It is difficult to ascertain what the private life of the Prophet was in these years of dazzling success.  The authorities differ.  Some represent him as sunk in a miserable sensuality which shortened his days.  But I think this statement may be doubted.  He never lost the veneration of his countrymen,—­and no veneration can last for a man steeped in sensuality.  Even Solomon lost his prestige and popularity when he became vain and sensual.  Those who were nearest to the Prophet reverenced him most profoundly.  With his wife Ayesha he lived with great frugality.  He was kindly, firm in friendship, faithful and tender in his family, ready to forgive enemies, just in decision.  The caliphs who succeeded him, for some time, were men of great simplicity, and sought to imitate his virtues.  He was doubtless warlike and fanatical, but conquests such as he and his successors made are incompatible with luxury and effeminacy.  He stands arraigned at the bar of eternal justice for perverting truth, for blending it with error, for making use of wicked means to accomplish what he deemed a great end.

I have no patience with Mr. Carlyle, great and venerable as is his authority, for seeming to justify Mohammed in assuming the sword.  “I care little for the sword,” says this sophistical writer.  “I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has or can lay hold on.  What is better than itself it cannot put away, but only what is worse.  In this great life-duel Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong.”  That is, might makes right; only evil perishes in the conflict of principles; whatever prevails is just.  In other words, if Mohammedanism, by any means it may choose to use, proves itself more formidable than other religions, then it ought to prevail.  Suppose that the victories of the Saracens had extended over Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,—­had not been arrested by Charles Martel,—­would Carlyle then have preferred Mohammedanism to the Christianity of degenerate nations?  Was Mohammedanism a better religion than the Christianity which existed in Asia Minor and in various parts of the Greek empire in the sixth and seventh centuries?  Was it a good thing to convert the church of Saint Sophia into a Saracenic mosque, and the city of the later Christian emperors into the capital of the Turks?  Is a united Saracenic empire better than a divided, wrangling Christian empire?

But I will not enter upon that discussion.  I confine myself to facts.  It is certain that Mohammedanism, by means of the sword, spread with marvellous and unprecedented rapidity.  The successors of the Prophet carried their conquests even to India.  Neither the Syrians nor the Egyptians could cope with men who felt that the sacrifice of life in battle would secure an eternity of bliss.  The armies of the Greek emperor melted away before the generals of the caliph.  The Cross waned before the Crescent.  The banners of the Moslems floated over the proudest battlements of ancient Roman grandeur.