Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/196

 you, nor aided any one against you. Observe, therefore, engagement with them through the whole time of their treaty: for God loveth those who fear him. And when the sacred months are passed, kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them; and seize them, besiege them, and lay wait for them with every kind of ambush: but if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory arms, then let them go their way, for God is gracious, merciful. If any one of those who join gods with God ask an asylum of thee, grant him an asylum, that he may hear the Word of God, and then let him reach his place of safety. This, for that they are people devoid of knowledge" (K., p. 611.—Sura ix. 1-6).

Without quoting the proclamation at full length, we may observe that in substance the terms granted were these. Those of the heathen with whom treaties had been made were informed that they should be free for four months. These are the "sacred months" alluded to in the text, and which had always been observed as a time of truce by the heathen Arabs, but which Mahomet deprived of their privilege. After this period was past the Moslems might kill the heathens or take them prisoners wherever they might find them. With other heathens, with whom there was no treaty in existence, Allah announced that he would have nothing further to do. Moreover, the heathen were excluded by this proclamation from approaching the holy places of Mecca in future. "O believers!"—such are the words of this last decree—"only they who join gods with God are unclean! Let them not, therefore, after this year, come near the sacred Temple" (K., p. 615.—Sura ix. 28).

The prophet was now at the climax of his power. All Arabia was his; both materially and spiritually subdued beneath his authority. The city of his birth, which had spurned him as one of her humble citizens, was now compelled to receive him as her lord. No triumph could be more complete; and it is a rare, if not a unique, example of a new religion being persecuted, imperilled, well-nigh crushed, rescued, strengthened, contending for supremacy, and supreme, within the life-time of its founder. But that life-time was now approaching its end. Mahomet in 632 celebrated the last festival he was destined to witness with the utmost pomp. He went with all his wives to