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past may reappear even in an awakened Islam. Mohammedan leaders, as a class, are blind to the best in our civilization, although they are working for a union of Mohammedan forces with modern institutions. Moreover they are impatient of all that savours of disloyalty to the sacred convictions of their past. Shall we then be angry with them? Can we even be surprised at their attitude of self-defense? Should we despise what seem to us their misguided efforts? Are they not obeying the law of group consciousness? The development of individual life does not always provide the model for that of group life. Individuals undergoing a conversion of their life-forces may be lifted, at once, onto a wholly new level of experience. Communities and peoples never make such a dramatic break with their past. Individual conversions

are precious reward for our labours, but there is an even larger sphere of missionary endeavour. By the gradual moulding of a higher type of group consciousness, the gospel leaven is brought into vital contact with great social masses, who as individuals might never be touched. A vast Mohammedan community is making the experiment of incorporating into its own social development many features of a Christian civilization. Can we doubt that God is moving in this way to bring His kingdom into closer relations with the Moslem world? No dramatic break with past ambitions, or even past prejudices, has taken place. Nevertheless Islam as a whole is moving into new regions of thought. Can we wait for the laws of character growth to take effect on a national scale Co-workers with God may be known by their infinite capacity for patience. The winning force in the world is the Gospel of Christ. There is a victorious tone that goes with faith in the fact. A great deal of our criticism of the moral crudities that accompany the forward movement in Islam is inconsistent with the patience

of missionary faith. Let us take the tone of victory in every statement we make regarding even what are the disappointing features of Moslem development.

Some writers on Christian ethics have sought to prove that the very truth of Christianity rendered it of necessity the most intolerant of religions. They have pointed out the uncompromising nature of the struggle between Apostolic Christianity and the heathen faiths of the Roman world. For the follower of Christ there could be no question of compromise between the true and the false; there was no middle ground; either a man was a believer or an unbeliever; there was no fellowship between light and darkness. To die was better than to admit the least degree of divine efficacy in heathen deities or ceremonies. This theory of Christian intolerance of the false comes so near to expressing the Christian position that it has partially misled hosts of noble witnesses to gospel truth. As an abstract statement, it is incontestable that truth is intolerant of falsehood. But the spirit of Christianity cannot be set forth in abstract propositions. The Gospel demands first of all that human nature shall be awakened, that it shall enter actively into right relations with all life, from the highest life-the perfect life of the Father -to the poorest life, it may be that of our humblest neighbour. Whole-hearted faith in Jesus Christ places a man in right relation to God, to himself, to his fellow men. Wherever men's nature is stirred to seek better things; to create social or national ideals; to enter upon a new career of moral self-expression-in such an aim, the Christian faith acknowledges a kinship with itself. In degenerate Rome there was but slight basis for any such kinship of spirit. Public life was in the chains of a system which produced moral death. All the spiritual force of primitive Christianity was poured forth in protest against the moral death represented by the corrupt

Far different

social and religious system of Rome. should be our relations with the nations of the East whose social and moral energies have been called into unprecedented activity by their contact with Western achievement; an achievement whose inmost character is being increasingly influenced by the Gospel of Christ. In such a missionary situation, the least suggestion of intolerance would be treachery to the work of the Divine Spirit as He takes the things of Christ, in the form of Christian social ideals, and shows them to the men of the Orient. Let us have faith in the missionary activity of God's Spirit beyond the bounds of Christendom. There is an unconscious preparation of the nations for Christ whenever they accept aims and ideals that have points of contact with His Gospel. From the ideals and principles of Christ, men's eyes will certainly be lifted to the person of Christ, and to know Him in personal relationship is Eternal Life. The changes that are taking place within Islam are bringing men of that faith, in large groups, within the social influence of the kingdom. They may be unconscious of their approach to Christ, but may it not be our privilege, by the right missionary attitude towards these changes within Islam, to awaken in Moslems the consciousness of their newly attained kinship with us and with the Saviour whom we serve ?

VIII

POLITICAL CHANGES IN ARABIA

REV. J. C. YOUNG, M. D., ADEN, ARABIA

N order to fully understand the political changes

I

in Arabia and to fully grasp their significance in the mission fields there, one must be thoroughly acquainted with the state of affairs prior to the year A. D. 1908, when the Turkish revolution took place and a new Constitution was given to the people.

When Selim I, of the Ottoman Empire, conquered Egypt and overthrew the Mamelukes he not only received the keys of Mecca and Medina from the Meccan Sherif, but he also got the then Caliph of Egypt, Mohammed XII, to make over to him the right and the title to the caliphate, and as the large majority of the orthodox believers in Islam at once accepted his lordship he came to be looked upon as the Imam ul Muslimin or earthly head of the Moslem world who had absolute power over all true believers in the Islamic creed.

To his authority, however, the Arabs of the Yemen never gave ready obedience; as they believed that since Mohammed was an Arab and Islam was generated in Arabia therefore the Imam ul Muslimin ought to be an Arab too, and speak the same pure language that Mohammed used in promulgating his message to the world. None other, they hold, than an Arab can be Heaven's vice-gerent to the children of men and that is why Turkish authority has never been able to establish itself in the Yemen in the same strong way and on the same firm basis that it has in Syria and in the Hejaz.

Of course the plundering propensities of the Valis who were sent to govern the Yemen, and the general corruption which was everywhere manifested, did not tend to allay the feeling of opposition or bring rest and peace into a land that was torn with internal strife.

When the late Sultan Abd ul Hamid came to the throne he was altogether unprepared for the duties that lay before him. Up till then his life had, to all intents and purposes, been that of a religious recluse whose thoughts were continually centred on the propagation of his own faith and the furtherance of his own ideas of God. His immediate friends were the Ulema of Stamboul and the learned men of the strict Koran school who hated the vacillating policy that his predecessor pursued, and longed for a strong man to rally the power of the caliphate and defy the European nations. To them "vox Caliphi" should thunder as "vox Dei" and not be heard as the whisper of the surrounding powers.

Of these Ulema the Sultan Abd ul Hamid was an apt pupil and in some ways a devoted slave. No sooner was he raised to sovereign power than he showed the world that it was his intention to be Imam ul Muslimin in the first place and then Sultan of Turkey. Heaven's vicegerent he would be whether his throne as an earthly monarch remained or passed away. In the religious world sovereign power was necessary for the propagation of Islam and this he was determined to have. Consequently from the day that he entered the palace as its ruler he set himself to restore the caliphate to its pristine glory, and determined that both his own will should be obeyed in the land and his faith followed in every part of the Turkish Empire.

Now in behaving as he did I have no doubt that he was actuated by the highest motives that could appeal to a bigoted Moslem's mind trained as his had been to for

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