little danger of being divorced from conduct; because it was in the conduct of men that it looked for the evidences of its truth. But with the lapse of time, a very different theology had obtained possession of the Eastern Churches. In place of a living, loving, and working God being regarded as the central point of the Christian faith, a false centre had been posited-a speculative definition of the idea of God. The essence of Christianity consisted, not in a life of holiness, but in the reception of this speculative definition. Thus the connection between faith and practice had been severed. Christian ecclesiastics could contemplate unmoved the profligacy and cruelty of the Byzantine Court. But those who denied the existence of the two natures in Christ, or went astray in some other incomprehensible subtlety of the same kind-these they were ready and implacable to hunt to death. For such a cause cities were burned, and rich provinces changed into deserts filled with a noise of wailing. Eastern Christianity had thus been parted into three divisions, each existing apart from the others, and all of them wholly lacking in life-giving power. For the many, Christianity was a routine of rites and ceremonies, the efficacy of which depended upon their careful and accurate performance; for the devout, Christianity consisted in a renunciation of the world, and seclusion in some monastic cloister; for the intellectual few, Christianity was an ontological system, to be proved by the logic of Aristotle, and enforced by the secular arm. Similar ideas of religion were, naturally, held by the Free-thinkers of the Muhammadan Church. They were, necessarily, the children of their age, subject to the prevailing intellectual tendencies of the time. They, no more than the Christian ecclesiastics, grasped the idea of establishing a harmony between thought and action. Hence they never raised a protesting voice against the unmeaning ritualism of the popular religion. They acquiesced in the crushing tyranny of the khalifate. When they had the power, they gladly availed themselves of the secular arm to enforce submission to their opinions. They had no thought of regenerating society, no gospel they desired to preach to men; theirs was a controversy fought out in the schools of theology, and which never went beyond them. Consequently, when Orthodoxy resumed possession of the territory from which for a time it had been expelled, it found all things as they had been previous to its expulsion. The popular heart had remained untouched. The Free-thinkers had left no traces of themselves, except in the controversial treatises which they had written. These were destroyed, and with their destruction the last vestiges of the conflict between Free-thought and the spirit of Islam were obliterated. The story of this conflict has now to be told. 151 CHAPTER I. THE PERSIAN AND THE ARAB. A.D. 749-786. THE old Sassanian Empire overthrown by the Arabs was a Persian despotism. But between the Government officials and the body of the people there existed a numerous and powerful landed aristocracy. These landed proprietors were termed "Dihkans." They were the heads of the village communities; and in all matters regarding the internal relations of these communities they had a decisive voice. They were the guardians of their interests; they were responsible for the proper distribution and collection of the land revenue; they could protest against tyranny or undue exactions on the part of the provincial or even the central government; and necessarily possessed an enormous influence over the cultivating classes. On the overthrow of the Sassanian dynasty, this influential class succeeded in preserving both their wealth and their local influence by a timely conversion to the new creed. Their conversion saved their estates from confiscation; and the Arabs had no other alternative but to employ them in the assessment and collection of the |