirteen years passed away in reproach, in persecution, in fear.  At last forty picked men swore to assassinate him.  Should he remain at Mecca and die, before his mission was accomplished, or should he fly?  He concluded to fly to Medina, where there were Jews, and some nominal converts to Christianity,—­a new ground.  This was in the year 622, and the flight is called the Hegira,—­ from which the East dates its era, in the fifty-third year of the Prophet’s life.  In this city he was cordially welcomed, and he soon found himself surrounded with enthusiastic followers.  He built a mosque, and openly performed the rites of the new religion.

At this era a new phase appears in the Prophet’s life and teachings.  Thus far, until his flight, it would seem that he propagated his doctrines by moral force alone, and that these doctrines, in the main, were elevated.  He had earnestly declared his great idea of the unity of God.  He had pronounced the worship of images to be idolatrous.  He held idolatry of all kinds in supreme abhorrence.  He enjoined charity, justice, and forbearance.  He denounced all falsehood and all deception, especially in trade.  He declared that humility, benevolence, and self-abnegation were the greatest virtues.  He commanded his disciples to return good for evil, to restrain the passions, to bridle the tongue, to be patient under injuries, to be submissive to God.  He enjoined prayer, fastings, and meditation as a means of grace.  He laid down the necessity of rest on the seventh day.  He copied the precepts of the Bible in many of their essential features, and recognized its greatest teachers as inspired prophets.