ample, recently held in Beirut, passed the following resolution :

"(1) That direct evangelistic work among Moslems, which has been going on quietly for several decades in Syria and Palestine, is more than ever possible to-day, whether by means of visiting, conversation, the production and careful distribution of Christian literature, Bible circulation, medical missions, and boys' and girls' schools.

"(2) That the promulgation of the Constitution has already, in the more enlightened centres, made this direct evangelistic work easier, and will, we trust, as the constitutional principle of religious equality becomes better understood by the people, make it increasingly so. And, on the other hand, we are face to face with a Mohammedan educational and religious revival which makes necessary this missionary advance if the prestige gained in the past is to be preserved and increased.

"(3) For which reasons it is certain that the time has come for a wisely planned and carefully conducted and intensely earnest forward move in work among Moslems in Syria and Palestine, and the attention of all the societies already working in the field is to be directed towards immediately making that forward move."

In a similar way the missionary societies in Egypt are coöperating to stir the Protestant and Coptic Churches to love their Moslem brethren and labour for their evangelization, and two successive conferences of converts from Islam have been successfully held at Zeitoun.

The changed attitude of the Church at home is evident, moreover, in the large number of student volunteers who are offering themselves for service in Moslem lands; they have been specially attracted by the difficulties of the problem, the new opportunities in the lands so recently awakened, and the vast populations and untouched areas of the unoccupied Moslem world.

Finally we rejoice to note the changed attitude towards

the Moslem problem in increased prayer. There have always been those who prayed for the Moslem world, hoping against hope, dauntless in faith, and believing the impossible, but, especially since the Cairo Conference, lonely workers in distant outposts have, by their lives and their lips, or by words in print (for example, the apostolic messages of Miss Trotter from Algiers, Miss Holliday from Tabriz, or Högberg from Kashgar), awakened a great volume of intelligent prayer whose potency only God can measure. Prayer circles and prayer cycles for the Moslem world will do for it what prayer has done in the opening of all the Chinese Provinces or the penetration of Africa.

The Church is awakening at last to its duty towards Islam. "Who will keep the Church awake," in the words of Mr. Speer, "unless it be those who have heard the challenge of Islam, who are going out against her, and have found her armour decayed, her weapons antiquated, and her children, though proud and reticent, still unhappy, stationary and retrogressive in a day of progress and life."

CONCLUSION

We conclude our survey by emphasizing once more, on the evidence of all these facts, the unity, the opportunity and the importunity of the Moslem world problem to-day, as well as the willingness of the Church, when aroused by its missionaries, to respond to its appeal. No other work on the mission field can be presented from so many divergent angles of interest as the great, dark, despairing, defiant, desperate Moslem world. Lucknow is a moun. tain top of vision second not even to Cairo. As our eyes sweep the horizon of all these lands dominated or imperilled by this great rival faith, each seems to stand out as typical of one of the factors in the great problem.

Morocco (one of the dark places in the world to-day) is typical of the degradation of Islam; Persia of its disintegration; Arabia of its stagnation; Egypt of its attempted reformation; China shows the neglect of Islam; Java, the conversion of Islam; India, the opportunity to reach Islam ; Equatorial Africa, its peril. Each of these typical conditions is in itself an appeal. The supreme need of the Moslem world is Jesus Christ. He alone can give light

to Morocco, unity to Persia, life to Arabia, rebirth to Egypt, reach the neglected in China, win Malaysia, meet the opportunity in India, and stop the aggressive peril in Africa.

With all there is of encouragement to our faith, the problem remains big and baffling. We can do nothing of ourselves our sufficiency is only of God. "Oh, our God, wilt Thou not judge them, for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us, neither know we what to do, but our eyes are upon Thee." Amen.

F

II

PAN-ISLAMISM IN TURKEY

REV. W. S. NELSON, D. D., SYRIA

ROM the beginning of its history in Arabia Islam has been an imitative religion. The best that

Mohammed found, in fact everything that was good in his teachings, was borrowed from Christianity, and the rest was appropriated with little or no change from other religious cults, or from the heathenism he was supposed to displace.

After a long period of success and wide advance in every direction from Mecca: after the sword of Islam had subdued nation after nation in Asia and Africa and had gained a foothold in Europe, there arose the first united resistance of Christianity that Islam had encountered. Heretofore the legions of Islam had attacked and conquered nations as such. It had made no difference whether the national faith had been heathen or Christian, the resistance offered had been a national resistance and the submission had been that of a ruling sovereign. The submission always involved the surrender of the old faith, and a formal acceptance of Islam with the avowal of the unity of God and the validity of the mission of Mohammed.

This success of Islam and its capture of the sacred places of Christianity furnished the motive necessary to unite a divided Christendom and to overcome the conflicts in Europe and to gather the great armies of all nations which followed each other in the wonderful crusades of the Middle Ages. Whatever we may say of the folly and

mismanagement, the petty jealousies and conflict among the leaders, the useless waste of life and treasure involved, we cannot withhold our praise for the loyalty to Christ and sacrifice for Him involved in those unparallelled movements.

It is not our purpose here to discuss the crusades, but merely to call attention to the fact that here was the first instance of a united Christendom attacking Islam. The crusades did not exert any lasting influence on the extent or power of Islam, but they furnished a lesson which was not forgotten, and may not improperly be regarded as the seed from which the idea of pan-Islamism grew. If Christendom united under the banner of the cross and, forgetting their national divisions and rivalries, strove to rescue the tomb of the Crucified from Islam, why should not all Mohammedan nations lay aside doctrinal differences and national distinctions under the banner of the Crescent to carry the faith of Islam to the ends of the earth?

It may well be believed that the present divergences of faith in Islam, the national jealousies among those who accept the teachings of the Arabian prophet are too great and too firmly rooted to make a real pan-Islamic movement possible or permanently effective. Any such union would fall to pieces quickly and disappear from view as did the crusades. Still the existence of such an idea and especially its dissemination among wild and uncivilized peoples will have local influence that may lead to serious disturbances and may produce wide-reaching consequences of a more than local importance. It may not be possible to find a real, vital, unifying principle in Islam that will ever permanently unite Sunnis and Shiahs, or permit Turks and Persians, Hindus and Moors to work and fight in harmony and mutual confidence. Still, the fact that all ascribe their faith to Mohammed