When Heraclius died in 641, he was covered with defeat, and the chief

provinces of his empire were, day by day, falling away. He left a son,

Constantine, twenty-eight years old, who had been named emperor from his

birth: and, by his second marriage with his niece, Martina, a son,

Heracleonas, nineteen years old, who had been named emperor two years

before, and two younger sons, David and Marinus, named Cæsars, besides two

daughters, who, like their mother, had been named expresses. In his will

he directed his two sons, Constantine and Heracleonas, to reign together

with equal power, and to acknowledge Martina as empress-mother.

Constantine III. was not Monothelite, but orthodox. At his accession he

received a letter(76) from Pope John IV., maintaining the true doctrine,

and also that his predecessor, Honorius, answering a question put to him

by the patriarch Sergius, “taught concerning the mystery of the

Incarnation, that there were not in Christ, as in us sinners, opposing

wills of the mind and the flesh: and for this, certain persons, trusting

to their own meaning, threw out the suspicion that he had taught there to

be the only one will of the Godhead and the Manhood, which is altogether

contrary to the truth”. This the Pope proceeds to prove at length. And he

ends by saying that he finds a certain document, contrary to Pope Leo, of

blessed memory, and the Council of Chalcedon, has been issued, to which

bishops are compelled to subscribe. This was the Ecthesis of Heraclius.

And he entreats the new emperor, as guardian of the Christian faith, to

command this document to be torn down, and, as a first sacrifice to God,

to scatter from His Church every cloud of novelty. So, if he regard the

things of God, may the Lord, whose faith is preserved in purity, preserve

his empire from the nations trusting in their ferocity.

But the emperor, Constantine III., died 103 days after his father,

poisoned, as eastern historians say, by his step-mother, the empress

Martina: with which crime they also inculpate the patriarch Pyrrhus. She

then reigned with her son, Heracleonas; but not for long. An insurrection

deposed her: both she and Heracleonas were maimed and banished, and

Constans II., son of Constantine III., and grandson of Heraclius, at

twelve years old became emperor, under tutelage of the council. The answer

given to the letter of Pope John IV. was that the Ecthesis affixed to the

door of churches should be removed.

But the empire was torn to pieces by the strife of the various heresies

contending for mastery. The patriarch Pyrrhus, who had succeeded Sergius

in the see of Constantinople, and in the patronage of his heresy, found it

expedient on the deposition of Martina to leave his see. He appeared in

Africa, and had a great controversy with Maximus in the presence of the

African episcopate in 645. He acknowledged himself to be defeated: and

went to Pope Theodorus at Rome, where he renounced the Monothelite heresy,

and was received by the Pope as bishop of the capital. But he returned

presently, at the instance of the exarch of Ravenna, to the errors which

he had renounced.

In due time the emperor, Constans II., produced the Typus to take the

place of his grandfather’s Ecthesis. And, when Pope St. Martin held his

great Council at Rome in 649, Constans burst into fury, and, as above

recorded, afterwards caused the Pope to be kidnapped, to be tried at

Constantinople, and to be condemned for high treason; finally, to perish

of want in the Crimea.

With Pope St. Martin, Maximus had been the great defender of the faith. It

is time to give some record of his life, his labours, and his reward.

Maximus sprung about the year 580 at Constantinople from an old and noble

family. There were few of rank superior to his relations. He had great

abilities, received an excellent education, and became one of the most

learned men in his time, and the ablest theologian. The emperor Heraclius

drew him against his wishes to the court, and made him one of his chief

secretaries. But, in the year 630, his love for solitude, as well as his

observance of the wrong bias which the mind of Heraclius was taking, led

him to withdraw from court. He resigned the brilliant position which he

occupied, became a monk in the monastery of Chrysopolis, that is, Scutari,

and, on the death of its abbot, was chosen unanimously to succeed him.

Henceforth to the end of his life, at the age of eighty-two, he became, by

word and deed, a champion of the Catholic faith against the Monothelite

heresy. In 633, he went with Sophronius, then a simple monk, to

Alexandria, and joined him in entreating the patriarch, Cyrus, to desist

from promulgating the new heresy. Against this, Sophronius, having become

patriarch of Jerusalem, published his synodical letter quoted above.

Maximus went on to the west, visiting Rome and Carthage, and rousing the

African bishops against the heresy. He showed his great dialectical skill

in a contest with Pyrrhus, then the deposed successor of the patriarch

Sergius. Pyrrhus even accompanied him to Rome, and renounced the heresy

before Pope Theodorus.

Maximus continued at Rome to use all his efforts against the heresy, and

counselled Pope Martin to call the Lateran Synod, and formally condemn it.

As the Ecthesis of Sergius had been composed against Sophronius, and then

the Typus—drawn up by the patriarch Paul, and imposed by the will of the

emperor Constans II.—had been substituted for it at Constantinople, the

Council of the Lateran which in 649 condemned both, excited the bitterest

wrath of the emperor. Three men had especially in his mind counter-worked

all his endeavours to impose his will as the standard of faith upon the

Romans and the bishops. These three men were Sophronius, patriarch of

Jerusalem, who had died shortly after the surrender of his city to Omar,

Pope Martin, and the Abbot Maximus. How he avenged himself on the Pope St.

Martin has been already described.

About the same time at which the Pope was carried off to Byzantium, in

653, Maximus also was seized, with his two disciples, both named

Anastasius, one a monk, the other a Roman priest, who had been a nuncio.

They were carried also to Byzantium, and thrown into prison. After the

Pope had been judged by the senate, and condemned to death for high

treason, Maximus and his disciples were also brought to trial.

Maximus had distinguished himself by a great number of writings. He is

considered the greatest theologian of the seventh century. He has kept a

very high rank through all the centuries which have followed him. After

the death of Sophronius, the intellectual combat against the Monothelite

heresy rested mainly upon him. The very high rank which he had held as a

minister of Heraclius, conjoined with his scientific defence of the truth,

made him the most conspicuous person in the Church after the martyrdom of

Pope Martin, whose friend, counsellor, and supporter he had been, and his

unbending constancy under the severest tortures has given him among the

Greeks the name of “the Confessor.”

Part of a letter(77) is extant from him to a certain Peter, a man of high

rank, who had entreated him to meet and resist the patriarch Pyrrhus in

the African conference. With regard to him Maximus says: “if Pyrrhus will

neither be heretical, nor be so-called, let him not satisfy this or that

individual. That is superfluous and unreasonable; for just as when one is

scandalised in him all are scandalised, so when one is satisfied all

surely will be satisfied. Let him then hasten to satisfy before all the

Roman See. When this is satisfied all men everywhere will accept his

religion and orthodoxy. In vain he speaks who would gain me and suchlike

as me: and does not satisfy and implore the most blessed Pope of the holy

Roman Church, that is, the Apostolic See, which has received and holds the

government, the authority, and the power of binding and loosing over all

the holy Churches of God in the whole earth in all persons and matters

from the Incarnate Word of God Himself, and likewise from all holy

Councils according to the sacred canons. For with him the Word who rules

the celestial virtues, binds and looses in heaven. For if he thinks that

others must be satisfied, and does not implore the most Blessed Pope of

Rome, he is like the man who is accused of homicide, or any other crime,

and maintains his innocence not to him who by law is appointed to judge

him, but without any use or gain strives to clear himself to other private

men who have no power to absolve him.”

Yet more remarkable, if possible, is another testimony which this great

martyr, born and bred at Constantinople, and up to the age of fifty a

minister of the eastern emperor, who bears the greatest name among the

theologians of the seventh century, has left behind him. It was apparently

written at Rome after the completion of the Lateran Council in 649, which

he mentions in it, and numbers with the five preceding ecumenical

Councils. It runs thus:—

“All(78) the ends of the world, and all therein confessing the Lord with

pure and upright faith, gaze stedfastly upon the most holy Church of the

Romans, its confession and faith, as upon the sun of eternal light. They

expect the brightness which ever lightens from it, in the doctrine of

Fathers and Saints, as, guided by a divine wisdom and piety the six

Councils have set it forth, drawing out with greater distinctness the

Symbol of the Faith. For from the beginning when the Incarnate Word of God

descended to us, all churches of Christians everywhere possess and hold as

the only basis and foundation that greatest of churches, as against which,

according to the promise of the Saviour, the gates of hell never prevail:

as which possesses the keys of the right faith and confession of Him: as

which discloses the real and only religion to those who approach it

religiously, while it shuts up and stops every heretical mouth loudly

speaking iniquity. For they are seeking without labour and apart from

suffering, O wonderful patience of God which endures it!(79) by two words

to pull down what has been established and built up by the Creator and

Ruler of all things, our Lord Jesus Christ, by His disciples and apostles,

by all the sequence of holy Fathers, Teachers, and Martyrs, who offered

themselves up by their words and deeds, their struggles and labours, their

toil and blood-sheddings, and lastly, by wondrous deaths, for that

Catholic and Apostolic Church of us who believe in Him. They would annul

that mystery of right Christian worship with all its greatness, its

brightness, and its renown.”

Pope Martin, who held this great Council, at which Maximus was present,

supporting the Pope with all his learning, had been seized, as we have

seen, in his own city and church, in the year 653, four years after it. At

the same time, Maximus, being about 73 years old, was seized at the same

place, and deported to Constantinople, and upon his arrival was taken

straight from the ship, naked and without sandals, together with his two

disciples and companions, and they were put into different prisons by five

officers and their attendants. Later, when the proceeding against the Pope

had been; closed, Maximus was brought into the palace before the whole

senate and a great crowd.(80) He was placed in the middle of the hall, and

the fiscal angrily addressed him with the words, “Art thou a Christian?”

Maximus replied, “By the grace of God I am”. “That is not true.” “Thou

mayest say so, but God knows that I am a Christian.” “And if thou art a

Christian, how canst thou hate the emperor?” asked the judge. “But,”

replied Maximus, “how is this known to thee? Hatred, like love, is a

secret affection of the spirit.” “It is become plain by thy deeds that

thou hatest the emperor and his realm, for it is only thou who hast

delivered Egypt and Alexandria and the Pentapolis, Tripolis and Africa

into the hands of the Saracens.”

These accusations fell to the ground, as the false witnesses brought could

not maintain them. But the end of this trial was to condemn Maximus and

his two companions to a separate and severe exile.

The Pyrrhus whom Maximus had so far prevailed over in the famous

conference held in Africa in 645, that he had renounced his heresy to Pope

Theodorus, and been received by him in St. Peter’s, who had then fallen

back through the influence of the exarch, and been excommunicated, had

succeeded in regaining the see of Constantinople, upon the death of

Paulus, the author of Typus. After a few months, he had died in the summer

of 655. He was followed by Peter, whose synodal letter, sent to Rome to

Pope Eugenius, is said to have been so dark on the subject of heresy that

the clergy and people would not suffer the Pope to celebrate Mass in the

Church of St. Mary until he had promised not to accept this letter.

Later in the summer, Maximus was again brought into the judgement hall of

the palace, where the two Monothelite patriarchs—Peter of Constantinople

and Macedonius of Antioch, then living in the capital—were present. “Speak

the truth,” said Troilus to him, “and the emperor will have mercy on thee,

for if one of the accusations be proved juridically against thee, thou

wilt be guilty of death.” Maximus declared they were all false; that he

had submitted the Typus to anathema, not the emperor. The Lateran Council

was asserted to have no force for he who held it has been deposed,

“Deposed he was not,” said Maximus, “but expelled.” Maximus and his

companion, Anastasius, were sent to different banishments.

A year later, a fresh attempt was made to break down his resolution. Paul

and Theodosius, two men of consular rank, and Theodosius, Bishop of

Cæsarea, the latter as commissary of the patriarch, Peter, the former two

of the emperor, reached the imprisoned confessor on the 24th August, 656.

Every effort was made to induce Maximus to accept the Typus, and enter

into communion with the see of Constantinople.

The terms which Maximus required were reported to the emperor, and fresh

commissaries, the patricians, Troilus and Epiphanius, and the same bishop,

Theodosius, sent again to Maximus.(81) “The Lord of the world sends us to

thee,” said Troilus, “to inform thee what it pleases him to require. Wilt

thou obey his command or not?” Maximus requested that he might hear the

command. They required that he should first answer the question. Maximus

said, “Before God and Angels, and you all, I promise, what the emperor

commands me, in respect of earthly things, I will do”. At length

Epiphanius said, “The emperor by us informs thee: since all the West and

all the perverse-minded in the East look to thee and make contention

because of thee, since they will not submit to us in faith, the emperor

wills to move thee that thou enter into communion with us on the basis of

the Typus issued by us. We will then personally go out to Chalce, and

embrace thee, and offer thee our hand and, lead thee to the cathedral with

all honour and pomp, and place thee by our side where the emperors are

wont to sit, and we will then partake of the life-giving Body and Blood of

Christ, and declare thee again for our father: and there will be great joy

not only in our own residence, but in all the world. For we are well

assured that if thou enterest into communion with this holy see, all who

have divided themselves from our communion on thy account will unite

themselves to us again.”

Then Maximus turned to the bishop and said to him with tears:—“My good

lord, we are all awaiting the Day of Judgment. You know what we drew out,

and agreed upon respecting the holy Gospels, the life-giving Cross, the

image of our God and Saviour, and the all-holy ever-virgin Mother who bore

Him.” The bishop cast down his eyes, and said to him, in a lower

voice:—“What can I do, since the emperor has chosen something else?”

Maximus said, “Why did you and those with you touch the holy gospels, when

you could not bring about the promised issue? Indeed, the whole power of

heaven would not persuade me to do this. For what answer shall I give, I

say not to God, but to my own conscience, that for the glory of men, which

has in it no substance, I have forsworn the faith which saves those who

cling to it.”

At this word they all arose, their fury overmastering them: they pushed

and scratched and tore him; they covered him with spittle from his head

downwards, so that his clothes reeked, until they were washed. And the

bishop, rising, said, this ought not to be done, but his answer only

should be heard, and then be reported to our lord. For religious matters

are done in different fashion from this. The bishop could scarcely induce

them to desist. They took their seats again, and reviled him with

indescribable insults, and imprecations. Epiphanius said furiously,

“Malefactor and cannibal, speakest thou thus, treating us and our city and

our emperor as heretics? We are more Christian and orthodox than thou art.

We confess that our Lord and God has both a divine will and a human will,

and an intellectual soul, and that every intellectual nature has by

nature, Will, and Operation, since motion belongs to life, and will to

mind: and we know Him to have the capacity of Will not only in the

Godhead, but also in the Manhood. Nor do we deny His Two Wills and Two

Operations.”

The abbot, Maximus, answered:—“If you so believe, as the intellectual

Natures and the Church of God, why are you compelling me to communicate on

the terms of the Typus, which merely destroys those things?” “That,” said

Epiphanius, “has been done for accommodation, that the people may not be

injured by these subtleties.” Maximus said:—“On the contrary, every man is

sanctified by accurate confession of the faith, not by its destruction, as

put in the Typus”. “I told thee in the palace,” said Troilus, “that it did

not destroy, but bade silence be kept that we may all live in peace.”

Maximus answered:—“What is covered in silence is destroyed. The Holy

Spirit says by the prophet:—‘There are no speeches nor languages, where

their voices are not heard’: a word not spoken is no word at all.” Troilus

said: “Keep in thy heart what thou wilt; no one prevents thee”. Maximus

answered, “But God did not limit salvation to the heart when he said:—‘He

that confesseth Me before men, I will confess him before My Father in

heaven,’ and the Apostle, ‘With the heart we believe unto justice, but

with the mouth confession is made to salvation’. If then God, and God’s

prophets and apostles bid the great and terrible mystery which saves all

the world to be confessed by holy voices, there is no need that the voice

which proclaims it be in any way silenced, in order that the salvation of

those who are silent be not impaired.”

Then Epiphanius, speaking most harshly, said, “Didst thou sign the

writing?” he meant the Lateran Council. Abbot Maximus said, “Yes, I

signed”. “And how didst thou dare to sign, and anathematise those who

confess and believe as the intellectual Natures and the Catholic Church?

In my judgment thou shalt be taken into the city, and be put in chains in

the forum, and the actors and actresses, and the women that stand for

hire, and all the people shall be brought, that every man and woman may

slap thee, and spit in thy face.” Abbot Maximus replied:—“Be it as thou

hast said, if we have anathematised those who confess Two Natures of which

the Lord is, and the two natural Wills and Operations corresponding to Him

who is both God and Man. Read, my Lord, the acts and decree, and if what

you have said is found, do all your will. For I, and my fellow-servants,

who have subscribed, have anathematised those who, according to Arius and

Apollinarius, maintain one Will and Operation, and who do not confess our

Lord and God to be intellectual in each of those Natures of which, in

which, and which He is: and, therefore, in both of them having Will and

Operation of our salvation.”

They said, “If we go on treating with this man, we shall neither eat nor

drink. Let us go, and take food, and report what we have heard. For this

man has sold himself to the devil. They went in and dined, and made their

report, it being the eve of the Exaltation of the life-giving Cross in the

year 656.”(82)

The next day, Theodosius, the Consul, came out early to the aforesaid

Abbot Maximus, and took away all that he had, and said, in the emperor’s

name:—“Since thou wilt not have honour, it shall be far from thee. Go to

the place thou hast thought thyself worthy of, suffering the judgment of

thy disciples, him at Mesembria, and him at Perberi.” The patricians

Troilus and Epiphanius had said:—“We will bring the two disciples, him at

Mesembria, and him at Perberi, and put them, too, to the proof, and see

the result. But learn, Sir Abbot, that, when we get a little relief from

this rout of heathens (that is, the Saracens), by the Holy Trinity, we

will bring you to terms, and your Pope, who is now lifted up, and all the

talkers there, and the rest of your disciples: and we will _cook_ you all,

each in his own place, as Martin has been cooked”. And the Consul

Theodosius took him and committed him to soldiers, and they took him to

Perberis. It is not known how long what is called the second exile of St.

Maximus lasted, which ensued after he had thus resisted the offers of the

emperor.

At a later time, he was brought from Perberis, with his disciple,

Anastasius, back to Constantinople.(83) A Synod, there held,

excommunicated them both, as well as Pope St. Martin, St. Sophronius, and

all the orthodox.(84) The second Anastasius, who had been a Nuncio, was

also brought, and the Synod passed on all three the sentence:—“As the

Synod has passed against you its canonical sentence, it only remains that

you be subject to the severity of the civil laws for your impiety. And

though no punishment could be proportionate to your crimes, we, leaving

you to the just Judge in respect of the greater punishment, grant you the

indulgence of the present life, modifying the strict severity of the laws.

We order that you be delivered to the prefect, and by him taken to the

guard: that you be then scourged; that in you, Maximus and Anastasius, and

Anastasius, the instrument of your iniquity, the blaspheming tongue be cut

out to the roots, and then your right hand, which has served your

blaspheming mind, be cut off: that thus deprived of these execrable

members, you be carried through the twelve quarters of this imperial city,

and then be delivered to perpetual banishment and prison, to lament for

the remainder of your errors.”

This sentence was carried out by the prefect. St. Maximus was then

transported to Lazika, in Colchis: the other two to different castles. As

Maximus, from weakness, could neither ride nor bear a carriage, he was

borne on a sort of bed made of branches to the Castle of Schemarum. St.

Maximus foretold the day of his death, which took place on the 13th

August, 662, when he was eighty-two years old. At that moment the chalif

Muawiah had about completed the first year in which he had fixed the seat

of the Saracenic empire at Damascus: and the “rout of heathen” from which

the Byzantine Consul had anticipated deliverance, held in peril during the

whole of Muawiah’s reign to 680 the imperial city on the Bosphorous, where

“the lord of the world” usually resided.

CHAPTER IV. CHRISTENDOM AND ISLAM.

We are now come to the greatest of contrasts and oppositions in human

history—to the Church of Christ, the foundress of nations, and to Islam,

her counterfeit and opponent; to the law which went forth from Jerusalem

and struck its perpetual root in Rome, and to the force which went forth

from Mecca, tarried for a while in Damascus and Bagdad, and then encamped

in the city of Constantine. Two reigns which never have ceased and never

can cease to counterwork each other, the reign of the Word and the reign

of the Sword.

In the twenty-eight years which run from A.D. 632 to 661 of the four

chalifs, Abu Bekr, Omar, Osman, and Ali, the sword has severed from the

throne of Constantine its fairest provinces, and conquered besides a

territory, the whole mass of which exceeded the Roman empire at its

greatest extension. The sword of Mohammed’s successors in doing this has

inflicted deadly wounds on the Christian patriarchates and dioceses

subjected to the new dominion. It has also reduced the unsubdued portion

of the eastern empire to tremble for its future existence: it has made the

whole West, already in possession of the Teuton family of races, gather

itself together, and prepare for a death struggle with the advancing

enemy.

It is necessary to consider in his personal life the man who gives name to

this immense movement, who raised the banner which flouted the Cross and

wrote upon that banner the symbol of human enjoyment against that of

divine abasement. The facts of his life which I wish to note are

especially those which are reproduced in his religion. They pass beyond

the sphere of the individual because they reappear incessantly in the

history of twelve hundred and fifty years, and affect nations of the south

and east which dwell from the Atlantic Ocean to the extremities of China.

Mohammed(85) was born in April, 571, in the city of Mecca, of a family

possessing spiritual rank in that home of ancient pilgrimages for the

Arabian tribes. But the branch to which he belonged was poor. His father,

Abdallah, died about the time of his birth. His mother, Aminah, born in

Medina, was so poor that she could scarcely support a nurse for him. His

mother died when he was six years old. His grandfather then took care of

him, but died also after two years. From that time his uncle, Abu Talib,

provided for him, but was so poor likewise that the orphan child was

presently reduced to tend sheep, whereas the rich class at Mecca was

largely engaged in traffic with their caravans, which visited Abyssinia,

Southern Arabia, Syria, Egypt, and Persia. Mohammed is said in his youth

to have twice visited Syria, probably as a camel driver. But it is said

with greater certainty that at twenty-five he entered the service of a

rich widow, Chadidja, and journeyed for her in South Arabia. He afterwards

married her, and then for the first time became sufficiently rich to turn

the thoughts which slumbered within him to higher subjects than procuring

his daily bread.

His marriage with Chadidja lasted till he was fifty years of age, when he

lost her and at the same time his uncle Abu Talib. During the whole period

of his marriage with Chadidja, who was much older than himself, he lived

in close union with her—what seems to have been, at least in regard to

this relationship—a virtuous and religious life. Mohammed’s education had

been much neglected. His country at the time was in a most uncivilised

condition, destitute of science, arts, and letters. Bardship alone was in

repute, and for this Mohammed had no gift, though he had a great gift of

oratory. The art of writing was little diffused; it is doubtful whether

Mohammed even in his later years possessed it. He was acquainted with

Jewish and Christian doctrines only by oral information. The great

authority of St. John of Damascus says that he lighted upon the Old and

New Testaments by conferences with an Arian monk, and thus drew up his own

religion. He was about forty years of age when he began to carry out a

design to restore what he thought the religion of Abraham, and to destroy

the idolatry into which his countrymen had fallen. He met with small

success and much opposition in this attempt until in the eleventh year of

the mission which he claimed as prophet, and the fifty-first of his life,

a most marked change in his personal conduct and in the conditions of his

life took place.

The chief men at Mecca had generally refused to receive him as a prophet

and to accept the reformation of religion which he proposed to them. In

his first years he had confined his revelations to his nearest relations

and friends. He had gained Abu Bekr and his young cousin Ali, an uncle

Hamza, named for his valour “the Lion of God,” and above all, Omar, at

first his opponent, but when converted the most energetic character among

all the companions of the prophet, and the strongest support of Islam. On

the whole, however, things had gone so far against him that he retired

secretly, together with Abu Bekr, from Mecca to Medina. This event, termed

The Flight, took place in September, 622, from which year his followers

count their time. It may be taken as indeed the time in which his full

character as prophet came forth to light. Henceforth he appeared rather as

the preacher of a new religion than as the restorer of what he called the

religion of Abraham.

The most important principle laid down by him from the time of his

migration from Mecca to Medina was that he then first permitted in the

name of God war against unbelievers. He afterwards made this a holy duty.

It was considered the first of virtues to fight the enemies of Islam. To

those who fell in such a battle he promised the highest joys of paradise;

to those who rejected him he threatened a shameful death by the

disposition of God.(86)

Upon his first settlement in Medina, which afterwards changed its original

name of Jathripp into this new name, signifying the city, he built a

mosque and arranged worship, in which a short prayer was offered five

times a day. He sought at first to gain over the Jews residing there, and

marked Jerusalem as the _Kiblah_, that is, the point to which the face

should be turned in prayer, and the tenth day of the first month as a fast

day, and allowed Jewish converts to keep the Sabbath.(87) But when he

found that the Jews would receive a Messias only of the race of David he

became their bitterest enemy. Later he appointed Mecca instead of

Jerusalem as the Kiblah, the month Ramadhan as fasting time, and Friday as

the day of rest.

His first campaigns, when he could scarcely bring a few hundred men into

the field, for the inhabitants of Medina had not yet joined him, but had

only granted him protection, were but predatory attacks on the caravans of

Mecca, which came near Medina. But when the Meccans grew prudent, and

either defended their caravans with a strong escort, or sent them round by

bye-paths to Syria, Mohammed planned a plundering attack in one of the

holy months, when every Arab deemed himself secure. This is the beginning

of a number of actions which, though he was not endued with a delicate

moral sense, he must have known to be bad, and only ordered, or at least

approved, for the sake of the end aimed at, chastisement of the heathen,

and breaking in upon their commerce. What Mohammed did was to call his

follower Abdallah, to give him a sealed packet, and instruct him to go to

South Arabia with twelve companions. He was not to open the packet before

the third day, and then fulfil the order it contained. Abdallah obeyed,

broke the seal on the third day, and found only the words: Go with thy

companions to the valley of Nachlah (south-east of Mecca), and there wait

for the caravans of Mecca. Words which Abdallah interpreted to mean that

he should fall upon these caravans. This he accomplished without

difficulty. Two men were taken prisoners, one killed, and the whole lading

carried as plunder to Medina. Mohammed had plainly used this short and

sealed packet to cut off all explanation with Abdallah respecting an act

of rapine in the sacred months, so as to be able to put away the

responsibility from himself, as might be needed. Even the Moslim at Medina

had but one cry of reprobation over this desecration of the sacred months.

Mohammed at first disavowed Abdallah as having gone beyond his command,

for he had not told him to attack the caravans in the sacred months. But

when he found himself considered no less the author of this deed, and as

he did not mean for the future to secure to Mecca four tranquil mouths for

its commerce, Koran verses were published in which war against unbelievers

was excused at every time, because they committed the much greater sin of

driving the prophet out of his country.(88)

The attempt to exculpate Mohammed from the guilt of the blood murderously

shed in falling upon this caravan is made the more difficult because his

biographers speak of many other murders ordered by him even in the case of

women, and extol him for such things. It may be noted that in the last

time before his flight he was no longer true and sincere. Thus he recorded

the whole history of the Old and New Testament prophets, adorned with many

Jewish and Christian legends, which he maintained, as was his wont, to

have been revealed to him by the angel Gabriel. This did not impose upon

the inhabitants of Mecca, who were right in ascribing his knowledge of

these things to intercourse with foreign informants less illiterate than

himself.

The first proper fight between Mohammed and the Meccans took place in the

second year of the Hegira at Bedr, a station between Medina and Mecca.

Mohammed had gone out with somewhat more than 300 men to surprise and

plunder certain rich caravans on their return from Syria. Abu Sofian, the

head of the Omeiad line, led these caravans, and had notice of Mohammed’s

purpose. He sent an express to Mecca inviting his townsmen to despatch an

armed escort to defend their property. Before these, 900 strong, arrived,

Abu Sofian, knowing that Mohammed lay in wait for him at Bedr, succeeded

in passing round this place by directing his caravans in security along

the coast road. When news that their goods were safe reached the Meccan

camp, a portion of the escort, which had taken arms only through fear of

losing their property, wished to return. The rest, bitter enemies of

Mohammed, and also fighting men, preferred to advance upon Bedr. This was

resolved upon, but many in the force persisted in returning to Mecca. The

same hesitation prevailed in the prophet’s camp: which had come out

intending to plunder, not for a fight with an enemy still continuing to be

in number. But yet greater was the fear of showing cowardice, and so

striking the new faith with the hardest blow. So they came to a bloody

conflict, in which the disciplined Medinese prevailed over the Meccans

whom their commercial habits had partly enfeebled. They carried off rich

plunder. Mohammed did not himself fight: he was praying in a hut until he

sank exhausted, and when he recovered consciousness, announced a victory

to his friends obtained by the aid of celestial warriors. This first deed

of arms laid the basis for a rapid increase of Mohammedanism. It gave the

poor community spoil in arms, in horses, and in camels, and in no little

ransom for the prisoners taken. It strengthened their confidence,

increased their following, and encouraged them to further enterprise. The

Jewish tribe Keinuka was their first prey. It was compelled to

unconditional surrender, and would probably have been entirely massacred

if a free retreat had not been obtained for it by Abd Allah, the head of

an Arabian clan dwelling in Medina, with whom these Jews had been in

former alliance. But all their goods went to the Moslem. At this time

occur many slayings of particularly hated or dangerous enemies of Islam.

So Mohammed inflicted a great terror which reduced to silence individual

opponents, and carried waverers into the bosom of Islam, which promised

them security.

But, in the meantime, the Meccans were not idle. Both interest and honour

required them to avenge the defeat at Bedr. Abu Sofian, in the year 625,

the third of the Hegira, appeared at the head of 3000 men, and occupied a

camp to the east of Medina. Mohammed wished to confine himself to the

defence of the city, but his more fanatic followers denounced this conduct

as cowardice, and he was compelled to march out with about a thousand men,

of whom nearly a third were commanded by Abd Allah: This man, a secret

enemy of Mohammed, returned back into the city. The Moslim, however, in

spite of their small number, fought with effect at Mount Ohod, north of

Medina, until the bowmen, who were ranged against the enemy’s horsemen,

deserted their post, and the impetuous Chalid fell upon their retreat. A

panic seized the believers, so that they sought safety in flight. Mohammed

himself was wounded, and sank to the ground, so that a report of his death

was spread, which added to the discomfiture of his host. But a faithful

henchman recognised him by the eyes alone, in spite of mail-coat, helmet,

and visor, and brought him to safety, while the Meccans, believing his

death, cared not to pursue the other fugitives, and were retiring. Only

after the battle was ended, Abu Sofian learnt that he was still alive.

Mohammed, the day after the battle, in which he lost 70 men, pursued the

enemy for some distance, only to show that he was not discouraged. The

defeat at Ohod lessened Mohammed’s reputation as much as the victory at

Bedr had raised it. The only considerable gain which Mohammed, in the

fourth year of the Hegira, could offer to his believers to make up for the

losses suffered, was the expulsion of the Jews of the clan Nadir, who had

lands and many strong castles near Medina. They surrendered these, and as

there had been no battle, Mohammed confiscated their property, and

bestowed it on his party of fugitives from Mecca. At the end of this year

he appeared near Bedr with a larger force, to show that he was not afraid

to defy Abu Sofian, who had threatened a fresh attack after the battle at

Ohod. But the Meccans were not ready, and, moreover, would not fight on a

bad year. Towards the end of the fifth year, in 627, they appeared again

under Abu Sofian, about ten thousand strong, with their allies, out of

various Bedouin clans before Medina. The Medinese could hardly set 3000

men against them, and were, in general, down-hearted, fearing an attack

besides from the Jewish clan, Kureiza. This time Mohammed maintained his

plan not to meet the enemy in the open field, but only to defend the town.

By the advice of a Persian he drew a broad trench about it. Slight as this

defence was, it sufficed, in the Arab ignorance of the art of siege, to

keep the enemy from an attack in force. Bad weather ensued, and Mohammed

succeeded in sowing distrust of each other among the confederates, so that

they retired after doing nothing. But, though the siege of Medina had cost

Mohammed little material loss, his reputation as warrior and as prophet

had suffered greatly, as at Ohod. Instead of following the Arabian custom,

to offer battle, he had cowered behind walls and trenches. Again he turned

first against the Jews, who had entered into negotiations with the

Meccans. After a few weeks, he compelled them to surrender. These were of

the clan Kureiza, formerly confederates with the second large Arabian clan

domiciled in Medina. They hoped, through the mediation of this clan, to

get as good conditions as the clan Keinuka had obtained through Abd Allah.

But the head of this clan had been wounded during the siege of the city,

and when Mohammed appealed to his judgment, he condemned to death the men

whose number ran from 600 to 900, and their wives and children to slavery.

Mohammed had this hard sentence executed immediately in the marketplace of

Medina. This expedition was followed by others against hostile Bedouin

clans. Thus the bad impression left by the siege was gradually effaced. So

at the end of the sixth year of the Hegira, 628, Mohammed was able to

resolve, at the head of his friends, as well believers as heathen Arabs in

alliance with him, on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He issued a solemn invitation

to join this pilgrimage. It met with small acceptance. He had issued it in

the name of God, and so was obliged to carry it out, though it was

attended by an inconsiderable number, as to which the accounts vary

between 700 and 1400 men. He had to trust to the Arab reluctance to shed

blood in the sacred months, though he had himself violated one sacred

month by murder and robbery. Finding the Meccans resolute to forbid him

entrance into their city, he had to halt on the border of the holy

territory. After long treating, agreement was made that he should retire

for that year, but should be allowed in the following year to pass three

days in Mecca on pilgrimage. The Meccans, for the sake of their commerce,

were as anxious for peace as Mohammed, and so a truce for ten years was

struck, which yet had this favourable condition for them, that, while

their fugitives were to be given up, those of Mohammed might be secure in

Mecca.

This repulse of the prophet and his companions from the holy city and its

temple was deeply felt, yet there were advantages obtained by this

seemingly dishonouring truce. Mohammed appeared at least to be recognised

by the proud city as an equal power. Now he might send out his

missionaries into every part of Arabia, make proselytes and conclude

alliances, and the right to enter Mecca the next year with those who

believed in him was something gained which perceptibly advanced his claim

among the Arabians. To increase his strength, enrich his followers, and so

enlarge their numbers and efface by a new victory the bad impression which

the failure of the pilgrimage had caused, he attacked the Jews of Cheiber,

who had lands and several castles four or five days’ journey north-east of

Medina. These were successively stormed and sacked, and all that the rest

could do was to surrender to the conqueror on condition that they should

serve him for the future as tenants who should give him half the produce

of the land. So by the conquest of other Jews he was able to increase the

number of his troops.

In the year 628-629 which passed between the failure of the pilgrimage to

Mecca, and the subsequent pilgrimage carried out according to the treaty,

several attacks on the Bedouins took place. The number of his believers

and allies increased, and the thought was more and more developed in

Mohammed that Islam must by degrees be accepted as the only true religion

not only by all Arabians but by all the nations of the earth. Even before

he had obtained possession of Mecca he sent messengers to the neighbouring

princes of Persia, Byzantium, and Abyssinia, as well as to the Christian

governor of Egypt, and to several Arabian chiefs subject to Byzantine or

Persian sovereignty, inviting them to be converted to his faith. These

embassies had no result, and were rejected with more or less harshness.

Only the Greek governor of Egypt gave them a friendly reception, and

without being converted to Islam sent the prophet costly presents, among

them two slave women, of whom one, Mariam, so greatly charmed Mohammed

that for her company he neglected his wives.

For the man who had been faithful to his old wife Chadidja until her

death, when he was past fifty years of age, had from the time that he came

forward, not merely as the restorer of a primitive religion which had

suffered corruptions, but as the herald of a new religion, say from the

date of the Hegira itself, espoused about a dozen wives,(89) some for love

and some for policy, to make alliance with families of repute. Among these

was Aischa, daughter of Abu Bekr, whom he took when scarcely out of her

childhood, a daughter of Omar, and a sister of Abd Allah, who had been

disgraced by the violation of a sacred month. The Koran limits the number

of lawful wives to four, but Mohammed himself was to be an exception. At

the time polygamy in Arabia had no restriction, and as public opinion was

not shocked, his wives had to submit. But when Mariam, the Abyssinian

slave, assumed the position of a dangerous rival, they complained to their

families, and showed their contempt to the faithless husband. He promised

to quit the favoured slave, but he dwelt with her for a month apart from

his wives and then produced verses of the Koran, dispensing him from his

promise respecting Mariam, and threatening his wives that if they

continued in their disobedience he would take instead of them more

submissive wives and virgins.

But a more important incident in the domestic life of Mohammed was to

occur, which showed how entirely he was led away by sensual passion.(90)

He had fallen in love with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, formerly his slave,

then his adopted son, and one of the most attached among his followers.

Zeid perceived this and was willing to cede her to the man who was not

only his prophet but his benefactor. The prophet took her, and added her

to the number of his wives. But the Arabians, though they practised

unlimited polygamy, did not allow to marry the wife of an adopted son,

whom they considered in the light of a real son. Mohammed felt the

scandal, and produced a passage from the Koran. In it he declared in the

name of God the custom hitherto entertained of treating adopted children

as really children to be foolish, and for the future even sinful. Then he

spread the belief that Zeid’s divorce from his wife had taken place

against his own advice; he makes God remind him in a following verse how

notwithstanding his own love for her he had counselled Zeid to keep her;

and how even after the divorce, he had shrunk, through fear of men, from

espousing her until God had expressly commanded it,(91) and this for two

reasons, first, to shew that he who acts after the will of God should not

heed the tattle of men; and secondly to give by his own example the more

force to the newly-enacted law in regard of adopted sons; a law, he added,

which earlier prophets, whom he takes care not to name, had promulgated.

But this marriage(92) also led to further revelations in the Koran, which

entirely severed the wives of Mohammed from the male world: and also

separated the other believing women by a thick veil from the eyes of

strangers. Mohammed’s jealousy stretched even beyond the grave, and he

forbade second marriage to his wives even after his death. The object was

to restrict them from all life in public to their own homes, and even

there, to intercourse with their own sex, or only their nearest male

relations. In spite of their polygamy, the wife had hitherto among the

Arabians been the companion of their life: Mohammed reduced her to be a

house-slave. She became in Islam a holy thing, indeed: but a holy thing

kept under veil and bolt, and guarded not by her own virtue, but by

eunuchs, from desecration.(93)

Mohammed’s invitation to the governor of Egypt, followed by the gift of

the slave woman to Mohammed, led to disastrous consequences in Islam to

woman’s position. The prophet called in God to sanction man’s lordship

over woman: the first time in history that such a corruption claimed a

divine sanction.

In the eighth year of the Hegira, January, 630, Mohammed obtained

possession of Mecca. To avenge a rupture of the existing truce, he broke

with 10,000 men into the neighbourhood of the city, which admitted him

both as its temporal lord and as the prophet of God, without a fight. He

received the homage of its inhabitants on one of the city’s hills, and

their oath to follow him in all wars against unbelievers. At the same

time, he declared Mecca to be again a holy city, in which God had allowed

him alone to shed blood, which, for the future, was never to be.(94)

After gaining this possession of Mecca, Mohammed issued in the ninth Sura

of the Koran what amounted to a new law of nations, and a new practice of

war. From that time forward none but Mohammedans were to enter the holy

city of Mecca and its circle: but likewise, outside of this, idolaters

were to be exterminated, Jews and Christians were only to be suffered,

when they paid tribute, and humbled themselves.(95) “O true believers,

verily the idolaters are unclean: let them not therefore, come near unto

the holy temple after this year. And if ye fear want by the cutting off

trade and communication with them, God will enrich you with His abundance,

if He pleaseth, for God is knowing and wise. Fight against them who

believe not in God, nor in the Last Day, and who forbid not that which God

and His Apostle have forbidden, and profess not the true religion of those

to whom the Scriptures have been delivered, until they pay tribute by

right of subjection, and they be reduced low. The Jews say Ezra is the son

of God, and the Christians say Christ is the Son of God. This is their

saying in their mouths: they imitate the saying of those who were

unbelievers in former times. May God resist them. How are they infatuated!

Besides God, they take their priests and their monks for their lords, and

Christ, the Son of Mary; only they are commanded to worship one God only.

There is no God but He. Far be that from Him which they associate with

Him. They seek to extinguish the light of God with their mouths: but God

willeth no other than to perfect His light, although the infidels be

averse thereto. It is He who hath sent His Apostle with the direction and

true religion, that He may cause it to appear superior to every other

religion, although the idolaters be averse thereto.”

This Sura was the last in time of those issued. “It(96) bears the stamp of

much reflection and careful execution.” In March, 631, Mohammed had sent

the greater pilgrimage to Mecca, under guidance of Abu Bekr. This Sura was

published on the chief day of the pilgrimage, and “its promulgation

committed to Ali,(97) who rode for that purpose on the prophet’s

slit-eared camel from Medina to Mecca, and, standing up before the whole

assembly at Al Akaba, told them that he was the messenger of the Apostle

of God unto them”. Thus it establishes the definitive position of Mohammed

in regard to all other religions, and the exclusiveness of his own claim.

In the last days of Mohammed, when the religious capital of Arabia had

been taken by him, and this new law of war had been published, embassies

from all parts of Arabia streamed to him, for to the Arabians there

remained no choice between the Koran and the sword. He may be considered

as the lord by conquest of Arabia, and moreover as one who pretended to

issue in the name of God and as His sole apostle a new world-religion.

Scarcely more than a year after this proclamation of war against what he

chose to consider idolatry he died on the 8th June 632, at the age of 63

lunar or 61 solar years.

When we review the ten years which elapsed from the Hegira to the death of

Mohammed, the following points are salient.

The imposition of religious belief by force becomes more and more the main

principle of Mohammed. As he increases in power the principle is set forth

with greater distinctness. He began as a citizen of Mecca by trying to

persuade his relations and friends. With some he succeeded. His kinsmen

gave him a partial support rather of clanship than of faith. But he found

it expedient to fly from his native city, and the flight marks to all

future time the beginning of his assumption not only to be a prophet, but

in that character to publish a new religion. The Flight is the Mohammedan

era as the birth of Christ is the Christian. At the end of the ninth year

the proclamation against idolatry in the ninth Sura, the last in time of

the whole series, marks the completion of the parent idea. Mohammed

declares himself the apostle of God, as such alone charged “with the

direction and true religion,” while Christians, though they are commanded

“to worship one God only, associate Christ the Son of Mary with Him”.

Whereas Mohammed declares Christ to be indeed one in the series of

prophets, the last before himself; but himself to be the prophet who

completes the chain. Thus he enacts that Christians can be safe before his

people only in one of two ways, either by forming part of them, that is,

by taking Mohammed instead of Christ, or by submitting to pay tribute, and

to the humiliations which accompany tribute. Thus the parent idea is the

messiahship of force.

It may be noted that it comes out in a profession of faith drawn

especially to exclude the association of the Son of Mary with God. Thus

Mohammed crowns the work which Arius attempted three hundred years before.

After the restless heresies in which the Greek mind had fluctuated during

these three centuries, the greatest enemy to the Greek empire and faith

was set up on that very negation of the godhead of Christ with which those

heresies had begun. Fifty years of Arian success, in which the emperors,

Constantius and Valens, take a large part, inspired and supported by

Eusebius, Macedonius, Eudoxius, and Demophilus, four successive bishops of

Byzantium, cause that disorganisation of the eastern Church which St.

Basil described as its ruin. Fifty years of patronising the Monothelite

heresy, in which the emperors Heraclius and Constans II. bear the largest

part, supported by four Byzantine patriarchs, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paulus,

and Peter, beginning in 628, mark the rise and accompany the establishment

of the Mohammedan empire and creed. Honorius dies before the heresy is

presented for acceptance in Rome in the imperial Ecthesis. Ten Popes

succeeding Honorius, in spite of the temporal distress which surrounds

them, oppose to the utmost the Byzantine heresy and despotism in the midst

of whom one gloriously lays down his life and is martyred by the eastern

emperor as guilty of high treason. This is the connection between Arius

and Mohammed, who appears as the divine punishment and remedy for

Byzantine successors of Constantine who would confiscate the liberty of

the church, and for state-made patriarchs who foster and formulate heresy.

Secondly, the revelations which Mohammed professes to receive from God he

professes also to be brought to him by the Angel Gabriel. Nor is he

ashamed to make this angel serve him in actions of the utmost turpitude.

Thus when the governor of Egypt bestows on him the slave-girl Mariam, he

falls so desperately in love with her that his proper wives, including his

favourite, the girl-wife Aischa, the daughter of his chief adherent, Abu

Bekr, revolt. The prophet is embarrassed and summons the Angel Gabriel to

his aid. Forthwith a passage of the Koran preaches to the discontented

wives obedience in the name of God, and the prophet threatens that if they

continue to be insubordinate he will dismiss them and find others more

obedient and submissive. Nor is even this the lowest depth of infamy. For

when he violates even the customs of the Arabs around him, loose as they

were, and favourable to the selfishness of the stronger sex, and takes the

wife of his most faithful follower and adopted son, he calls in Gabriel to

justify the adultery in the name of God, and to enlarge to any extent

which the prophet may choose his exclusive privilege of taking wives. It

would be difficult to say how the stamp of imposture could be fixed on the

Koran with more convincing force than by this association of an angel and

of God himself with acts which are contrary to the universal natural law.

Thirdly, it may be remarked that as to polygamy, since it was the custom

of the Arabians in his time to practise it without restraint, Mohammed

might be considered as neither better nor worse than his countrymen, who

had so corrupted the purity of the original law of marriage. This might be

allowed if we were considering Mohammed simply as a Saracen of that time.

But we are considering him in the light in which he put himself forward as

the apostle of God, the one apostle who was to set forth the one God:

“there is but one God and Mohammed is his prophet”. It is in this

character that he did what no one had ever done before. Polygamy had crept

in, “through the hardness of men’s hearts,” but Mohammed attempted to set

by his appeal to God and his use of the Angel Gabriel a divine sanction

upon this great corruption, and upon the unlimited concubinage which he

practised himself, and authorised in others. Thus St. John Damascene a

hundred years after his time used of him these indignant words: “This

Mamed put together many foolish things. Thus in the writing entitled

‘Woman’ he lays down the law that a man may openly take four wives, and a

thousand concubines if he can, as many as he can subject to himself(98)

besides the four; and he may divorce when he pleases and take another. And

he made this law for the following reason.” Then St. John narrates the

case of Zeid and his wife in these words: “Zeid had a handsome wife; Mamed

fell in love with her. As they sat together Mamed said, God has charged me

to take thy wife. Zeid answered: Thou art the apostle, do as God told

thee. Or to go further back, he said: God charged me that thou divorce thy

wife. Zeid divorced her. After some days Mamed said: God also charged me

to take her. So he took her and made her an adulteress, and then he

enacted that every one who will may divorce his wife, and after the

divorce, if she return to him, another must marry her first.”(99)

Patriarchs and prophets have sinned, as well as common men; but Mohammed

is the only legislator who has called in God to sanction his sin, and

propagate it among others in the name of God: and he did this under the

title that he was the special apostle of God, sent to propagate the only

true religion. The terrible sin of David stands out as contrary to all his

previous life. He sought pardon for it, and after it became the great

penitent, and humbly bowed his head beneath chastisements as awful as his

own sin. Mohammed exulted in his sin, as deserving of praise and

exceptional privilege.

Fourthly, throughout the ten years, from the Hegira to his death, Mohammed

carried out his own principle of propagating religion by force in his

utter disregard of human life. As soon as he had left Mecca he practised

robbery upon its caravans and killed without scruple those who resisted

the robbery. He tried to make friends with Jewish clans around him, and

when they rejected him for their Messias, slew them by hundreds. He slew

even for private revenge those who stood in his way: and women as well as

men.

These alleged revelations become in Mohammed’s hands the enactments of a

sovereign legislator. He claims them to be words of God delivered to him

by the angel Gabriel. The personal character of Mohammed as developed in

them is, therefore, of the greatest importance. He speaks not only of his

“brother Moses” in the Jewish legislation which he closes, but of the Son

of Mary as the Word and Spirit of God, on whose work he sets the superior

seal of his own mission; and as a matter of fact, those who took his name

had his personal character and actions before them for a standard, as the

Christians had the Son of God. From the moment of his death this fact is

brought out by the conduct of his followers. His chief companions meet and

elect a head whom they call the chalif or successor of the prophet. That

title is the sole source of his authority, which is both religious and

civil, supreme in each, but supreme because it is the transmitted

authority of the Prophet who is not a prophet only, but the “Apostle of

God”. The four points above noted, the propagation of religion by force,

the imposture in the use of the name of Gabriel, the enacting of polygamy

with the superadded license of unbounded concubinage, and the employment

of murder as means of success, mark the intense antagonism between the

character of Mohammed and the character of Him whom he charged the

Christians with associating to God. Instead of the Man, meek and humble of

heart, who said to His disciples that in following His meekness and

humility they should find rest for their souls, we have the man who

ordered the believers in him to beat down all idolaters that did not

profess, “There is one God, and Mohammed is His prophet,” and made death

in battle against them to be the martyrdom which he chose for his people.

Instead of the Man who said, “If I had not done among them the works which

no other man hath done, they would not have sin,” we have the man who

answered the appeal made to him for miraculous works in testimony of his

mission, by disclaiming the power to do them. Instead of the Virgin’s Son

who set up the virginal life, and propagated His faith by the teaching and

example of those who followed it, we have the man who forged a divine

permission for the grossest polygamy and an unlimited concubinage obtained

by successful war. Instead of the Man who reverenced above all men the

sanctuary of human life, we have the man who murdered without scruple

those who did not accept his mission.

As to the nature of the kingdom which each of these two set up, the One in

His last words to His disciples on the night of His sacrifice said, “The

kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and they that have power over

them are called beneficent, but you not so: but he that is the greatest

among you let him become as the younger, and he that is the leader as he

that serveth”. In accordance with this precept, just as Mohammed was

preparing to appear as the prophet, the greatest among Christians took as

the symbol of his spiritual rule for his title, Servant of the servants of

God: and so Chalid, the chief fighter, under Mohammed, Abu Bekr, and Omar,

was termed “the sword of the swords of God”. The prophet in the Sura

proclaiming his religion pronounced force to be the instrument of

spreading it, and in doing this blood was to be shed like water: and from

his time his chalifs have practised the slaughter of as many as they

chose. Nor is this confined to enemies, but his religion has considered

his own subjects thus slaughtered as witnesses of the prophet’s claim. To

be killed by order of the chalif is to the believer a title of honour, and

the sacrifice of so many a day to his order a sacrifice to his religion.

The pretension put forward by Mohammed in the ninth Sura has been fully

accepted by his people from the beginning. He is their apostle, and

accordingly from his life they have taken and woven into their own in

every age the employment of force, the imposture of a man’s invention put

in an angel’s name, the right to take away life at the pleasure of the

ruler, but above all, polygamy and concubinage. The sensual life of

Mohammed began exactly at the time when, discarding persuasion as the

instrument of converting unbelievers, he began to propagate by force his

pretended mission as a prophet. The deterioration in the moral life

coincides with the time when he passed from the character of one who

sought to restore the religion of Abraham to the very different character

of one who sought to introduce a new and universal religion. Moreover,

this sensual life of the founder has likewise infected with a moral

pestilence all those parts of Asia, Africa and Europe, wherein his

followers have prevailed. The man who from fifty to sixty years of age was

multiplying young wives, moving them to jealousy with a slave concubine,

seizing the wife of an adopted son, in virtue of a feigned divine decree,

and making a special license to himself as the prophet of God to marry as

many wives as he pleased, and whose wives he pleased, has corrupted all

the generations of those who profess his religion. But more than in any

others this corruption is apparent in those who rule in the prophet’s

name. Omar, Osman, and Ali, the second, third, and fourth chalifs,

followed Mohammed closely in this corruption of domestic life. Ali, the

husband of his favourite daughter, equalled her father in his wives, as

likewise Osman, the husband of another daughter. Every Mohammedan prince,

as a rule, follows the founder of his dynasty and creed, and thus, as the

race of the Virgin Mother reproduces in every age the example of her whom

all generations call blessed, and her Divine Son has planted in her the

tree of chastity, of which He is Himself the first fruit, and which takes

root in an honourable people, and as every work of superhuman charity

grows upon that tree, and the sex lost in Eve is glorified by Mary, so the

Mohammedan line is equally true to its origin. To the very end of the long

night of heathenism, on which the coming of our Lord dawned, monogamy

still survived in the noblest descendants of Eve. The German had it and

the Roman, and there were ages in which those races, heathen though they

were, honoured woman, and maintained the sanctity of marriage, before it

was exalted into a sacrament, and before the foundation of human society

was consecrated by the blessing of the Redeemer, given in the touch of His

Blood. The degradation of woman in every age and every people during the

1250 years of Mohammedan domination, is the special stamp of the various

peoples who have borne his name. I take the example highest in position

and worst in character. To the precept of Mohammed, enforced by his own

conduct, we owe it that in Constantine’s own city the very chalif who

represents him continues without marriage to practise an unbounded

concubinage. Thus from generation to generation the race of Othman—which

can scarcely be called a family—has been continued, and enabled to reign

over the fairest countries of the globe, Christian during many hundred

years, for a period almost as long as the long descended lines of Capet

and Hapsburg have subsisted in honourable marriage. Concubinage has

provided it with children, and fratricide has prevented rivals down to the

time of Sultan Mahmoud. When he succeeded to the throne, stained in every

generation with such crimes, he was the only survivor of his race. Out of

the previous history a Turkish annalist(100) records without astonishment,

for it was an ordinary incident, that in a tumult which had taken place at

the funeral of Sultan Murad III., nineteen brothers of the Sultan Mohammed

III., all innocent and guiltless, were strangled and added to the company

of martyrs. From the life of Mohammed himself has sprung a despotism

without limit, a cruelty which scorns natural affection, and a sensuality

without example.

As the personal life on earth of the Son of God is seen in the religion

which He planted, and in the history of the people which He formed and

maintains, so the personal life of the man Mohammed is seen in the

religion which bears his name, and in the people which have carried it on.

It is only to elucidate this thought that I have selected these

particulars of the Arabian’s life, and as a prelude to the contrast which

the religions themselves present.

A few months after his return from the great pilgrimage to Mecca in 632,

Mohammed was preparing a third campaign against the Byzantines, which

however could only be executed after his death. A word must be said as to

his exact position at the moment of his death. In the ten years which

follow immediately the Hegira, the original camel driver, who became

husband of Chadidja, and lived with her virtuously to her death, pursued

the life of a freebooter, which had many alternations of failure and

success. In his character of prophet, “the apostle of God,” he aimed at

material power, and scrupled not to pursue it by deceit, robbery, and

murder, all exercised as means of converting men to the worship of one

God, the almighty and “most merciful”. He had fifteen months before his

death so far prevailed as to obtain mastery over the city which he had

left as a fugitive. It was in a certain sense the capital of Arabia, and

he was claiming and in a great degree receiving the homage of all

Arabians. But other men who also called themselves prophets, such as

Moseilama, were his rivals. The subjection of Arabia was by no means

complete at the time of his death. The German historian—himself of the

Jewish race and religion—from whose careful study of Mohammedan writers I

have taken many of the incidents above recorded, says that with the

exception of his weakness in his relations to the female sex, in regard to

which he claimed the privileges allowed to him as a special favour from

God, he gave a fair example to his people. There was the greatest

simplicity as to his dwelling, his clothing, and his food. He was so

unassuming that he not only refused every external mark of honour from his

companions, but declined every service even from his slaves which he could

perform himself. He was often seen in the market place buying food,

mending his clothes in a miserable little room, or milking a goat in his

court. Every one could approach him at all hours, whether in the street or

in his dwelling. He visited all the sick, and showed sympathy to every

sufferer, and was also magnanimous and indulgent where policy did not

otherwise require. His generosity and benevolence, and also his care for

the common good were boundless, so that in spite of the many presents

which he received from all sides, and the rich plunder which came to him

from his wars, he left little property behind him, and treated even this

as belonging to the State. After his death it was not given to his

daughter Fatima, his only heiress, the wife of Ali. He had other sons and

daughters besides Fatima, on the number of whom tradition varies. They all

died before him. We may name only Rukejja and Umm Kolthum, whom the future

Chalif Osman successively espoused, both by his first wife Chadidja; and

also Ibrahim son of the Coptic slave Mariam, whose early death the prophet

sorely lamented. But this historian treats the bringing in the Angel

Gabriel as the bearer of his revelations to have been a deceit throughout.

The power which Mohammed claimed rested entirely on the truth of his

assertion that God had committed to him a prophetical office, carrying

with it the promulgation of a new and universal religion. The absolute

falsehood of this assertion is contained in the invention of the Angel

Gabriel. The Jewish historian whom I have quoted fully admits this

imposture, just as St. John Damascene made it a reproach a hundred years

after Mohammed’s time. The virtues above mentioned, what are they but the

beautiful spots of the tiger’s skin veiling the ferocity of the beast?

Mohammed by the confession of his friends would appear to have had two

intense passions, one for sweet odours, the other for women. Thalebi

commenting on the 5th Sura records how ten zealous disciples used often to

meet and pray in the house of Osman.(101) They watched through the night

and had resolved to prepare themselves for paradise by chastity and

mortification. Mohammed did not approve of it, and preached to the people

that it was no way his mind that those who professed Islam should abstain,

like Christian priests and religious, from women and from eating flesh,

and from sweet odours; should debar themselves from sleep, and practice

hardships. Fighting was his monkhood. Abulfeda says he openly confessed as

to himself, “Two things attract me and carry me away: women and sweet

odours. My joy is in these two pleasures, and they make me more

prayerful.” In fact Mohammed was never so pious as when he took a new

wife; while he deserted them all for the Coptic slave-girl Mariam. And the

Koran told him that he was right.

What were pharisaic prayings in the market place to the devotions of

Mohammed? He called upon all with whom he came in contact to accept the

one God, and Mohammed as his prophet, on pain of being exterminated, and

he delivered up to the pleasure of the Mohammedan fighter as many female

captives as any one could take, over and above the four wives whom he

allowed to all. These captives were not the victims of angry passions in

men maddened by a furious conflict, but the avowed and justified reward of

those who might, if slain in battle, have been martyrs, but instead were

victorious. The very worst corruption(102) which we meet with in the idol

worship and demon worship of Greeks and Romans was the shamelessness which

pandered to all lusts of the flesh under cover of religion. But Mohammed

added to this corruption. In virtue of his Koran the most infamous

passions were allowed not in belief of false gods, themselves models of

impurity, but in worshipping the one holy God. In all this the example as

well as the word of the religious founder had gone before, and his people

followed it from age to age.

Mohammed then at the time of his death was a successful robber in a

country wherein the tribal life was in a state of great confusion and

incessant changes, and the ancestral religion had degenerated into a rude

and senseless idolatry. The race which occupied Arabia—the whole people

which claimed Ishmael the son of Abraham for their ancestor—was devoid of

order and of culture, of art or science, and had not affected the history

of the world beyond its own boundaries. That the lord of Byzantium on the

one hand or the lord of Ctesiphon on the other contemplated permanent

danger to their realms from the incursions of such a race can as little be

supposed as that Europe now is in fear of subjugation from a host of

Caffres or Zulus, people, in personal bravery, resolution and bodily

strength, equal probably to what the Saracens then were.

In Omar’s chalifate(103) he had sent an army of 30,000 men, under one of

Mohammed’s eldest companions, to compel the Persians on the Euphrates to

become Mohammedans. They had placed themselves under the last heir of the

royal race, the young and valiant Jezdejerd. When the embassy requiring

them to accept Islam or tribute came, the heir of the great king said to

them mockingly: “You came hither as traffickers and beggars. Your food was

green lizards; your drink salt water; your dress rough camel’s hair. Now

you would force upon us a hateful religion. Hunger pushes you on; so I

forgive you. Go back and I will load your camels with corn and dates. If

you disdain a generous offer, punishment shall find you in Persia.” Then

the old sheick Mughira answered undismayed: “What thou sayest of our

misery is true. So great was our poverty that we fed on worms, snakes, and

scorpions. The hair of our camels and our goats we worked into a covering

for our nakedness. Our faith consisted in perpetual war and robbery. We

put even our daughters to death to escape supporting them. Then God took

pity on our miserable state, and sent us through His holy prophet the book

of the true faith. It commands us to make war against the heathen, to

change our poverty and our misery for riches and power. Take then our

religion which binds you to no other burdens than all the faithful bear.

Or pay the tribute of the heathen. Will you do neither, arm yourselves to

fight.”

Such was the people among whom Mohammed arose. The spirit which he wakened

speaks in the words of the poetess Chansa, with which she sent her four

sons to battle. “By God, the only one, ye are the sons of a man as ye are

the sons of a woman. I have not deceived your father; I have not brought

your uncle to shame, nor stained your race. Ye know what rich reward God

has promised to Moslim for war against the unbelieving. Bethink you that

the eternal dwelling is better than this place of sojourn.” All her four

sons fell in battle. Chansa cried: “Praise be to the Lord who has made me

a name through the martyr-death of my sons”. The words of this mother

breathe the whole spirit which made Islam a conquering power.

Mohammed had died without leaving any indication as to whom he wished for

his successor. His chief adherents, Abu Bekr, father of his wife Aischa,

in whose residence he had died, his sons-in-law Ali and Omar, with their

several parties, met together. Omar put aside his own claims, and had

influence sufficient to procure the election of Abu Bekr, and to frustrate

that of Ali. Severe as the struggle to obtain the chalifate was, at the

moment it brought with it greater burden than dignity.(104) Mohammed had

spread his belief more by bribery, deceit, and violence than by

conviction. Many provinces of Arabia after his death were shaking it off.

Aischa’s own words were, “when the apostle of God died, the Arabs were

deserting him; the Jews and Christians raised their head; the hypocrites

no longer concealed their hypocrisy, and the Moslim were like an abandoned

flock on a cold winter night”. Abu Bekr’s prudence and Omar’s energy put

an end to the rivalry of pretending prophets and Bedouin reluctance of

taxation. In March, 633, revolt in Arabia was overthrown, and the first

chalif could execute the injunction of Mohammed to spread Islam beyond the

Arabian peninsula.

The choice of a chalif not in the family of Mohammed to carry on his newly

made realm and religion with armed hand was of the utmost moment to both.

In idea realm and religion were one and the same thing. And the choice

indicated that force was the power which ruled both. Abu Bekr had not only

been chosen by the influence of Omar, but during his short chalifate of

two years had that most resolute of all Mohammed’s companions behind him

to support, inspire, and perhaps control him. When the companions met upon

his death in 634 Omar’s star was in the ascendant; and in the ten years of

his chalifate he won in the opinion of his people the highest name which

any Mohammedan ruler has attained. In truth, he made the empire. At the

first choice of Abu Bekr for chalif it was but a horde of robbers in a

province hitherto without name in history; when twelve years later Omar

died by the hand of an assassin, it already rivalled the greatest empires

of the world. To feel the profound contrast between the kingdom of Christ

and the kingdom of Mohammed, we need but to consider the course of the

first twelve years from the death of each founder. When the sword of Herod

fell upon St. James, the son of thunder, the first of the apostles who was

to seal his faith with his blood, and so fulfil his acceptance of his

Lord’s chalice, the kingdom of Christ had been preached among labours and

trials innumerable. No one had yielded submission to it but in obedience

to the inward dictate of conscience, and every one who so accepted it had

suffered loss so far as this world is concerned. It was from imminent

peril of death that when St. James, probably then the second in rank and

influence of the apostolic band, was put to death, the first of all

escaped from prison under angelic guard and went into another place to

found the Roman Church. A martyrdom undergone by one apostle and a

martyrdom postponed by another marked the setting up of St. Peter’s

pastoral staff in the capital of the Cæsars. The Christian people were

everywhere then a poor, distressed, and praying people; hardly

distinguished by the imperial Roman from the provincials of Judea, whom

among all his subjects he most disliked. When Omar died, Antioch,

Jerusalem, and Alexandria had fallen beneath his arms; the sepulchre of

Christ was in his power; the patriarch of the holy city trembled lest the

chalif of Mohammed should desecrate it to be a mosque by praying in it.

Every Mohammedan convert received honour and wealth; everyone not

converted to Mohammedanism risked honour and life, wife and child. The

Christian martyr shed his blood on the scaffold; the Mohammedan martyr

died in the heat of battle, and his companions received for the danger

which they had risked and overcome the persons and goods of the conquered.

Omar’s empire stretched for thousands of miles over Africa and Asia; his

authority was that of the prophet, who wielded civil power as an appendage

of the spiritual, because, as he held, there could not be two swords in

one sheath. The chief apostle exercised one of the greatest of his

acts—that of choosing the capital of the Christian faith—when he was

flying from a tyrant put in Jerusalem by the caprice of a Roman emperor.

The arms were spiritual in one kingdom and material in the other;

exercised with the long suffering of an apostle in one, with the

unquestioned despotism in the other of a ruler who triumphed over souls by

destroying bodies. The fundamental opposition which marks the two kingdoms

is seen in strongest evidence during the first twelve years in each.

Hitherto, in human history, there is one man and one man only, who has

matched himself with the Son of God: and not only matched himself, but

declared that he was the superior; that the commission given to the Son of

Mary was subordinate to the commission given to the Son of Abd Allah: that

the prophet Jesus led up to the prophet Mohammed. It is certain that in

the Mohammedan religion its prophet occupies the place which in the

Christian religion is occupied by our Lord. But when this is said, it must

be said with the understanding that “Mohammed’s religion is a Judaism

built stiffly on an abstract unity of God, stripped of its Messianic

character, and of all the deeper spiritual elements which belong to that

character”.(105) When it is said that Mohammed has matched himself with

Christ, it must be added that he has first stripped Christ of the divine

Sonship, and placed Him simply as a prophet in a series of prophets, the

last and greatest of whom is Mohammed himself. He has denied the Blessed

Trinity: he has termed the honour paid by Christians to the Son, idolatry;

he ranks Christians as idolaters for offering it, as being incompatible

with the unity of God. He denies the Incarnation on the Arian ground, that

it is impossible for the one only Nature to generate or be generated. He

has denied the fall of man, equally as he denies his restoration. He

denies the passion of Christ, for unfallen man needs no such sacrifice as

that of the Son of God offered upon the Cross. In the system set up by him

there is no sacrifice. In that point of singular meaning it stands alone

among the religions of the earth. Accordingly there is no priesthood.

Mohammed claimed to exercise the prophetical and in it the regal power;

but not the sacerdotal. There is none such in his religion. Such as it is,

on an infinitely lower level than the Christian, Mohammed is the centre of

it. From the Jewish and the Christian religions he took prayer, fasting,

and almsgiving, likewise the doctrines of primary import, the unity of the

godhead, the resurrection of man in body as well as spirit, to a final and

eternal judgment of reward or punishment. That which came from himself is

purely bad; a corruption affecting all the relations between the sexes,

and reducing all those who live in his religion to a far worse condition,

as respects those relations, than experienced by those who lived in Greek,

or Roman, or German heathenism, at their worst. As the personal life of

Mohammed, from the time of his claim to be the prophet of a new religion,

was in this respect infamous, so is his religion. All that the Christian

faith and Church, by the sufferings of unnumbered martyrs, and the wisdom

of great pastors, who are the honour of human nature, had done in 600

years for the restoration of marriage, the creation of woman’s worth and

dignity, the whole fabric of the Christian home, the whole offspring of

Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Calvary, Mohammed, by word and example, strove to

overthrow. He embodied in his religion the revenge of Asia and Africa upon

Christian purity: and the hand which established a pure Arian doctrine, as

to the Godhead, destroyed the Christian wife and child, husband and

father, so far as its malignant influence extended. So it was at the

beginning: so it has been through the 1260 years: so it is now.

The whole movement of Mohammed was to establish a counter kingdom to that

of Christ, of which he who lived as a sensualist from fifty to sixty years

of age is the standard. His chalifs were its continuators. And while his

instrument was conquest, the bait which keeps each successive generation,

and defies the approach of the Christian faith, is the indulgence of those

sensual enjoyments which marked the life of the founder from the time of

the Flight, which has equally marked the conduct of the ruler and the rich

during all the twelve centuries. The Mohammedan peasant may have a

virtuous home, for the harem is beyond his means: he may be sparing,

sober, and honest: but where is the Mohammedan ruler or rich man whose

inner life will bear inspection? As Roman law stopped before entering the

slave apartment, Mohammedan law stops before entering the women’s

apartment: while the mark of the chalifs supreme dignity is to have no

wife, but concubines, in the very words of St. John Damascene, a thousand

if he please. Has any false religion ever shown such a mark of imposture?

or is any opposition to the Son of God so deep as this, so universal in

its effect upon the whole character?

About a hundred years after the time of Mohammed there lived at the court

of the chalif of Damascus the man who ranks as the last great Father of

the eastern Church: who, indeed, anticipated in some degree in that Church

the position afterwards held by St. Thomas Aquinas, in the West.(106) His

father, Sergius, though a fervent Christian, held high office in the

Syrian court. He purchased and set free captive Christians, and among them

was a Thalian monk, named Cosmas, learned in theology and philosophy.

Cosmas became teacher of his benefactor’s son, John: and gave him such an

education, that upon the death of his father the chalif made him one of

the chiefs of his council, while Peter, bishop of Damascus, charged him to

defend by writings the Christian truth against unbelievers.

He must have known well the religion of the chalif, in whose court he was

a high officer. He thus speaks of Mohammed. “Down to the time of Heraclius

the Saracens were avowed idolaters. Afterwards a false prophet arose among

them, named Mamed. He lighted upon the Old and New Testament, and as the

result of confabulations with a certain Arian monk constructed a heresy of

his own. He gained by the appearance of piety influence with his people,

and pretended that a Scripture was brought down to him from heaven. Having

put together in his book certain most absurd statements, he delivered to

them a worship.

“He says there is one God, the Creator of all things, who is neither

begotten nor begetting. He says that Christ is the Word and Spirit of God,

a creature and a servant: and that He was born without a father from Mary,

the sister of Moses and Aaron. For, says he, the Word and Spirit of God

entered Mary, and she bore Jesus a prophet and servant of God. The Jews

wickedly wished to crucify Him: they seized and crucified His shadow. But

Christ Himself, he says, was not crucified, nor did He die. For God took

Him to Himself into Heaven, for He loved Him. And this, he says, that when

Christ ascended into Heaven, God asked Him: ‘Jesus, didst Thou say, I am

the Son of God, and God?’ And he says, Jesus answered, ‘Lord, pardon me.

Thou knowest that I never said it, nor am too proud to be Thy servant. But

men that were transgressors wrote it, that I said this word, and they lied

against Me, and are in error’. And God answered and said to Him: ‘I know

that Thou didst not say this word’. Now he said many other portentous and

ridiculous things in this Scripture of his, which he pretends to have been

sent down to him from God. Now when we allege, who is the witness that God

gave him a Scripture? Which of the prophets foretold that such a prophet

was to arise? Moses received the law from God in the sight of all the

people, when he appeared on Mount Sinai, in cloud, and fire, and darkness,

and storm. And all the prophets from Moses onwards foretold the coming of

Christ, and that Christ is God, and that the Son of God would come in the

flesh, and would be crucified, and die, and rise again, and that He is the

Judge of the living and the dead. And when we ask, why did not your

prophet come so, others bearing witness to him. Why did not God, as He

gave the law to Moses in the sight of the people on the smoking mountain,

give the Scripture which you speak of to him in your presence, that you

also may be assured. They answer, God does what He will. We reply, that we

know well. But we ask how the Scripture came down to your prophet. And

they answer, the Scripture came down upon him when he was sleeping.

“Again we ask, how is it, when in this Scripture of yours he enjoined to

do nothing, and to receive nothing without witnesses, that you did not ask

him, first show by witnesses that you are a prophet, and have come forth

from God, and what Scripture bears witness to you? They are mute through

shame. Since you may not marry without witnesses, nor market, nor possess,

nor take an ass or beast of burden without witness. Wives, indeed, you

have, and possessions, and asses, and all the rest through witnesses.

Faith alone and Scripture you have without a witness. He who gave you this

has no security whatever. No witness preceding him is known: but he

received it asleep. They call us associators, because we bring in an

associate to God, when we say that Christ is the Son of God, and God. We

reply, prophets and Scripture have handed this down to us. You, as you

assert, acknowledge prophets. If we are wrong in saying that Christ is Son

of God, it is they who have taught it and delivered it to us.”

The objection here made in general, that Mohammed had no witness to his

mission, and none to the assertion that his Scripture came from God, has

received no answer. Indeed, not only is there no witness that the Koran

was given by God, or by the agency of the prophet Gabriel, but the

condition in which it was left by Mohammed at his death supplies the

strongest internal evidence that the Scripture was an imposture. This is

the account given by the historian of the present day, who has used thirty

years of his life to study, and compare Mohammedan writers on their

prophet.(107)

“The Koran is the Arabic name for the Mohammedan Bible, or collection of

discourses held by Mohammed in the name of God, in his quality as inspired

prophet, which, as he asserts, were partly communicated through the angel

Gabriel, partly revealed to him immediately by God through dreams or

visions. But the Koran is not, like the Bible, a book drawn up in

chronological order, or according to the variety of its contents, but a

mixing up of hymns, prayers, dogmas, sermons, casual writings, narratives,

legends, laws, and orders of the day, with many repetitions and

contradictions. This comes because Mohammed himself made no collection of

the revelations given singly to him during a course of twenty-three years.

It is probable that it was not even his wish that all of them should be

kept, since a great number of them had only a transitory meaning. Likewise

he had undertaken so many alterations in his doctrines and laws that he

had reason to shrink from handing them all down to posterity. In fine he

certainly wished to retain up to his death free room for modifications and

additions which might be necessary. But after his death all fragments of

the revelation were thrown together, even when they had been repealed by

others, or were already issued in different form. All portions of the

Koran, scattered in different hands, inscribed on parchment, palm-leaves,

bones, stones, or other rough materials for writing, were collected—or

even such as lived only in the remembrance of his companions and

disciples—and were divided, mostly without regard to their contents, or

the time at which they had been revealed, into greater or smaller

chapters, Suras; and thus the actual Koran, with all its defects, was

made. It is only by an accurate knowledge of the circumstances of

Mohammed’s life, and the language of the Koran, in some degree possible to

restore the chronological order of its several parts. By the help of

Mohammed’s Arabian biographers, some of whom go back so far as the second

century of the Mohammedan era, it is possible to determine the date of

such sections as relate to historical events. Where this is not the case,

the character and form of the revelation serve to direct. Mohammed in his

first time appears more as a reformer, later as the founder of a new

religion, at last as prince and legislator. In the first period he was

carried away by inward enthusiasm: his language has a rhythmical movement,

with true poetic colouring. In the second period a calmer consideration

takes the place of excited fancy; he is more rhetorician than poet: his

words spring rather from an understanding wide awake, not sparkling, as

before, with warmth of heart. In the third period the language sinks to

sober prose, not only in ordaining laws, issuing injunctions, or narrating

campaigns, but when he paints, as before, God’s Almightiness, the wonders

of creation, the terrors of the last judgment, or the joys of paradise.

“The Koran was first collected by the chalif Aim Bekr. This collection is

said to have been occasioned by the death of many acquainted with the

Koran in the war against the rival prophet, Moseilama, and the fear that

there would soon no longer be men who had learnt it by heart and

understood it. A certain Zeid who had served the prophet as secretary was

charged to collect the revelations, and when he had completed his work, he

gave it over to the chalif, from whose hand after his death it passed into

that of his successor, Omar. Omar left it to his daughter Hafsah, widow of

Mohammed. Zeid’s work aimed merely at providing a copy of all the

scattered fragments. No thought seems as yet to have been taken to arrange

them in order or to divide them into chapters. This collection had as yet

no public authority, for other fragments were in circulation, which varied

from it more or less, so that there were often disputations about the true

reading of particular passages. To meet this state of things, so dangerous

to the unity of the faith and the law, Chalif Osman caused a new edition

of the Koran to be prepared. The collection made by Abu Bekr formed the

basis of this. Osman sent copies of this edition to the chief cities of

the subject provinces, and caused all versions varying from it to be

destroyed. The division of the Koran into 114 chapters dates from Osman.

In this, however, as above remarked, neither subject nor order of time was

sufficiently considered. The sequence was generally determined by the size

of the chapters, the larger being put at the head, and the smaller at the

close. The Koran of Osman now stood for the ground text of the divine

revelation. If later further copies led to variations of the text, they

spring from the incompleteness of the Kufish writing, which continued in

use for several hundred years. In this not only were the vowel marks

wanting, but the diacritic points which served to distinguish from each

other several similar letters.

“The Koran contains subjects of highly mixed character. It embraces not

only the whole doctrine and legislation of Mohammed, but likewise a

considerable portion of his life, of his mental and material struggles, as

well as the history of prophets preceding him, and the legends concerning

them.”

Thus in the year 632 a robber who was compelling the whole Arabian people

to submit to his authority had somewhat suddenly died. His companions,

robbers like himself, met together after his death. They proclaimed the

dead chieftain “to be supreme teacher of religion, and, in that capacity,

law-giver over the whole extent of the social, civil, and political

domain”.(108) They elected one of themselves to continue this authority by

the name of chalif, or successor. In this act I note four things. The

successor is not taken out of Mohammed’s family, but by free choice of the

faithful. Secondly, he is chosen as a spiritual head: but this headship

carries in itself the whole temporal power. Thirdly, the place of Mohammed

among his own faithful, corresponds to the place of Christ in his Church,

if we bear in mind all the differences which distinguish the two

communities. Fourthly, the chalif in the Mohammedan community corresponds

to the Pope in the Christian. He is the successor of Mohammed, God’s

Apostle, as the Pope is the successor of St. Peter. The chalif is the

bearer of Mohammedanism, as Mohammed’s vicegerent: the Pope is the bearer

of Christendom, as the vicegerent of Christ, and the spiritual Peter. As

Christ and Mohammed answer to each other in religions radically

antagonistic to each other, so Pope answers to chalif, with the same

requisite differences.

It is to be noted that Christendom and Islam coincide as to the time of

their rise. A Catholic Church there had been through all the six preceding

centuries. But the allegiance of different bodies politic to one Christian

faith and legislation was only beginning when Mohammed arose. The various

kingdoms which the Teuton races were forming in all the countries of the

West drew their common spiritual life from the Pope in Rome. The eastern

emperor was becoming one of many sovereigns who acknowledged the authority

of Peter. If Heraclius thought himself to wield the one sovereignty

displayed by Justinian, he was undeceived before his death. If his

grandson kidnapped a Pope out of his Lateran Church and Palace, and then

martyred him as a traitor to his absolute power, the isles of the West

were looking upon him at the same time as the bestower to them of the

Christian faith, and of all the blessings which that faith brought with it

to their civil life. St. Wilfrid spoke to the Northumbrian king concerning

the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven. The king listened and obeyed.

Thus the roots of Christendom were sprouting in France and Spain and

Britain at the moment that Omar guided the suffrages of Mohammed’s

companions to choose the aged Abu Bekr for his successor. From that time

these powers are formed over against each other in perpetual contrast and

antagonism. The union of the two powers in Islam becomes the centre of a

complete despotism. The distinction of the two powers in Christendom—which

Pope Gelasius had marked with so much emphasis to the encroaching emperor

Anastasius a hundred and forty years before—which St. Martin exercised at

the cost of his life in the time of the third chalif—was the pledge and

guarantee to Christendom of authority, supreme but temperate, of spiritual

rule protecting civil liberty. A long succession of Popes—at the mercy of

eastern despots as to civil matters—maintain their spiritual independence

and their guidance of that new assemblage of nations in a common

Christendom through the terrible seventh century. At the same moment

Northern Africa, and Egypt, and Syria fall passively into the hands of the

chalifate, and Byzantium loses the half of its power and trembles for its

own existence.

How vast in its importance for future ages the establishment of the

chalifate upon the death of Mohammed was, may be seen from the following

considerations.(109) It cannot be denied that the absolutely despotic form

of government in lands under the sway of Mohammed has been created by the

influence of the religion. It has indeed often been maintained that the

genius of Asiatic peoples specially produces this form of rule. But states

which are not Mohammedan rest on quite a different basis: and their rulers

are or were subject to great and essential limitations. A Hindu king who

reigned under the laws of Manu could not break through the immunities of

the Brahmins, or the separation of the castes. An emperor of China, though

he be called the son of heaven, and his throne be approached only with

forms of the deepest submission, can name no officer except according to

the list of candidates provided by the learned order. Not so the Princes

of the Faithful. Two elements here concur to produce the most complete

form of despotism: the mixing together or more properly unification of the

spiritual and the temporal power; and the military power resting on

conquest. According as the theocratic or the military principle prevailed,

the sovereignty would take a distinct colouring: the despotism assume a

milder or a sterner aspect. When, as in the case of the Arabian chalifs,

and in a certain degree of the Turkish sultans since Selim, the religious

character prevailed, and the political power, in accordance with the

original spirit of Islam, appeared only as an issue and endowment of the

spiritual, the unconditional submission would take more of a religious and

conscientious devotedness. Then the dynasty, clothed in the divinity which

hedges a king, could enjoy greater stability and security: the ruler

himself, reminded ever of his consecrated character, of the duties and the

higher responsibility which lay upon him, would make through regard for

the prescriptions of religion a more moderate use of an authority in

itself unlimited. Where, on the contrary, the spirit of an arbitrary

military lordship prevailed, as in most of the kingdoms formed after the

overthrow of the chalifate in Central Asia, the blind obedience of the

subject would rather be the result of fear and custom. An attempt to

overthrow the possessor of supreme power, with the self-same violence by

means of which he had raised himself to it, would appear at once as

allowable and attractive. Thence would follow more frequent change of

dynasty, indifference to it on the part of the population, continual

suspicion, and tyrannical exercise of even the bloodiest means to put down

every opposing force.

Thus the government of the Ottoman kingdom did not take that character of

brutal tyranny which marks the history of Persia. The Persian king is so

absolutely lord of the life and property of his subjects, that a sentence

even issued in a drunken revel without the least formality receives

immediate execution. A Persian proverb truly says: To be near the shah is

to be near a burning fire. The general view that a king is naturally

tyrannical and unjust has passed into the very language, so that a

complainant for the strongest expression of the wrong which he has

suffered says: He played the king over me. Thus the learned in the law

maintain that the king’s commands are superior to the right of nature,

they only yield to a positive divine command. The lordship of the Ottoman

sultans, though resting on the same principle of unlimited power, appears

on the whole milder and more moderate. Here too, as the founder of the

line declared, all property belongs to the sultan; here also “the slave’s

neck is thinner than a hair,” and all subjects rank as the sultan’s

slaves, and even call themselves so: here too the sultan’s mother calls

her son “my lion” or “my tiger,” and Moslim name the sultan not only “the

Shadow of God,” or “the Refuge of the World,” but also “the Executioner,

the Slayer,” since he alone possesses the absolute right over the life of

all. Turkish doctors ascribe to him also a holy character not to be

effaced by any immorality. If his actions shew a scorn of all admitted

conceptions of justice or prudence, yet in force of a Mohammedan fiction

it is assumed that he does much or most of this in consequence of a divine

suggestion, and therefore that his motives can neither be discerned nor

judged by men. In the same spirit the learned in the law maintain that the

sultan can put to death every day fourteen persons, without giving reason,

or lying under imputation of tyranny. Whoever receives death without

resistance from his hand or by his order becomes thereby a martyr, and

many of his servants are said to have striven after the honour of such a

death as a secure pledge of eternal happiness. A tyrannical power such as

this as a rule naturally strikes those only who stand near the throne. The

members of his own family, the higher officers of state, fall victims to

it. The mass of the people seldom feels such direct effects of their

despot. Here the principle holds, the higher the dignity, the more perfect

the confidence, the greater the danger. The grand visiers, the other

selves of the sultans in temporal matters have experienced this. A hundred

and eighty statesmen have held this highest office of the kingdom from

1370 to 1789: most of them therefore scarcely more than two years. Many

have been executed after a short time. One of the most esteemed Mohammedan

princes, Soliman the Magnificent, executed during his government, one

after the other, most of the men on whose shoulders he had laid the most

important works and the highest offices of his kingdom. An instinct of

obedience, an inclination to unconditional absolute subjection under

absolute authority prevails among Mohammedans, to which the utmost cruelty

appears endurable, the utmost perversity natural.

It must be added that the Sultan of Morocco unites the spiritual, and the

temporal power, as sheriff, that is descendant of the prophet through

Hosein and Ali. He is a despot as absolute as the king of Persia. All

depends upon his will. He makes, alters, suppresses, and restores laws. He

changes them according to his humour, convenience, or interests. Here

there is no body of Ulema, no Mufti clothed with an authority independent

of the sovereign, no divan, colleges, or ministerial departments. All

follows the single command of the ruler.

The nature of the supreme authority in these three Moslem empires speaks

at the present day of its origin in the person of Mohammed.

What we see is this. The misuse of Cæsarean power in applying to the

Church of God, which from the beginning by divine order was independent, a

supremacy in spiritual things not belonging to the civil ruler, is allowed

by Divine Providence to call forth a far more terrible despotism, in the

guise of a false prophet who invents a religion of which he is to be the

apostle, and then claims all power, spiritual and temporal, as belonging

to him in the character of apostle, and the use of force as the means of

propagation. That despotism is allowed to seize for permanent occupation

the richest provinces of the eastern empire, and to make its capital in

fear of perpetual subjection. But it is also used to check the imperial

usurpation over the Church, and to begin an era, now lasting for twelve

centuries and a half, in which two religions, and two forms of government

springing from these religions, stand over against each other in perpetual

and irreconcilable opposition.

The structure of the Church was vehemently shaken by the earthquake(110)

which attended the pouring out of Islam upon the south-eastern and

southern countries of the former Roman empire. It had to be seen whether

the whole fabric would maintain itself upon its foundation of rock when

such mighty portions of its structure were torn by main force away. Moslem

writers say, when the locust swarm darkened vast countries, they bore on

their wings these Arabic words:—“We are God’s host, each of us has nine

and ninety eggs; and if we had a hundred we should lay waste the world

with all that is in it”.

The hundredth egg has never been granted, but if the assassin’s stroke had

not carried off Chalif Omar in 644, and again Chalif Osman in the year

656, and again Chalif Ali in the year 661, perhaps the desolation might

have been fully accomplished; as also if the chalifate, created by

election in 632, had not become within thirty years a mere hereditary

kingdom, in which rival pretenders and rival families exhausted the

strength of Islam by perpetual conflicts. The empire of the sword has also

illustrated the divine decree: “All that take the sword shall perish with

the sword”.

CHAPTER V. OLD ROME AND NEW ROME.

The seizure of Pope St. Martin in his Lateran Church by the exarch of

Ravenna, Kalliopas, under order from the Emperor Constans II., his secret

deportation to Constantinople, his trial before the Senate as guilty of

high treason, his condemnation to death, and subsequent death in the

Crimea from hardship or starvation, with the election of Pope Eugenius

during his lifetime by the Roman clergy through dread of a Monothelite

being forced upon them by the Byzantine; all this marks probably the

lowest point of civil depression and helplessness to which the Papacy was

ever reduced in those momentous three centuries which run from Genseric to

Aistulf, from 455 to 755. The emperor who committed acts so mean,

perfidious, and cruel was reigning over an empire already cut in two by

the sword of Mohammed’s chalif. How little he had heeded the chastisement

we learn from an incident in the trial of the great eastern confessor, St.

Maximus, which I have already recorded, but to which I recur that I may

exhibit the full insolence of the eastern despot, as well as his

blindness. Theodosius, the consul, coming straight out from the emperor’s

cabinet, with the condemnation of Maximus in his hand, addressed him in

these words:(111) “Learn, Sir Abbot, that when we get a little relief from

this rout of heathens (that is, of the Saracens who had stripped Constans

of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North Africa as far as Kairowan), by the

Holy Trinity we will bring you to terms, and your Pope, who is now lifted

up, and all the talkers there, and the rest of your disciples; and we will

_cook_ you all, each in his own place, as Martin has been cooked”.

These words were spoken on the 14th December, 656.(112) The Pope Eugenius

was the Pope alluded to in them, and it is inferred from them that he

rejected those terms of union which the emperor was seeking to impose and

which the nuntios were willing to accept. The martyrdom of St. Martin had

taken place on the 16th September of the preceding year, 655.

It was the providence of God that the chalif himself never allowed the

sworn protector of the Church who sat on the eastern throne to execute

this threat. Rather he was all through this century in dread lest the

Mohammedan, having fixed his throne at Damascus, should advance it to

Constantinople. It was again the providence of God that Constantinople

itself should not fall during this time of its utmost weakness, and so

open the whole of northern Europe to Mohammedan domination. The city of

Constantine was then the material rampart which stopped the impetuous

current of Saracen invasion to the north. The chalif Muawiah, who reigned

over the immense Saracen empire from 661 to 680, was strong enough

continually to beat the Emperor, to ravage his Asiatic territory, to

advance towards his capital, but he was never able to take it. The advance

of the seat of the Saracenic empire from the remote Medina to the near and

beautiful Damascus, the paradise of eastern cities, dwelling in its

perpetual garden among ever-flowing waters of Abana and Pharpar, was

itself a sign how the empire had fallen. A religion founded on the denial

of the Christian faith, of which it was, moreover, the special rival, had

full possession of the once Roman and Christian East. Muawiah became

chalif on the death of Ali in 661. He had conducted the civil war against

Ali, which distracted for five years the Saracen power, with the forces of

Syria, as its governor; and when he became supreme made it the capital of

his empire.

Constans II., having crowned with martyrdom the greatest confessor of the

West, Pope Martin, and the greatest confessor of the East, St. Maximus,

resolved in the year 662, to visit the West. The tyranny of Constans in

regard to the Pope was not completed even by his treatment of St Martin.

When he had condemned this Pope, but before he had caused his death he is

supposed to have compelled the Roman clergy to elect another Pope. This

was Eugenius, who was recognised in the year 654 for Pope, while St.

Martin was yet alive.(113) Whether the urgency and threats of the imperial

ministers overcame at length the constancy of the clergy, or whether, as

is more probable, they feared to see some heretic sent by the emperor to

occupy the throne of St. Peter, they elected Eugenius, by birth a Roman, a

person of great goodness and holy life, who held the See two years and

eight months. The synodical letter of Peter, the fourth Monothelite

patriarch of Constantinople in succession was sent to him, but being

obscure in its expressions about our Lord, was sent back with

indignity.(114) It would seem that the exceeding danger of the time caused

the election and consecration of Pope Eugenius in the lifetime of St.

Martin, to pass for legitimate. Eugenius died in 657, and was succeeded by

Pope Vitalian, after a vacancy of a month and 29 days.

Pope Eugenius had not acknowledged either of the patriarchs Paulus or

Peter by writing to them, but Vitalian sent his nuntios to Constans to

announce his accession to the papacy by his synodical letter. Constans

received them graciously, acknowledged the privileges of the Roman Church,

and sent by them to St. Peter at Rome a copy of the gospels bound in

golden covers and studded with diamonds. Vitalian, says Anastasius,

preserved in all respects the ecclesiastical rule and vigour.

Constans had a brother named Theodosius, whom he forced to become a

deacon, and he had repeatedly received from his hands the chalice of the

Lord’s Blood. Afterwards he caused him to be murdered. He was said to have

often dreamt of his victim, offering him a chalice full of blood, with the

words: “Brother, drink”. The stings of conscience and the hatred of the

people for his cruelty and his protection of heresy, were supposed to

drive him from his capital.

The book of the Popes under its notice of the life of Vitalian says:(115)

“In his time the emperor came from the royal city by coast to Athens,

thence to Tarentum, Beneventum, and Naples. At Rome he arrived on the 5th

July. The Apostolical went out with his clergy to the sixth milestone from

the city to receive him. The same day the emperor went to pray at St.

Peter’s, and offered his gift. On Saturday he went to St. Mary’s and also

offered his gift. On Sunday he went in procession with his army to St.

Peter’s. All went out with wax candles to meet him, and he offered on the

altar a golden woven pall, and Mass was celebrated. Again on Saturday the

emperor came to the Lateran, took a bath, and dined in the Julian

basilica. On Sunday there was a station at St. Peter’s, and after

celebration of Mass the emperor and the pontiff took leave of each other.

Twelve days he remained in the Roman city. Every bronze statue which

ornamented the city he took down, nay, and he unroofed of its brazen tiles

the Church of Blessed Mary at the Martyrs, and sent all things which he

had taken to the royal city. Then on Monday he left Rome and returned to

Naples. Then he went by land to Rhegium and entered Sicily. He lived in

the city of Syracuse, and caused much affliction to the people, the

inhabitants or proprietors of Calabria, Sicily, Africa, and Sardinia, by

his exactions during many years such as had never been.(116) He separated

even wives from their husbands, and sons from their fathers, and they

suffered many other unheard of things, so that a man had not hope of life.

They took even the sacred vessels and ornaments of God’s holy churches,

and left nothing.”

The visit of Constans to Rome casts a strong light upon the condition of

things in a century concerning which we are singularly destitute of

detailed information.

When Constans landed with a certain force at Tarentum, he found the

Lombards in possession of the duchy of Beneventum. A legend said that

their king Autharis after a bold march through the Peninsula to the

Straits of Messina, had spurred his horse into the sea and exclaimed,

“This shall be the Lombard boundary”. But his successors had never made

good the words of Autharis. Naples and Amalfi, Sorrentum, Gaeta, and

Tarentum had imperial governors. Alboin however made a duchy of Beneventum

which then included the ancient Samnium and Apulia, and portions of

Campania and Lucania. It was a stronghold of Lombard robbers in southern

Italy. Constans tried to expel the young duke Romuald. But he failed, and

hearing that King Grimoald was approaching to aid his son, he went to

Naples, left at Formiæ, the present Mola di Gaeta, 20,000 men, and marched

on Rome by the Appian Way.

Pope Vitalian went out to meet him as legitimate Roman emperor. It was

true that ten years before he had seized Pope St. Martin in his church,

and carried him off by stealth to trial, suffering, and ultimate martyrdom

in the Crimea. It was true likewise that while holding St. Martin in

prison, he had repeated the evil deed committed by Justinian’s empress

Theodora, a hundred and sixteen years before, and compelled the Roman

clergy under threat of worse things to elect a new Pope while the Pope was

living, though in this case the elected was himself blameless and

excellent. It is true, also, that later still he had treated the great

confessor Maximus with equal cruelty. But these crimes did not prevent his

being the actual emperor to whom loyal submission was due from the great

throne of justice in the earth. It would seem also by the mode in which

Constans had received the nuntios who bore Pope Vitalian’s synodical

letter, announcing his accession, and by the superb present which he sent

back in acknowledgement, that somehow a better spirit prevailed at the

moment towards the Pope. We are met indeed by the fact that the

Monothelite patriarch Peter held the see of Constantinople for twelve

years from the death of the re-established Pyrrhus in 654, to his own

death in 666, being the fourth heretic in succession from Sergius in the

see of the royal city. Constans approached Rome at the head of an army. He

made his offerings as emperor to the three great churches of Rome, the

Lateran, St. Peter’s and St. Mary Major. The Pope was completely at his

mercy. He lodged in the imperial palace on the Palatine, which, however

great its desolation, was able at least to receive him. In his twelve days

sojourn he laid his hands upon every bronze statue which he thought worth

plundering: and he stripped of its costly roof the church which his

predecessor sixty years before had given to the Pope, dedicated to the

Mother of God and all Martyrs.