The _Hajrat_, or Flight, from which dates the Muhammadan era, took place on July 16th, 622 A.D. A refuge was found in the rival city of Madina. [Sidenote: Madina] At Madina, Muhammad found leisure to mature and carry out the Idea which had now possessed him that he should found a Reign of God upon the earth. “Behind the quiet and unobtrusive exterior,” writes Sir William Muir, “lay hid a resolve, a strength and fixedness of will, a sublime determination, destined to achieve the marvellous work of bowing towards himself the heart of all Arabia as the heart of one man.” There is, to the sympathetic student of his life, nothing wonderful in the hold which Muhammad took upon his followers. He mastered men by the force of his iron will, and then won them by the force of his noble and generous nature. [Sidenote: Character] Many words have been wasted upon the problems of the character of this sixth-century Prophet, and it is not intended to enter upon them here. It must be remembered that if the vision of Muhammad was world-wide while his personal life remained at the limit of his time and his isolated race, there are not lacking similar examples elsewhere of great leaders whose private lives we explain by their generation and surroundings; also, it is probably wise, that until we know and are able to sympathize with the Arabic character, we of the West should say little in way of condemnation, all the more that condemnation of the Prophet is not the method to win men from his allegiance. [Sidenote: Personal Claim] There is a far more important question which may not be passed over. Did Muhammad realize the _personal_ claim involved in his religious message? Was his soul so pre-occupied with the grand Idea that his own relation to it was not at first apparent? For, it cannot be forgotten that from the beginning the second Article of the Muslim Creed was inherent in the first. God is known as God to the Muslim only because the Apostle of God has proclaimed Him to be God. Muhammad is the Revealer of God, and God is God. This is the true and inevitable order. This claim, as a foundation of belief, was the source of success of the arms of Islam in the past, and is the living power of Islam to-day; at the same time, it was and is the test of the man and of his message. Is Muhammad the Revealer of God? There is possible one answer only to the question, so far as the disciples of the Christ Whom he claimed to supersede are concerned; but the answer does not end the story of the relation between Christianity and the Arabian Prophet. Would that it did! [Sidenote: Death] Muhammad died at Madina on June 9th, 632 A.D., in his sixty-second year. His death was peace. His last words were, “The blessed Companionship on high.” [Sidenote: The dead hand] Being dead this man still rules. In all human history there is no more striking illustration of the might of the “dead hand” than is presented in Islam. THE GREAT THOUGHTS OF ISLAM. 1. GOD.