Yet Mohammed went on, neither daunted by fear nor discouraged by sarcasm. The number of his followers steadily increased; his first converts, Ali, his cousin, and Zeid, his faithful servant, being quickly joined by many others. Mohammed now boldly proclaimed the message delivered to him in the cave of Hira the Koran. He declared that the law of Moses had given way to the Gospel, and that the Gospel was now to give way to the Koran; that the Savior was a great prophet, but was not divine; and that he, Mohammed, was to be the last and greatest of all the prophets. Such assertions were usually received with shouts of derision; and yet, when Mohammed eloquently upheld fairness and sincerity in all public and private dealings, and urged the giving of alms, and the living of a pure and humble life, there were those who, like Amzi, felt that there was something worthy of admiration in the new prophet's religion; and his very firmness and sincerity, even when spat upon, and covered with mud thrown upon him as he prayed in the Caaba, won for him friends. The opposition of his uncles, Abu Lahab and Abu Sofian, was, however, carried on with the greatest rancor; and at last a decree was issued by Abu Sofian forbidding the tribe of the Koreish from having any intercourse whatever with Mohammed. This decree was written on parchment, and hung up in the Caaba, and Mohammed was ultimately forced to flee from the city. He and his disciples went for refuge to the ravine of Abu Taleb, at some distance from Mecca. Here they would have suffered great want, had it not been for the kindness of Amzi, who managed to send them food in secret. But the prophet's zeal never flagged. When the Ramadhan again came round, and it was safe to venture from his temporary retreat, he came boldly into the city, preached again from the hill Safa, and proclaimed his new revelations, praying for the people, and ending every prayer with the declaration now universal throughout the Moslem world,-- "God! There is no God but he, the ever-living! He sleepeth not, neither doth he slumber! To him belong the heavens and the earth, and all that they contain. Who shall intercede with him unless by his permission? His sway extendeth over the heavens and the earth, and to sustain them both is no burthen to him. He is the High, the Mighty!" The sublimity of this eulogy of the Most High may be readily traced to the psalms, particularly to that grandest of all songs, the one hundred and fourth psalm, which has been said to be remarkable in that it embraces the whole cosmos. And, in fact, the whole trend of the Koran may be traced to a study of the Bible, particularly to the New Testament, with occasional digressions into the Mishnu, and the Talmud of the Hebrews.