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