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.