Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 130
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 130 had been steeped in spiritual torpor. The people were sunk in superstition, cruelty and vice. It was common practice for the eldest son to take to wife his father’s widows, whom he inherited with the rest of the estate. Pride and poverty had introduced amo ng them the crime of female infanticide. Their religion was a gross idolatry; and their faith the dark superstitious dread of unseen beings whose goodwill they sought to propitiate and whose displeasure to avert, rather than belief in an over - ruling Provid ence. The life to come, and retribution of good and evil as motives of action were practically unknown. Thirteen years before the Hijra, Mecca lay lifeless in this debased state. What a change had those thirteen years produced! A band of several hundred persons had rejected idolatry, adopted the worship of One God, and surrendered themselves implicitly to th e guidance of divine revelation; praying to the Almighty with frequency and fervour, looking for pardon through His mercy, and striving to follow after good works, almsgiving, purity and justice. They now lived under a constant sense of the omnipotent powe r of God, and His providential care over the minutest of their concerns. In all the gifts of nature, in every relation of life, at each turn of their affairs, individual or public, they saw His hand. Above all, the new existence in which they exulted was r egarded as the mark of His special grace. The Holy Prophet was the minister of life to them, the source, under God, of their newborn hopes; and to Him they yielded an implicit submission. In so short a period Mecca had, from this wonderful movement, been rent into two factions which, unmindful of old landmarks of tribe and family, arrayed themselves in deadly