Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/199

Rh of the Christians of Egypt was not less rigorous.

Whether any Christians were left in the peninsula of Arabia at the death of Muhammed may be reasonably doubted. His dying injunction was that his native country might be inhabited solely by believers; and it was rigorously enforced in the khalifate of Omar, who is said to have banished from Arabia the Jews who were left at Chaibar. Yet we read of a bishop of Yaman and Sanaa in Arabia, who must have flourished during the eighth century, and of a priest of Yaman at the commencement of the tenth.

Empires and kingdoms, like men, have their diseases and failings, their periods of health, of decline, and recovery; and the page of history is intended to expose their vices, and by comparison to shew their remedies. If the fall of empires is