And from this mosque Mohammed exhorted with wondrous eloquence, the music of his voice falling like a spell on the multitudes, as they listened to teachings new and more living than the old, dead, superstitious idolatry to which they were in bondage; yet, had they known it, teachings whose choicest gems were but crumbs borrowed from the words of One who had preached in all meekness and love on the shores of Galilee and the hills of Palestine more than six hundred years before.
They listened in wonder to condemnation of their belief in polytheism.
"In the name of the most merciful God," Mohammed would say, "say God is one God, the Eternal God; he begetteth not, neither is he begotten, and there is not anyone like unto him!" Thus did he aim at the foundation of Christianity, seeking to overthrow belief in the "only begotten Son of God" as a divine factor of the Trinity. Jesus he recognized as a prophet, not as God's own Son; and, while he borrowed incessantly from the Scriptures, he refused to accept them, declaring that they had become perverted, and that the original Koran was a volume of Paradise, from which Gabriel rendered him transcripts, and was, therefore, the true word of God which had been laid from time everlasting on what he called the "preserved table," close to the throne of God in the highest heaven.
And yet, during the greater part of his career, the utterances of this strange, incomprehensible man were characterized by a seemingly real glow of philanthropy and an earnest solicitude for the salvation of his countrymen from the depths of moral and spiritual degradation into which they had fallen. A missionary spirit seemed to be in him, in strange contrast and incompatibility with the sacrilegious words that often fell from his lips.
In all the records of history there is nothing more wonderful than the marvelous success which attended Mohammed at Medina. Staid and sober merchantmen, men with gray heads, fiery youths, proselytes from the tribes of the desert, even women, flocked to him every day; and he soon realized that he had a vast army of converts ready to live or die for him, ready to fight for him until the last.
Amzi, alone, of all his followers, seemed to stand aloof, half-believing, yet unwilling to proclaim his belief openly; simply waiting, as he had waited all his life, to see the truth, yet too indolent to set out bravely in the quest. He preferred to look on from aside; to weigh and calculate motives, actions and results; to judge men by their fruits, though the doing so called for long waiting.
Yet Amzi grew more and more dissatisfied. He felt, though he knew not its cause, the want of a rich spiritual life, that empty hollowness which pleasures of the world and the mere consciousness of a moral life cannot satisfy.
More than once he was tempted to declare himself a follower of the prophet, but he put it off until a riper season.
Poor Dumah noted Amzi's frequent visits to the mosque with a vague dread. He had an instinctive dislike of Mohammed, whose assumptions of superiority to Jesus he understood in a hazy way, and resented with all his might.
One day he entered with a tablet of soft stone to which a cord was attached. Putting the cord about Amzi's neck, he said: