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level, and is a contrast to Mecca; instead of the narrow and barren valley, it boasts beautiful gardens and rich foliage; a river flows through its plain, and all around lie green fields, evidences of the generous returns that nature affords there to the labors of the husbandman. Of all the bright spots in the beautiful region, the suburb of Koba, two miles to the south of the city and connected with it by uninterrupted gardens, most attracts the eye. Upon this scene of loveliness Mohammed looked down as he achieved the difficult ascent of the mountains. Perhaps his appreciation of the view was enhanced by sweet but dim memories of the day when his mother, Amina, had taken him to visit his relatives, on which, alas, she had given up her young life! Other thoughts must have been mingled with these sad-sweet reminiscences, however, for in spite of all the assurances he had received from friends, Mohammed could but have doubted what his reception was to be.

He determined not to enter Medina directly, and turned his camel towards Koba, where he alighted beneath a tree. As it was not known that he had lost three days in the cave, his friends had already expected his arrival for some time; and every day they had watched for him on the road a mile or so beyond the city. This morning they had returned from their perch, which was on the rocks west of Medina, but when Mohammed came in sight, a Jew who saw him from his house-top, cried: "He has come! He for whom the Refugees have been looking has at last come!" If the calculations are correct, this was Monday, June 28th. It was not long before the

streets echoed and re-echoed with the joyful cry: "He is come! He is come!" From every quarter the excited people flocked to greet the prophet, who did not fail to bear himself with his usual dignity, and said, very much as modern rulers say when they call upon their people to give thanks:

"O people, show your joy by giving to your neighbors the salutation of peace; send portions to the poor; bind close the ties of kinsmen; pray while others sleep; and thus shall ye enter paradise!"

For several days Mohammed rested at Koba, and then, fully assured that his entrance into the city. would be welcome, he determined to take up his abode there on the following Friday. By that time, Ali had arrived, and accompanied him. In the morning he mounted his favorite camel, with Abu Bekr behind him. A host of followers surrounded them; a powerful chief at the head of seventy horsemen acted as guard of honor; disciples took turns in holding a canopy of palm-leaves over his head; one enthusiast unfolded his turban, and, tying it to the point of his lance, bore it along as a standard. Before entering the city limits, the prophet halted at a spot still pointed out as the place of Friday prayer, and preached a sermon, after performing religious services. It was the first of a series of Friday services that has continued to this day.

The inhabitants, clad in holiday garments, streamed forth to welcome the coming hero, calling upon him: "Alight here, O prophet! here is abundance! here is room! here is protection!" Mohammed replied: "Let the camel go free; she will show the place at

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which Allah wills that I shall alight." Slowly the triumphal procession moved along among the graceful palms and green gardens of the southern portion of the city; and finally the beast halted and sat down in the eastern district, in a large court-yard containing a few date-trees. By thus giving a supernatural character to the selection of the place, Mohammed wisely avoided all the jealousies that might otherwise have been aroused by his choice of a home. His first duty was to purchase the ground; for he refused to accept it as a gift, though it was urged upon him.

After the triumph, came sober thoughts of what was to be done to ensure the success of the mission to a people who might not all be in sympathy with the faithful. There were among the inhabitants of Medina the band of emigrants from Mecca (Muajerin), and the new converts (Ansars), upon whom reliance might, of course, be put; but there were also many known as the Disaffected, who asked: "For what do we people of Medina throw ourselves at the feet of this foreigner?" "Is it not merely to lose our liberties, and bring ourselves and our children into bondage?" These covered up their animosity for the present, but it was living hatred, and the prophet knew that at any moment that they might think promising, it would break forth into declared and vigorous opposition.

There were also in Medina Jews, with whom the prophet's relations were peculiar; for he had borrowed many things in his faith and practice from them, and professed much sympathy with their re

ligious views. Some of these were gained over and became faithful adherents of Islam, but others cast ridicule upon the prophet. Against these latter he, in turn, inveighed as rebels, as men judicially blind, as belonging to the generation of those who had killed the prophets in other days, and had rejected the Messiah.

"O People of the Book," he cried, "why do ye disbelieve in the signs of Allah, the while ye witness them? Why do ye clothe the truth with falsehood, and hide the truth that ye know?"-Sura iii.

In the second sura, which dates from the first year of the Hejra, the prophet recommended his followers to avoid the use of wine. Four years later he decided that total abstinence was the only safe policy, and forbade both wine and games of chance.

It was no easy task that Mohammed had before him; he knew as well as we do now that a public triumph is often the forerunner of a fall. Still, he continued to profess that he looked to Allah only for support and guidance.

ISLAM.

LET us stop now at the threshold of the new era and ask what was the doctrine that Mohammed had up to this time preached, and what he was expected to bring to Medina. It was "strikingly new and original," as Professor Palmer has said; for the first time it put before the Arabian the grand conception of one God, the faith of their father Abraham, which the ignorant worship of stocks and stones had long obscured. It was a radical and noble reform that, when the sons of the wind-swept plains gave up feticism for the worship of Allah. The nation was not turned from all evil; they saw, for instance, that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob married more wives than one, and had concubines from among their slaves; and they did not feel called to renounce their like customs; they looked at Christianity through the dim light of obscured tradition, and they did not see its grandeur, nor feel attracted to doctrines in it which they could not understand; they scorned the dogma of the trinity, because it presented to their imagination Allah, Miriam, and Issa (Jesus),-a confused mixture of a divinity which they most fervently worshipped, a prophet whom they never