difficult by the fact, that whilst Christianity existed for three hundred years without any political power, Muhammadanism, from the time of the Hijra, was not a merely religious, but a politico-religious system; so that it is almost impossible to say what results are attributable to the religious element, and what to the political power of Islam. But such a comparison is perfectly feasible for the short period from Muhammad's entering upon the work of a prophet in Mecca to his assuming the additional function of a temporal ruler in Madina. During this period, generally estimated at thirteen years, the chief exponent of Islam was the person of its founder. Christianity also has such a period in which its chief exponent was its own founder: this was the time of Christ's public ministry, lasting for about three years. Now what was the respective result of the three years' preaching of Christ, and of the thirteen years' preaching of Muhammad? In Luke vi. 13 we read that out of a larger number of disciples Jesus chose twelve apostles; in Luke x. 1, that on another occasion He could send seventy disciples to preach the gospel. In Matt. xxi. 46, we are told that the reason why His enemies, the chief priests and Pharisees, abstained from laying hands on Him, was their 'fear of the multitude who took Him for a prophet'; and in John vii. 40, 41, that, on hearing His sayings, the people said, 'This is of a truth the Prophet', while others said, 'This is the Christ'. In Acts i.

15, an assembly of one hundred and twenty disciples is mentioned, and in 1 Cor. xv. 6, we are informed, that on one occasion during the forty days between His resurrection from the dead and His ascension into heaven, He was seen by above five hundred brethren, or believing Christians, at once.

From Arabic historians, such as the Katibu'l-Waqidi, Ibn Hisham, Tabari, Ibn Sa'd, and others, we learn, on the other hand, that the first converts of Muhammad were his own wife Khadija, his adopted son Zaid, his nephew 'Ali, his intimate friend Abu Bakr, and several slaves who appear to have derived benefit from Abu Bakr's riches; that up to 'Umar's adoption of Islam in the house of Arqam, or after Muhammad had been trying to spread his religion for about six or seven years, his converts amounted only to about fifty (namely, forty or forty-five men with ten or eleven women);¹ that, when they fled to Abyssinia from the persecution in Mecca, their number, some time later, rose to one hundred and one (namely eighty-three men and eighteen women), which would seem to comprise all the converts of Mecca, up to the Hijra, inasmuch as the Katibu'l-Waqidi states the number of the Meccan fugitives who assisted at the battle of Badr, nineteen months later, to have been eighty-three; and that the converts of Madina, at the time of the Hijra, consisted of seventy-three men and two women. These data cannot leave it doubtful