Once others believed in and relied on him, his own latent self-reliance grew into a living and active factor that carried all before it. But as he looked at it, all his strength was from God. God was at his elbow and in his heart, therefore he could not fail. Nothing, in fact, shows better than this aspect of the matter how very wise and all-knowing (his constant refrain about God in the Koran) Mohammed himself was. How tactful and diplomatic, but above all, how deep his knowledge of human nature. Had Khadija and his household not believed in him, it is safe to assume that then there would have been no Prophet and no Islam. As Novalis says: “My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.” So it was with Mohammed. So it is with us all. So Carlyle pithily observes: “A false man found a religion? Why a false man cannot build a brick house!” I have already shown that Mohammed was not false. But neither did he found a religion. Apart from the fact that he was a reality, and as true as any of the world’s great prophets, Mohammed was unable to perform the impossible. Religion as a natural product was beyond his comprehension and potentialities. Islam like Christianity was a creed--a human or artificial development--the healthy and vigorous offspring of a noble and sublime, yet in no sense original conception. But there was no demerit in this want of originality. Because as Carlyle says: “The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity”: and with regard to Mohammed, this has been more than once acknowledged. Launched upon the world of Arabia in no false and unreal spirit, but with the spirit of grim sincerity and earnestness, Islam has proved its stability spiritually and materially, the present result of which speaks for itself. It is enough to say that a creed whose followers now number over 250,000,000, or some 15 per cent. of the human race (an under- rather than an over-estimate), could have sprung from a healthy and vigorous seed only--a seed that has been nourished and kept alive by the vital spark of human sympathies, hopes and aspirations.