of his power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful women in
Arabia, said to him: "Was she not old? Did not God give you in me
a better wife in her place?" "No, by God!" exclaimed Mohammed,
and with a burst of honest gratitude, "there never can be a
better. She believed in me when men despised me, she relieved me
when I was poor and persecuted by the world."

His marriage with Chadizah placed him in circumstances of ease,
and gave him an opportunity of indulging his inclination to
religious meditation. It so happened that her cousin Waraka, who
was a Jew, had turned Christian. He was the first to translate
the Bible into Arabic. By his conversation Mohammed's detestation
of idolatry was confirmed.

After the example of the Christian anchorites in their hermitages
in the desert, Mohammed retired to a grotto in Mount Hera, a few
miles from Mecca, giving himself up to meditation and prayer. In
this seclusion, contemplating the awful attributes of the
Omnipotent and Eternal God, he addressed to his conscience the
solemn inquiry, whether he could adopt the dogmas then held in
Asiatic Christendom respecting the Trinity, the sonship of Jesus
as begotten by the Almighty, the character of Mary as at once a
virgin, a mother, and the queen of heaven, without incurring the
guilt and the peril of blasphemy.

By his solitary meditations in the grotto Mohammed was drawn to
the conclusion that, through the cloud of dogmas and disputations
around him, one great truth might be discerned--the unity of God.
Leaning against the stem of a palm-tree, he unfolded his views on
this subject to his neighbors and friends, and announced to them