Mohammed married this woman when he had reached his twenty-fifth year. At the age of forty he began to have his revelations and to preach his new religion. His first convert, naturally perhaps, was his wife, then Ali and Zeid his two adopted children; then his friend, the prosperous merchant, Abu-Bekr. Such was the nucleus for the new faith. Mohammed is described in tradition as a man above middle height, of spare figure, commanding presence, massive head, noble brow, and jet-black hair. His eyes were piercing. He had a long bushy beard. Decision marked his every movement and he always walked rapidly. Writers seem to agree that he had the genius to command and expected obedience from equals as well as inferiors. James Freeman Clarke says that to him more than to any other of whom history makes mention was given: “The monarch mind, the mystery of commanding, The birth-hour gift, the art Napoleon Of wielding, moulding, gathering, welding, banding The hearts of thousands till they moved as one.” As to the moral character of Mohammed there is great diversity of opinion and the conclusions of different scholars cannot be easily reconciled. Muir, Dods, Badger, and others claim that he was at first sincere and upright, himself believing in his so-called revelations, but that afterward, intoxicated by success, he used the dignity of his prophetship for personal ends and was conscious of deceiving the people in some of his later revelations. Bosworth Smith and his like, maintain that he was “a very Prophet of God” all through his life and that the sins and faults of his later years are only specks on the sun of his glory. Older writers, with whom I agree, saw in Mohammed only the skill of a clever impostor from the day of his first message to the day of his death. Koelle, whose book is a mine of accurate scholarship and whose experience of many years mission-work in Moslem lands qualifies him for a sober judgment, sees no striking contrast between the earlier and later part of Mohammed’s life that cannot be easily explained by the influence of Khadijah. He was _semper idem_, an ambitious enthusiast choosing different means for the same end and never very particular as to the character of the means used.