Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 13

ISLĀN
Syria for a kinswoman, far older than himself, Khadīja; when he returns, she has found him so faithful, so frugal, so pure, so trustworthy, that she marries him, and they become man and wifeMuhammad not yet the Prophet, Khadīja not yet the first disciple; young man and older woman are they, but they live in a marriage so happy that it remains one of the ideal marriages of the world, until she leaves him a widower at fifty years of age, after six and twenty years of blessed married life.
After the marriage come fifteen years of thought, of quiet onter life, of terrible in ward struggle. As he walks through the streets of Mecca the children i'nin ont and cling around his knees. He has ever a tender word for the child, a caress for the little one; he is never known to break his word; his kindly counsel is ever at the service of the poor and the distressed. Al-Amin, they call him, “the trustworthy”; that is the name his neighbors give him, the man worthy to be trusted, noblest name a man can win. But while the onter life is thus useful, gentle and helpful, what is the inner life? Al, who may tell the storms of anguish and of agony that drive the future Prophet into the neighboring desert, to wrestle with his own son in the struggle that only the God-inspired men can know. Far into the desert he flies, month after month, throughout these fifteen years; in the desert cave in solitude he lies, in meditation, in prayer, in bitter self-doubt and self-questioning, in wondering what is the message that he hears: “In the name of thy