The Christians of the East, who had broken for the most part with the orthodox Church, also regarded Islam as a lesser evil than the Byzantine established Church. Moreover Islam, as being both a political and ecclesiastical organisation, regarded the Christian church as a state within a state and permitted it to preserve its own juridical and at first its own governmental rights. Application was made to the bishops when anything was required from the community and the churches were used as taxation offices. This was all in the interests of the clergy who thus found their traditional claims realised. These relations were naturally modified in the course of centuries; the crusades, the Turkish wars and the great expansion of Europe widened the breach between Christianity and Islam, while as the East was gradually brought under ecclesiastical influence, the contrast grew deeper: the theory, however, that the Muhammedan conquerors and their successors were inspired by a fanatical hatred of Christianity is a fiction invented by Christians. We have now to examine this early development of Islam in somewhat greater detail: indeed, to secure a more general appreciation of this point is the object of the present work. The relationship of the Qoran to Christianity has been already noted: it was a book which preached rather than taught and enounced isolated laws but no connected system. Islam was a clear and simple war-cry betokening merely a recognition of Arab supremacy, of the unity of God and of Muhammed's prophetic mission. But in a few centuries Islam became a complex religious structure, a confusion of Greek philosophy and Roman law, accurately regulating every department of human life from the deepest problems of morality to the daily use of the toothpick, and the fashions of dress and hair. This change from the simplicity of the founder's religious teaching to a system of practical morality often wholly divergent from primitive doctrine, is a transformation which all the great religions of the world have undergone. Religious founders have succeeded in rousing the sense of true religion in the human heart. Religious systems result from the interaction of this impulse with pre-existing capacities for civilisation. The highest attainments of human life are dependent upon circumstances of time and place, and environment often exerts a more powerful influence than creative power. The teaching of Jesus was almost overpowered by the Graeco-Oriental culture of later Hellenism. Dissensions persist even now because millions of people are unable to distinguish pure religion from the forms of expression belonging to an extinct civilisation. Islam went through a similar course of development and assumed the spiritual panoply which was ready to hand. Here, as elsewhere, this defence was a necessity during the period of struggle, but became a crushing burden during the peace which followed victory, for the reason that it was regarded as inseparable from the