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