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.