probably in 572, the religion of the Arabs had sunk into idolatry or indifference. There were three hundred and sixty images in the Kaaba. But there were some who were called _hanifs_, who were serious and earnest, and turned away from idolatrous worship. Besides the _Sabian_ religion of the Persian sun-worshipers, the leading tenets and rites of Christianity and of Judaism, both in the degenerate types which they assumed on the Syrian borders, were not unfamiliar to Arabs dwelling in the caravan routes on the borders of the Red Sea. CAREER OF MOHAMMED.--_Mohammed_ was early left an orphan under the care of his uncle _Abu Talib_. In his youth he tended sheep, and gathered wild berries in the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he became the commercial agent of a wealthy widow, _Khadija_, made journeys for her into Palestine and Syria,--where he may have received religious knowledge and impressions from Christian monks and Jewish rabbis,--and, after a time, married her. He is described as having a commanding presence, with piercing eyes, fluent in speech, and with pleasing ways. Eventually he came into close contact with the _hanifs_. He followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate _Mount Hira._ A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own responsibility to God, entered into his soul. A tendency to hysteria in the East a disease of men as well as of women--and to epilepsy helps to account for extraordinary states of body and mind of which he was the subject. At first he ascribed his strange ecstasies, or hallucinations, to evil spirits, especially on the occasion when an angel directed him to begin the work of prophesying. But he was persuaded by _Khadija_ that their source was from above. He became convinced that he was a prophet inspired with a holy truth and charged with a sacred commission. His wife was his first convert. His faith he called _Islam_, which signifies "resignation to the divine will." His cousin _Ali_, his friend _Abubekr_, and a few others, believed in him. There is no doubt that the materials of Mohammed's creed were drawn from Jewish and Christian sources: _Abraham_ was the _hanif_, whose pure monotheism he claimed to re-assert; but the animating spirit was from within. The sum of his doctrine was, that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God.