PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 BY 
 
 JVLps. Alexander Ppoudfit. 
 

 f 
 
 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/mohammedanmissio00jess_0 
 
V MAP lo iUiiHii.i!<- ISLAM 
 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. HENRY H. JESSUP, D.D., 
 
 Fob Twenty-four Years Missionary in Syp.ia. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 No. 1331 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
Copyright, 1879, by 
 THE TRUSTEES OP THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOAED OF PUBLICATION. 
 
 Westcott & Thomson, 
 Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada . 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 A discourse on “ The Mohammedan Mis- 
 sionary Problem,” delivered before the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church 
 in the United States, meeting at Saratoga 
 Springs May 18, 1879, by the Moderator, 
 the Rev. Henry H. Jessup, D. D., of 
 Beirut, Syria, attracted general attention, 
 and awakened a desire on the part of 
 many to have it in print. In compliance 
 with this demand, and at the request of 
 the Presbyterian Board of Publication, Dr. 
 Jessup has rewritten and enlarged the dis- 
 course, and the result is here given to the 
 jiublic. 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 This little treatise does not profess to be 
 an exhaustive statement of the relations of 
 Islam and Christianity. It is a mere out- 
 line. It is published in deference to the 
 earnest request of friends who have thought 
 it worth preserving in a permanent form. 
 
 The map accompanying this volume is 
 taken from that printed in Stobart’s Islam, 
 published by the Christian Knowledge So- 
 ciety. The green shading has been ex- 
 tended over parts of China not marked in 
 the original, to indicate the existence of 
 four millions of Moslems in that empire. 
 This is the only correction made in this 
 map, for which I would express very great 
 obligations to Principal Stobart. 
 
6 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The Arabic pronunciation of the name 
 of the founder of Islam requires that the 
 English word be written Muhammad, but 
 I have followed the ordinary spelling, Mo- 
 hammed. It is unfortunate that Stobart, 
 following Irving, should have adopted a 
 form of the name so utterly wrong as 
 “ Mahomet,” 
 
 The number of Mohammedans in the 
 world is given in this work as one hun- 
 dred and seventy-five millions. Mr. Keith 
 Johnston estimates it as follows : 
 
 In Europe 5,974,000 
 
 In Africa 50,416,000 
 
 In Asia 112,739,000 
 
 Total ..169,129,000 
 
 It does not probably vary far from one 
 hundred and seventy or one hundred and 
 seventy-five millions. 
 
 Inquiry is often made for the best books 
 on Mohammedanism. The following is a 
 list of the more important : 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 1. Introductory Essay of Sale’s Koran: 
 Lippincott. 
 
 2. The Preface and Notes of Rodwell’s 
 Koran: Williams & Norgate, London. 
 
 3. Sir William Muir’s Life of Mohammed : 
 London. 
 
 4. Stobart’s Islam and its Founder: Chris- 
 tian Knowledge Society. 
 
 5. Dr. Sprenger’s Life of Mohammed: 
 Allahabad, 1851. 
 
 6. Dr. Pfander’s Mezan el Hoc : Church 
 Missionary Society, London. 
 
 7. Irving’s Life of Mahomet. 
 
 8. Lane’s Modern Egyptians. 
 
 9. P. Boswortli Smith’s Mohammed and 
 Mohammedanism : Harpers. 
 
 10. Rev. T. P. Hughes’s Notes on Mo- 
 hammedanism. 
 
 11. Osborn’s Islam under the Arabs: 
 Longmans, Green & Co. 
 
 12. The Coran, Sir William Muir : Chris- 
 tian Knowledge Society. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 13. Dr. Hamlin’s Among the Turks : 
 Robert Carter & Brother. 
 
 14. Burton's Pilgrimage to El Medinah 
 and Mecca : Putnam & Co. 
 
 15. Clark’s The Arabs and the Turks: 
 Dockl & Mead. 
 
 16. Rev. T. Milner’s Turkish Empire : 
 Religious Tract Society, London. 
 
 17. Report of Conference on Foreign Mis- 
 sions, , Mildmay, 1878. J. F. Sliaw & Co., 
 London. 
 
 18. The Trident, the Crescent and the 
 Cross, Vaughan. Longmans, London. 
 
 19. Islam and Christianity, J. M. Arnold. 
 Longmans. 
 
 20. Christianity and Islam, Stephens. 
 
 See also the list of authorities in the 
 
 preface to Boswortli Smith’s Mohammed. 
 
 The works of Syed Ahmed Khan Balm- 
 dor and Syed Ameer Ali are an attempt at 
 a refutation of Sir William Muir’s indict- 
 ment of Mohammedanism, written by Mos- 
 lems. There is a great assumption of learn- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 9 
 
 ing and a sophistical defence of the Koranic 
 teachings with regard to slavery, polygamy, 
 divorce and the degradation of woman. 
 
 The multiplication of books on this sub- 
 ject shows its growing importance. 
 
 It is our earnest hope and prayer that this 
 revival of interest in the historical, theolog- 
 ical and ethical bearings of Islamism may 
 result in a new practical interest in the spir- 
 itual welfare of the Mohammedan nations. 
 It is high time for the Christian Church 
 to ask seriously the question whether the 
 last command of Christ, “ Preach the gos- 
 pel to every creature,” concerns the one 
 hundred and seventy-five millions of the 
 Mohammedan world. 
 
 HENRY H. JESSUP. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 570. Birth of Mohammed, at Mecca. 
 
 590. Gregory I. becomes bishop of Borne. 
 
 597. Mission to the Saxons in Britain. 
 
 609. Mohammed proclaims his pretensions. 
 
 622. The Hejra, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca to 
 Medina. 
 
 632. Death of Mohammed. 
 
 632. Abu Bekir, first caliph or successor of Mohammed. 
 
 636. Capture of Jerusalem by the caliph Omar. 
 
 640. Capture of Alexandria by Omar. 
 
 711. Tharyk crosses the straits from Africa to Europe, and 
 calls the mountain Jebel Tharyk (Gibraltar). 
 
 732. Battle of Tours ; Abd-er-Bahman defeated by Charles 
 Martel ; Western Europe saved from becoming Mos- 
 lem. 
 
 786. Haroun er-Bashid, caliph of Baghdad. 
 
 1063. Alp Arslan, Seljukian Turkish prince. 
 
 I oil!? Beign of Othman, founder of the Ottoman dynasty. 
 
 1326. ° ’ J J 
 
 1452. Perfection of art of printing in Mentz by Guttenburg, 
 Faust and Schceffer. 
 
 10 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 11 
 
 1453. Capture of Constantinople by Mohammed II. ; exodus 
 of Greek scholars to Southern Europe. 
 
 1492. Discovery of America by Columbus. 
 
 1492, July 2. Boabdil (or Abou Abdallah) defeated by Fer- 
 dinand at Granada ; end of Moslem rule in Spain. 
 
 1517. Ottoman sultan Selim I. conquers Egypt, wrests the 
 caliphate from the Arab line of Koreish through 
 Motawekkel Billah, and transfers it to the Ottoman 
 sultans ; Ottoman caliphate never acknowledged by 
 Persian or Moorish Moslems. 
 
 1683. Final check of Turks at gates of Vienna by John 
 Sobieski, king of Poland, Sept. 12; Eastern Europe 
 saved from Moslem rule. 
 
 1856. End of Crimean War; Treaty of Paris; European 
 agreement not to interfere in domestic affairs of 
 Turkey. 
 
 1878. Treaty of Berlin; independence of Bulgaria secured; 
 Anglo-Turkish Treaty ; England occupies Cyprus — 
 agrees to defend the frontier of Asiatic Turkey 
 against Russia, on condition that the sultan exe- 
 cute fundamental reforms in Asiatic Turkey. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM COMPARED 
 
 The Aggressive 
 Command. 
 
 The Motto. 
 
 The Treatment 
 of Enemies. 
 
 “ Go ye into all tlie world, and preach 
 the gospel to every creature.” Mark xvi. 15. 
 
 “Fight thou against them until they 
 pay tribute by right of subjection, and 
 they he reduced low.” Koran, chap. ix. 
 29. 
 
 “ There is one God and one Mediator 
 between God and man, the man Christ 
 Jesus.” 1 Tim. ii. 5. 
 
 “ There is no God hut God, and Mo- 
 _ hammed is his apostle.” 
 
 “ Love your enemies.” Matt. v. 44. 
 
 “ O Lord of all creatures ! O Allah ! 
 destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine 
 enemies, the enemies of the religion! 
 Give them and their families, their 
 women, their children, etc., as booty to 
 the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures!” 
 _ — Mohammedan Missionary Prayer. 
 
 12 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 T tlie beginning of tlie seventh century 
 
 there occurred two events of momentous 
 importance. Though geographically remote 
 from each other, and not often associated in 
 the mind of the Christian student, they were 
 providentially related in the most intimate 
 manner, as bearing upon the welfare of the 
 race and the future development of Christ’s 
 kingdom in the world. 
 
 One was the rise of the Mohammedan re- 
 lio-ion — the other the Christianization of the 
 
 o 
 
 Saxon race in Britain. 
 
 It is the purpose of the writer in the 
 following pages to show the evident plan and 
 providence of God in the past, present and 
 
 13 
 
14 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 future relations of the Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
 tian race to the Mohammedan world. 
 
 God has been preparing Christianity for 
 Islam ; he is now preparing Islam for 
 Christianity. The Roman power and the 
 Greek language prepared the way for the 
 coming of Christ and the giving of the gos- 
 pel to the world. Anglo-Saxon power and 
 the Arabic language, the sacred language of 
 the Koran, are preparing the way for giving 
 the word of Christ, and Christ the Word, to 
 the millions of the Mohammedan world. 
 
 The Mohammedan religion arose, in the 
 providence of God, as a scourge to the idol- 
 atrous Christianity and the pagan systems 
 of Asia and Africa — a protest against poly- 
 theism, and a preparation for the future con- 
 version to a pure Christianity of the multi- 
 tude who have fallen under its extraordinary 
 power. 
 
 The religion of Islam has been styled the 
 “ quarantine of the nations,” and in the ap- 
 prehension of Christian faith it must be re- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 15 
 
 garded as a step in advance of all pagan 
 systems, and yet falling far short of the 
 morality and spirituality of the gospel, and 
 destitute of any provision for human re- 
 demption. 
 
 When Gibbon declared that the Islamic 
 motto, “ There is no God but God, and Mo- 
 hammed is his apostle,” asserts an “eternal 
 truth and an eternal lie,” he truly expressed 
 its duplex and inconsistent character. 
 
 Mohammed unfurled his standard in 622 
 a. d., when he fled from Mecca to El Medina 
 (“the city”). This Hejra, or “flight,” is 
 the beginning of the Mohammedan era. 
 The religion of Islam spread rapidly over 
 Arabia, and thence northward over Palestine 
 and Syria. Ivhaled, the “ Sword of God,” 
 captured the cities and towns of Syria ; ten 
 thousand Christian churches were either 
 destroyed or converted into Mohammedan 
 mosques. The cities of Syria and Palestine 
 to-day are filled with mosques whose archi- 
 tecture betrays their Christian origin. The 
 
16 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 splendid mosque of Amweli, in Damascus, 
 was the church of St. John the Baptist ; 
 the mosque of Aksa in Jerusalem was the 
 church of J ustinian ; and the world-re- 
 nowned mosque of Constantinople was the 
 church of Agia Sophia. 
 
 Sweeping into Africa, the scimitar of the 
 Moslems carried the Koran into Egypt, far 
 up the Nile, across Northern Africa to Tunis, 
 Algiers and Morocco ; and in 711 a. d. the 
 Mohammedan general Tliaryk crossed the 
 Straits into Europe, and called the great 
 rock on the northern side, from his own 
 name, Jebel Tliaryk, “mountain of Tliaryk,” 
 now called, by a corruption of the Arabic 
 words, Gibraltar. 
 
 In twenty-one years the Moslems had 
 subjugated Spain, but in 732 their progress 
 into France was checked by Charles Martel, 
 who in the battle of Poictiers defeated the 
 invading army and saved Western Europe 
 from becoming a Mohammedan province. 
 The history of the Arabs in Spain is too 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 17 
 
 familiar to need more than a mere allusion, 
 but it is a significant coincidence in history 
 that in the year 1492 — the very year in 
 which Columbus discovered America, and 
 thus opened a new field for the growth and 
 development of that christianized Anglo-Sax- 
 on race which w T as destined to wield so mighty 
 an influence upon the future of the Mo- 
 hammedan nations — Ferdinand overthrew the 
 last Spanish Mohammedan army at the gates 
 of Granada, and the Moslems were driven 
 back into Africa. In the following century 
 it was a common proverb in Spain, “As hard 
 to find as Mohammed in Spain,” showing 
 that the Moslem occupation of more than 
 seven hundred years in Spain was at an end 
 for ever. Turning northward from Arabia, 
 the political and literary power of Islam 
 reached its highest glory in Baghdad under 
 the Caliphs. This was the golden age of 
 Arabic literature. The Caliphs used their 
 wealth and power in translating into Arabic 
 the best classics of Greece. Translations of 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates and Euclid and 
 other authors into Arabic found their way 
 down the Mediterranean iuto Spain and 
 France; and there are in the University 
 Library of Paris more ancient Arabic 
 manuscripts than can be found in the 
 whole Turkish empire. 
 
 The armies of the Prophet by rapid con- 
 quests subdued in turn Persia and Afghan- 
 istan, aud overran a large part of India. 
 Thence they moved on through Central 
 Asia into China ; and to-day there are four 
 millions of Moslems in China, of whom two 
 hundred thousand live in Peking, the capital 
 of the Flowery Kingdom. 
 
 A new factor now appeared in history. 
 The Tartar Turks, a pagan race from Cen- 
 tral Asia, conquered the empire of the Arab 
 caliphs, and were conquered by its religion ; 
 they became Mohammedans. Then began 
 the struggle between the rising Ottoman 
 power and the tottering empire of the 
 Greeks. Step by step, the Turks pushed 
 
MISSIONAB Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 19 
 
 the Greeks to the westward, and in the year 
 1453, Mohammed II. unfurled the standard 
 of the Prophet on the towers of Constantino- 
 ple. In the previous year (1452) the art of 
 printing was perfected by Guttenburg, Faust 
 and Schoeffer, preparing the way for the re- 
 vival of letters. The capture of Constanti- 
 nople in 1453 threw the Greek scholars of 
 the East into a panic at the advance of the 
 infidel host, and not a few of them fled to 
 Southern Europe, bearing with them the 
 Greek language, Greek literature and the 
 Greek New Testament. Many were appoint- 
 ed professors in the universities of Italy and 
 Southern Europe, and thus awakened an in- 
 terest in the study of the Greek and prepared 
 the way for the development of Bible study 
 and the translation of the New Testament 
 into the languages of Europe in the time 
 of the Reformation. 
 
 The Mohammedan Turkish power now 
 attempted the conquest of Europe from the 
 East, as the Mohammedan Moorish power 
 
20 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 had tried it from the West. It was not un- 
 til the year 1683 that the Turks were finally 
 defeated on the 12th of September at the 
 gates of Vienna by Sobieski, and the Mos- 
 lems were driven back across the Danube. 
 
 In the year 1878, by the terms of the 
 Treaty of Berlin, and as the result of the 
 Busso-Turkish war, the Turkish territory 
 in Europe was narrowed down to a mere 
 belt extending across from the Black Sea to 
 the Adriatic, including East Boumelia (or 
 Southern Bulgaria), Macedonia, Thessaly 
 and Albania. 
 
 The caliphate, or succession of Moham- 
 med, belongs legally to the Arab family of 
 Koreish, the family of the Prophet. In 
 1517 the Turkish sultan, Selim I., conquered 
 Syria and Egypt, and brought with him to 
 Constantinople Motawekkel Billah, the last 
 titular caliph of the family of Abbas. From 
 this descendant of Daliir Billah, the thirty- 
 fifth caliph of Baghdad, Selim “procured the 
 cession of his claims, and obtained the right 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 21 
 
 to deem himself the shadow of God upon 
 earth. Since then the Ottoman padishah 
 has been held to inherit the rights of Omar 
 and Haroun, and to be the legitimate com- 
 mander of the Faithful, and, as such, pos- 
 sessed of plenary temporal and spiritual au- 
 thority over the followers of Mohammed.”* 
 The Persians and Moors, however, reject 
 this claim, and at the close of the Russian 
 war not a few even of the Arab muftis de- 
 clared that the caliphate had been forfeited 
 by the inglorious defeat of the Turks, and 
 should now return to the Arab family of 
 Koreish. 
 
 The above is a brief epitome of the rise 
 and geographical extension of the religion 
 of Islam. It now extends from the Pacific 
 Ocean at Peking to the Atlantic in Sierra 
 Leone, over one hundred and twenty de- 
 grees of longitude, embracing one hundred 
 and seventy-five millions of followers. Its 
 
 * Freeman : The Saracens, p. 158. 
 
22 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 votaries are diverse in language, nationality 
 and customs, embracing the more civilized 
 inhabitants of Cairo, Damascus and Con- 
 stantinople, as well as the wild nomad tribes 
 of Arabia, Turkestan and the Sahara. 
 
 The evangelization of these vast, organ- 
 ized, fanatical and widely-extended masses 
 of men is one of the grandest and most 
 inspiring problems ever brought before the 
 Church of Christ on earth. It is a work 
 of surpassing difficulty, which will require 
 a new baptism of apostolic wisdom and 
 energy, faith and love. 
 
 But He who sitteth on the throne, and 
 with whom “ a thousand years are as one 
 day,” will prepare the way in his own wise 
 and gracious time. lie is already prepar- 
 ing the way ; and it is our purpose to notice 
 the remarkable interposition of the divine 
 providence in raising up in the two great 
 branches of the Anglo-Saxon Christian fam- 
 ily, in Great Britain and the United States 
 of America, the political, religious and ed- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 23 
 
 ucational means and appliances which are 
 tending to bring the Mohammedan world 
 to Christ. 
 
 We shall thus see how the Christianization 
 of the Saxon race in Britain just at the time 
 when the Mohammedan religion arose in the 
 East was a divine plan, the remedy provided 
 for the growing moral disorder, the “ rod 
 blossoming” for future displays of the di- 
 vine power as well as the divine love to 
 man. 
 
 This great Mohammedan problem lying 
 before the Church of Christ in the imme- 
 diate future, connected with its fulfillment 
 of the great missionary commission of its 
 divine Head for the world’s salvation, will 
 tax the intellect, the faith, the wisdom, the 
 zeal and the self-denial of the whole Church 
 in every land. 
 
 How are we to reach the one hundred 
 and seventy-five millions of Mohammedans 
 spread over one hundred and twenty degrees 
 of longitude, from the Pacific in China to 
 
24 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 the Atlantic in Sierra Leone, embracing vast 
 nations speaking thirty different languages, 
 with diverse climates, customs and traditions, 
 yet unified and compacted by a common faith 
 which has survived the shocks and conflicts 
 of twelve hundred years? 
 
 This problem is even now pressing itself 
 as never before upon the attention of Chris- 
 tian scholars and divines, and within a few 
 years the literature of the subject has grown 
 from a few standard and well-known books 
 to a vast number of treatises, essays, papers 
 and stately volumes, written in Germany, 
 France, England, India and the United 
 States, while the observations and testi- 
 mony of missionaries and travelers have 
 thrown a flood of light upon the moral, 
 religious and theological, as well as the 
 civil and political, status of this mighty 
 system. 
 
 It is our purpose in these pages to present 
 a mere outline of the relations of Islam to 
 Christianity as illustrated by those features 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 25 
 
 in Islam as a system and in the state of the 
 Eastern World, which are unfavorable to the 
 acceptance of Christianity, together with those 
 which are favorable. It is not possible to treat 
 the subject in an exhaustive manner within 
 the present limits, but we may hope to gather 
 together the salient points, that we may the 
 better estimate the nature of the contest be- 
 fore us. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE UNFAVORABLE FEATURES. 
 
 § I. The first difficulty lies in the union 
 between the temporal and spiritual power 
 in Islam. 
 
 It is a politico-religious system. The sul- 
 tan is the caliph of Mohammed — i. e. his 
 successor. He is the prophet and priest and 
 king of the Mohammedan world. The laws 
 of the empire are based on the Koran, the 
 decisions of the imams and Mohammedan 
 tradition. The scimitar was the precursor 
 and supporter of the Koran when Moham- 
 med and his successors first propagated the 
 new faith. 
 
 In the fifteenth century the Crescent ruled 
 from Burmah on the east to Mogadore on 
 the Atlantic, and all Europe trembled at 
 the name of Islam. In the Turkish em- 
 
 20 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 27 
 
 pire the imperial army is a religious army, 
 the great national festivals are religious fes- 
 tivals, testimony is a religious act, and Mo- 
 hammedanism is thus entrenched in the very 
 political and civil organization of the empire. 
 Apostasy from the Mohammedan religion is 
 thus in Turkey treason to the Mohammedan 
 state. A convert to Christianity from Islam 
 is arrested as a renegade from the conscrip- 
 tion. The military authorities will insist that 
 they care nothing for the man’s religion, but 
 he must be arrested as a traitor. This polit- 
 ico-religious alliance in the Turkish empire 
 is in accordance with the letter and the spirit 
 of Mohammedan law, and is the great ob- 
 stacle to the evangelization of the Moham- 
 medans. 
 
 § II. The second feature in Islam unfavor- 
 able to missionary success is the divorce be- 
 tween morality and religion. 
 
 The Koran is not wanting in moral pre- 
 cepts, nor are the V edas or the writings of 
 Confucius. Yet it can be said that what- 
 
28 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 ever in the Koran is true was taken from 
 the Bible, and what is not from the Bible 
 is either false or frivolous. 
 
 Islam is an intensely formal and ritual 
 system, a religion of works — outward works, 
 not affecting the heart or requiring trans- 
 formation of the life. Fasting, the pilgrim- 
 age to Mecca, praying five times a day, tes- 
 tifying “ There is no God but God, and 
 Mohammed is his apostle,” almsgivings, 
 ablutions, genuflections, circumcision and 
 repeating the one hundred names of God, 
 are some of the rites and acts by which 
 the believer purchases Paradise. 
 
 One who fulfills this ritual, in whole or in 
 part, is a good Muslim, even though not to 
 be believed under oath. Dr. Eli Smith of 
 Beirut was said by an Arab to be a very holy 
 man But, poor man ! he had no religion 
 that is, no observance of an outward ritual. 
 The good works of Islam are of the lips, the 
 hand and the outward bodily act, having 
 no connection with holiness of Jife, honesty, 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 29 
 
 veracity and integrity. An Arab highway- 
 robber and murderer was once brought for 
 trial before a Mohammedan pasha, when the 
 pasha stepped down and kissed his hand, as 
 the culprit was a dervish or holy man who 
 had been on several pilgrimages to Mecca, 
 and had been known to repeat the name of 
 God (Allah) more times in a day than any 
 other man. 
 
 As their whole idea of deen, or religion, re- 
 fers to the outward and ceremonial, they have 
 lost all conception of the spiritual nature of 
 religion, and language itself is so perverted 
 that when spiritual ideas are meant to be 
 conveyed, or attempted to be conveyed, to 
 them, they apprehend only the outer husk, 
 the very shell, while the inner spiritual 
 meaning is lost. “ The minutest change 
 of posture in prayer, the displacement of 
 a single genuflection, would call for much 
 heavier censure than outward profligacy or 
 absolute neglect.”* 
 
 * Stobart, p. 237. 
 
30 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 § III. The third unfavorable feature in 
 Islam is its Ishmaelitic intolerance. 
 
 There is no precept in the Koran enjoin- 
 ing love to enemies. It teaches kindness, 
 charity and forgiveness of injuries, but 
 only to Mohammedans. It knows nothing 
 of universal benevolence. 
 
 Islam is an Arab, an Ishmaelitic, faith — 
 “its hand against every man.” Mohamme- 
 dans glory in the name Ismailee. They are 
 the people; all else are kafirs, infidels. Mo- 
 hammed offered to men their choice of three 
 things — Islam, slavery or death. All who do 
 not accept Islam are looked upon as the legit- 
 imate servants of the true believers, and must 
 pay them tribute. The Circassians, lately de- 
 ported by the sultan from Bulgaria to Syria, 
 stated on their arrival that “ they had killed 
 off the little kafirs in Bulgaria, and were now 
 fleeing from the ‘ Big Kafir,’ the Muskobe, 
 and that if the Russian kafir came as far south 
 as Syria they should massacre the Christians 
 of Syria, and then flee a second time.” 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 31 
 
 In the great Mohammedan missionary 
 university in the mosque of Azliar in 
 Cairo, Egypt, where ten thousand students 
 are assembled from all parts of the Mo- 
 hammedan world, studying the Koran and 
 preparing to teach it throughout Asia and 
 Africa, a missionary prayer is offered every 
 evening in which the whole ten thousand 
 unite. The following is a literal transla- 
 tion of it : “I seek refuge with Allah from 
 Satan the accursed! In the name of Allah, 
 the Compassionate, the Merciful ! O Lord 
 of all creatures, O Allah ! destroy the in- 
 fidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the 
 enemies of the religion ! O Allah ! make 
 their children orphans and defile their 
 abodes ! Cause their feet to slip ; give 
 them and their families, their households 
 and their women, their children and their 
 relations by marriage, their brothers and 
 their friends, their possessions and their 
 race, their wealth and their lands, as booty 
 to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures !” 
 
oo 
 
 oZ 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 In the eighth Sura of the Koran, verse 40, 
 are these words: “Fight thou against them, 
 till strife he at an end and the religion be 
 all of it God’s.” So also in Sura ix. 29 : 
 “ Fight thou against them [i. e. the Chris- 
 tians and Jews] until they pay tribute by 
 right of subjection, and they be reduced 
 low ” (i. e. utterly humiliated). 
 
 On a recent public occasion in Beirut, 
 after the official reading of a firman of the 
 sultan Abd-ul-Hamid guaranteeing absolute 
 equality and liberty to all the sects of the 
 empire, and granting to the Christians the 
 right of military service and office, the 
 pasha, an enlightened and liberal man, 
 asked an old Mohammedan sheikh of the 
 orthodox school to close the ceremony with 
 prayer. All the company arose, when the 
 sheikh, a venerable, white-bearded dignitary, 
 stepped forward and prayed as follows : “ O 
 Allah, grant the victory to His Imperial 
 Majesty the sultan Abd-ul-Hamid Khan. 
 Destroy all his enemies, destroy the Rus- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 33 
 
 sians; O Allah, destroy the infidels. Tear 
 them in tatters, grind them in powder, rend 
 them in fragments, because they are the 
 enemies of the Mohammedans.” He was 
 then about to proceed when the mufti, or 
 chief interpreter of the Koranic law, stepped 
 forward, stopped him and whispered in his 
 ear, when he proceeded : “ O Allah, destroy 
 the enemies of the Mohammedans, because 
 they are also the enemies of the Christians 
 and of the Jews. Amen.” This was an 
 orthodox Mohammedan prayer, such as the 
 orthodox constantly use, and this venerable 
 sheikh was unable to grasp the idea that 
 Christians and Jews have any other right 
 but the right of serving the faithful and 
 being cut off in answer to their prayers. 
 
 This spirit of intolerance has engendered 
 a haughty, overbearing feeling and deport- 
 ment toward all others, which is intensified 
 in proportion to their own ignorance. Mo- 
 hammedan arrogance is encouraged hy the 
 assurance of the Koran (Sura iii. 106) : “Ye 
 
34 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 are the best nation that hath been raised up 
 unto mankind.” What more is needed to 
 prove that they are superior to all others? 
 They know little or nothing of geography, 
 science or European civilization. Their ex- 
 clusive spirit appears in a striking manner 
 in the Turkish imperial law forbidding 
 Christians from entering the army, as the 
 army is composed of the “ faithful,” whose 
 business is to fight for the faith. This law 
 has occasioned the greatest political and ma- 
 terial loss to the sultan, who has thus alien- 
 ated and embittered millions of his Christian 
 subjects. 
 
 Whenever Islam holds the sword it uses 
 it for the oppression and humiliation of all 
 infidels, but when it loses the military con- 
 trol it submits with fatalistic sullenness. 
 
 § IV. The fourth unfavorable feature in 
 Islam is its destruction of the family through 
 polygamy and concubinage. 
 
 One has said ( Stobart , p. 229) that “an 
 evil code of ethics, enjoined by the national 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 35 
 
 faith and accepted, by its appeal to a divine 
 origin, as the final and irrevocable standard 
 of morality, presents an insuperable barrier 
 to the regeneration and progress of a na- 
 tion.” — “ Yet such is the position which 
 the Koran has taken.” 
 
 Mohammed distinctly sanctioned polyg- 
 amy, allowing each Muslim to take four 
 legal wives (Sura iv. 3), and in addition to 
 these, as concubines, the slave-girls “ which 
 their right hands possess” (Sura Ixx. 30) — 
 that is, purchased or captured in war. “ In 
 reality, the number of wives is practically 
 unlimited, as divorce and exchange are al- 
 lowed with little or no restraint.” “ The 
 husband may divorce his wives without 
 any assigned reason and without warning, 
 may rebuke, imprison and scourge them, 
 and the dishonored wife has almost no 
 means of redress.” “ The husband may 
 twice divorce and twice take back the 
 same woman, but if he a third time divorce 
 her, she cannot again become his wife till 
 
36 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 she have married (cohabited with) and 
 been divorced from some other man ” 
 (Sura ii. 230). 
 
 Ordinarily, the poorer Mohammedans 
 content themselves with one wife, but what 
 peace and domestic happiness can there be 
 where the wife may at any moment be 
 turned away by the caprice of her hus- 
 band? “Some Mohammedans make a 
 habit of continually changing their wives.” 
 One author speaks of “ young men who 
 have had twenty and thirty wives, a new 
 one every three months and there is 
 nothing in the Koran to prevent such a 
 brutal course of action. The Koranic doc- 
 trine of polygamy utterly destroys the 
 sanctity and purity of the family, brutal- 
 izes the man and degrades the woman. 
 It has been gravely claimed that polyg- 
 amy lessens sensuality, and is an advance 
 on the morality of civilized Christian na- 
 tions. The contrary is true. It has made 
 sensuality in its most beastly forms the 
 
MISSION A II I" PR OBLEM. 
 
 37 
 
 rule, and not the exception. It uproots 
 the family economy, order and discipline, 
 and fosters unrestrained passion and lust. 
 No intelligent Mohammedan defends it on 
 the ground that it promotes domestic vir- 
 tue, happiness or family discipline : it is 
 defended on the ground of its divine in- 
 stitution in the Koran. 
 
 It is the opinion of Sir William Muir that 
 woman “ possessed more freedom, and exer- 
 cised a healthier and more legitimate influ- 
 ence, under the pagan institutions of Arabia 
 before the time of Mohammed than under 
 the influence of Islam.” Stobart quotes the 
 language of Sallust with regard to the prac- 
 tice of polygamy among the ancient Moors 
 and Numidians: “No one marries a woman 
 for a companion — pariter omnes viles sunt;” 
 and the same may be said of Mohammedan 
 women to-day. Polygamy is a mighty ob- 
 stacle to Christianity in all lands, Moham- 
 medan or pagan, and nowhere is it more 
 firmly entrenched than among those who 
 
38 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 defend it on the ground of a positive divine 
 ordinance. 
 
 There naturally results from polygamy — 
 
 § V. Fifthly, the degradation of woman. 
 
 The Moslems say that “women are only 
 superior in craft and cunning.” “ There 
 are three classes of persons who have no 
 religion — Bedawin Arabs, muleteers and 
 women.” Mohammed declared that when 
 he looked down into hell, he found the 
 greater part of the wretches confined there 
 to be women. The whole Mohammedan 
 treatment of women rests on the assump- 
 tion that woman cannot be trusted. Wo- 
 men are not allowed to eat with their hus- 
 bands, to enter the floor of the mosques 
 nor to read the Koran, except in very 
 rare cases. Should a woman be allowed 
 to learn the Koran, she is placed in one 
 room with her female attendants, while the 
 teacher, a blind sheikh, sits in the adjoin- 
 ing room and teaches her orally through 
 the half-opened door. The very meanest 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 39 
 
 Muslim will have in Paradise eighty thou- 
 sand servants, seventy-two houris, or girls 
 of Paradise, besides the wives he had in 
 this world, though it is the general opinion 
 that the wives of this world will be ex- 
 cluded from the society of their husbands 
 in Paradise, and go into a separate place 
 of happiness. The Koran does distinctly 
 affirm that “ God will bring the believing 
 men and the believing women into gardens 
 ’neatli whose trees the rivers flow ” (Sura 
 xlviii. 5) ; also, “ Male and female believ- 
 ers shall enter Paradise, nor shall they be 
 wronged the skin of a date-stone.” 
 
 But even on the supposition that the 
 Koran allows women a reunion with their 
 husbands, what a monstrous perversion of 
 all a woman’s ideas of virtue, honor and 
 self-respect, to be told that she is to be 
 but the secondary character in a celestial 
 hareem of seventy-two houris of transcen- 
 dent beauty and attractiveness ! 
 
 Ali Bey says (1807) : “As the Prophet 
 
40 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 lias not assigned any place for women in his 
 Paradise, the Mohammedans give them no 
 places in the mosques, and have exempted 
 them from the obligation of frequenting 
 the public prayers.” The Moslem women 
 are not instructed in religion. Woman is 
 a mere toy and pander to man. She is 
 kept closely veiled, threatened with dire 
 judgments if she allows a man to see her 
 face, beaten, despised, kept in degradation. 
 
 No Mohammedan will allude to a woman 
 in the presence of other men without beg- 
 ging pardon of those present for mention- 
 ing so vile a subject, just as he would do if 
 alluding to a dog, a hog or a donkey. I 
 know of nothing which so stirs the indig- 
 nation of a Christian civilized man as to 
 find himself in the company of men call- 
 ing themselves decent members of society, 
 and yet unable even to mention the name 
 of his own revered mother without begging 
 pardon of those present for introducing so 
 vile a subject. I am happy to say that I 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 41 
 
 have never degraded myself by yielding to 
 so repulsive and abominable a custom. If 
 a Mohammedan finds himself obliged to 
 mention his wife, mother or daughter in 
 the presence of other men, he will speak 
 of her in the masculine gender, as, “ he is 
 sick ” or “ he is absent,” etc. 
 
 AY omen are kept in seclusion and subjec- 
 tion. I was once present in the study of 
 Dr. Van Dyck in Beirut when the Moham- 
 medan mufti, or supreme judge of the city, 
 called. After the usual formal salutations 
 he informed Dr. Y 7 an Dyck that there was 
 a sick man at his house who needed im- 
 mediate care. Said he, “ He has fever, 
 headache and great pain. AVill you come 
 and see him at three o’clock?” Dr. Van 
 Dyck replied, “ Yes, I will call and see 
 her'' The mufti was speaking of his wife, 
 or one of his wives, and yet he would not 
 speak of her in the feminine gender, but 
 called her “a sick man.” 
 
 The Moslems by degrading woman have 
 
42 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 degraded themselves. In a recent book* on 
 woman in Turkey, which exposes many of 
 the vices and abominations of the polyga- 
 mous liareem-system of the Moslems, the 
 author represents one of the diplomatic 
 corps of Constantinople as saying to his 
 colleagues, “ Enlightened men do not hesi- 
 tate to avow that polygamy is like a cancer, 
 eating into and destroying our social system. 
 To rid us of such a scourge is the special 
 work of a patriot. It should be the heart- 
 felt wish of every Mussulman to undertake 
 and accomplish it; for the advantages — we 
 may say the blessings — which result from 
 monogamy are immense, and we know how 
 to appreciate them. For my own part, I 
 could heartily wish that a radical reform 
 were set on foot in our social system, and 
 that the emancipation of woman could lead 
 to the abolition of polygamy. No doubt 
 the day will come when women will walk 
 
 * Les Femmes en Turquie. Par Osman Beg, Major Vladimir 
 Andyovich. Paris : Caiman Levy. 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 43 
 
 unveiled through the streets, and go into 
 society as they do in Europe ; hut, alas ! I 
 am old, and shall never live to see that 
 happy day.” 
 
 In speaking of mixed marriages the 
 same author says, “ The Koran permits a 
 Mussulman to marry a Christian — forbids 
 that Moslem women should be joined to 
 Christian husbands.” “This law bears the 
 seal of its Semitic origin in the sense of 
 lowering woman, who is regarded in her- 
 self as but a little cipher. Woman, in her 
 husband’s view, is but a field ; and in this 
 way a Moslem may possess himself of the 
 object without worrying himself as to its 
 produce. As a field can have neither faith 
 nor intellect nor will of its own, it would 
 be absurd for a man to occupy himself 
 about what a woman believes, thinks or 
 wishes : she is absolutely nothing but her 
 master’s domain.” 
 
 The Koran says (Sura ii. 223) : “ Your 
 wives are your field and, as Osman Beg 
 
44 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 so clearly shows, they are treated as having 
 no more rights or honor or respect than a 
 field. Sura iv. 38 says : “ Men are superior 
 to women, on account of the qualities with 
 which God hath gifted the one above the 
 other.” “ Virtuous women are obedient, 
 
 . . . but chide those for whose refractor- 
 iness ye have cause to fear, and scourge 
 them.” Whatever other injunction of the 
 Koran is disobeyed, this one is well kept 
 by the Moslems. Wife-beating, that most 
 repulsive and degrading practice, being en- 
 joined in the Koran, is so common as to 
 be thought not even worthy of remark. 
 Osman Beg, in describing hareem-life in 
 the seraglio of the sultan in Constantinople, 
 observes : “ Discipline is maintained in the 
 seraglio by repressive measures and corporal 
 punishments. The first consist in a refusal 
 of permission to go out, being locked in, etc. 
 Corporal punishments are designated by the 
 verb to abandje, which signifies the basti- 
 nado on the soles of the feet. In the pres- 
 
MISSION AH Y I'll OB LEM. 
 
 45 
 
 ent century the reforming spirit lias pene- 
 trated everywhere, and the bastinado has 
 undergone a sensible diminution, at least 
 for the person of the sufferer. The prac- 
 tice of striking young girls upon the soles 
 of their feet, with the risk of laming them, 
 has been quite abandoned. Blows are given 
 elsewhere : it would be hard to say with 
 precision on what part of the person. It 
 is well understood that rods are substituted 
 for the stick.” 
 
 It is asserted that the liareem of the sul- 
 tan Abd-ul-Medjid numbered not less than 
 one thousand women and girls, who were, as 
 all Moslem women are, uneducated, profane, 
 slanderous, capricious, never trained to con- 
 trol their tempers or their tongues for a 
 moment. One can imagine the moral and 
 social condition of woman in such a home, 
 or such a caricature of a home. The rod, 
 the scourge, is the only instrument of dis- 
 cipline. Women are treated like animals, 
 and behave like animals. 
 
46 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 It is the testimony of history that the 
 Mohammedans are responsible for the whole 
 zenana - system of India, and that previous 
 to the irruption of the Moslem Moguls 
 (Mongols) the Hindoo women enjoyed 
 vastly greater liberty than since that time. 
 It is the Moslem theory that woman can 
 never, in any time, place or circumstances, 
 be trusted ; they must be watched, veiled, 
 suspected, secluded. Ali Beg says: “I 
 have often seen the people of Morocco 
 present the sultan with their daughters 
 “ he has married two of his own sisters 
 “ decorum requires that Mohammedans 
 never speak of women.” Girls and women 
 are not counted in taking the census. A 
 man having daughters, and no sons, regards 
 himself as childless. 
 
 It is fair to judge any religious system by 
 its fruits in the domestic family-life, by its 
 treatment of woman ; and, tried by this test, 
 Mohammedanism is a failure. What worse 
 condemnation of Islam can be found than 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 47 
 
 the Koranic precept which enjoins the 
 “ scourging of disobedient women ” ? 
 
 Alas for the eighty-five millions of Mo- 
 hammedan women living without consola- 
 tion and dying without hope ! 
 
 § VI. As a natural result of their treat- 
 ment of woman, we find in Islam, sixthly, 
 gross immorality. 
 
 The Rev. J. Vaughan, for nineteen years 
 a missionary in India, says: “However the 
 phenomenon may be accounted for, we, 
 after mixing with Hindoos and Mussul- 
 mans for nineteen years back, have no 
 hesitation in saying that the latter are, as 
 a whole, some degrees lower in the social 
 and moral scale than the former.” 
 
 In these days, when so much has been 
 written about the high ethical tone of 
 Islam, we shall speak plainly on this 
 subject, unpleasant as it is. We would 
 reiterate the position already taken, that 
 polygamy has not diminished licentiousness 
 among the Mohammedans. The sin of 
 
48 
 
 TIIE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 sodomy is so common among them as to 
 make them in many places objects of 
 dread to their neighbors. The burning 
 denunciations of the apostle Paul in the 
 first chapter of Romans, verses 24 and 27, 
 are applicable to tens of thousands in Mo- 
 hammedan lands to-day: “Wherefore God 
 also gave them up to uncleanness ; . . . men 
 with men working that which is unseemly, 
 and receiving in themselves that recompense 
 of their errors which was meet,” 
 
 In the city of Hamath, in Northern 
 Syria, the Christian population even to this 
 day are afraid to allow their boys from ten 
 to fourteen years of age to appear in the 
 streets after sunset, lest they be carried off 
 by the Moslems as victims of the horrible 
 practice of sodomy. Mohammedan pashas 
 surround themselves with fair -faced boys, 
 nominally as scribes and pages, when in 
 reality their object is of entirely another 
 character. A young English lord, travel- 
 ing in Syria some years since, entered the 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 49 
 
 Turkish baths in the city of Tripoli, when 
 he was set upon by a number of Moslems, 
 as the men of Sodom attempted to assail 
 the angelic guests of the righteous Lot, 
 and only with the greatest difficulty did 
 he effect his escape from their brutal 
 hands. They were arrested, bastinadoed 
 and sent to the Acre penitentiary. A 
 crime so abominable, unspeakable and in- 
 credible, instead of being checked by Mo- 
 hammedanism, is fostered by it, and it is 
 one of the scourges of Mohammedan so- 
 ciety. 
 
 § VII. Another of the untoward features 
 of Islam is untruthfulness, or, in plain lan- 
 guage, lying. 
 
 It is often asserted that the Moslems as 
 a class are truthful — more so than their 
 Greek, Armenian and Maronite neighbors 
 in Turkey. There can be no question that 
 the nominal Christian populations are far 
 enough from the scriptural standard — 
 “ Truth is fallen in the streets, and equity 
 
50 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 cannot enter” — but there is little to choose 
 between the different sects in this respect. 
 
 I have known men among the Moslems 
 comparatively truthful, but as a rule truth- 
 telling is one of the “ lost arts.” It is rare 
 even to find a man who can be believed 
 under oath, although the Orientals have a 
 superstitious fear of an oath. Perjury is 
 too common to be noticed, and even the 
 kadis, or judges of the Koranic law, are 
 notoriously corrupt and venal. According 
 to their law, none but Mohammedans can 
 testify in courts of law, and scores ot false 
 witnesses can be found in any large Moslem 
 town or city, although testimony is regard- 
 ed as a religious act offered in the presence 
 and to the very “ face of God.” 
 
 Although the Koran enjoins care for the 
 poor and the orphan, no poor man can se- 
 cure his rights in a Moslem court, where 
 everything is done by bribery. There seems 
 to be an utter collapse of restraining power 
 on the conscience where personal interest is 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 51 
 
 involved, and the spectacle of a man always 
 telling the truth on principle was something 
 unknown in the East before the revival of 
 evangelical Christianity. 
 
 Their highest and most solemn oath is 
 “ by the beard of Mohammed.” But in 
 these latter days they have found an oath 
 of even greater binding force, and now in 
 important cases they swear “by the ivord 
 of an Englishman .” 
 
 § VIII. Another obstacle in Islam is the 
 Koranic misrepresentation and perversions 
 of the person and teachings of Christ. 
 
 In Mohammed’s day (Sura v. 116) Jesus 
 is asked whether he said to men, “Receive 
 me and my mother as two Gods besides 
 God.” Also, “ They are certainly infidels 
 who say God is the third of three.” Mo- 
 hammed saw the pseudo-Gospels full of 
 prayers and hymns of praise to Mary, the 
 “theotokos” (mother of God), and the 
 Trinity was in those days converted into 
 a positive tritheism, regarding the Father, 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 52 
 
 the Son and the Spirit as three distinct Gods. 
 There is reason to suppose that Mohammed 
 inferred from the Mariolatry prevalent in 
 his time that the Trinity consisted of the 
 Father, the Son and the Virgin Mary ! 
 Whether we believe that he saw the New 
 Testament, and wilfully gave it a Jewish 
 interpretation, or that he only heard of it 
 through Jewish and Arian sources, it is 
 equally true that the Koran greatly mis- 
 represents the character ol Christ. It calls 
 him “ Christ the Word of God,” and yet 
 denounces those who call him God, and 
 “ repudiates all the leading dogmas of the 
 Christian faith.” “It attacks his divine 
 nature, denies his death, and utterly ig- 
 nores the redemption purchased by his 
 sufferings and death on Calvary. feura 
 xliii. 59 asserts that “ Christ is none other 
 than a servant whom God favored with 
 the gift of prophecy.” 
 
 Yet there is a plain contradiction in the 
 Koran with regard to the death of Christ. 
 
MISSION A R Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 53 
 
 Sura iv. 156 asserts that “ the Jews did not 
 really kill him,” while Sura iii. 47, 48 as- 
 serts that God said, “ O Jesus, verily I will 
 cause thee to die, and I will take thee up 
 unto me.” The Moslem doctors, in order 
 to explain away the latter verse, claim that 
 the death of Jesus is still future, and that 
 at his second coming into the world before 
 the Last Day he will die ; and in the city 
 of Medina, in the “ Hujrali,” or chamber 
 where Mohammed is buried, a vacant tomb 
 is left for “ Saiyidna Iesa ibn Mariam ” 
 (our Lord Jesus, the son of Mary), where 
 at his second coming, on the fulfillment of 
 his mission, he is to be buried. — Stobart, 
 p. 145. 
 
 § IX. Another obstacle is the aggressive 
 spirit still vital in Islam. 
 
 While it is true that Mohammedans do 
 not distribute the Koran, nor even sell it 
 to an unbeliever, there still exists not a 
 little of the old Crescentade spirit of the 
 seventh century. We have already alluded 
 
54 
 
 TIIE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 to the great Mohammedan missionary uni- 
 versity in Cairo, Egypt, with its ten thou- 
 sand pupils and three hundred Moham- 
 medan sheikhs as teachers. The central 
 and fundamental study is the Koran and the 
 Koranic literature, such as Arabic grammar, 
 prosody, logic, rhetoric, with Mohammedan 
 history and laws. These young men live 
 in ascetic simplicity, studying, eating and 
 sleeping on the floor, and boarding them- 
 selves at a cost of not far from four cents 
 a day. They are trained in the Koran, 
 and fitted to go forth throughout the Mo- 
 hammedan world as teachers and interpre- 
 ters of the Koran. They are a real power 
 in Asia and Africa, and Christian mission- 
 aries find the graduates of the Azhar their 
 ablest and most formidable adversaries in 
 these great dark continents. 
 
 When Stanley’s letter from Uganda was 
 published in England, mentioning his prop- 
 osition to King Mtesa to abandon his newly- 
 embraced Islam ism and accept Christianity, 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 55 
 
 and appealing to Christendom to send mis- 
 sionaries to this great African kingdom, the 
 letter was translated and published in the 
 Turkish and Arabic journals, which took 
 up the subject with great fervor. A Mos- 
 lem missionary society was formed in Con- 
 stantinople, and subscriptions raised in the 
 capital and Syria, for sending Arab Mo- 
 hammedan missionaries at once to confirm 
 King Mtesa in the faith. The outbreak 
 of the Russian war at the time interrupted 
 their plans, but it must be borne in mind 
 that the Mohammedan world is not wholly 
 asleep on the subject of the Christian mis- 
 sionary enterprises of our day. They are 
 poor in resources ; they have no great Bible, 
 tract and missionary societies to raise and 
 expend the means and train the men ; but 
 they have men, zealous, hardy, fearless, who 
 would welcome death in the swamps of 
 Africa as the sure passport to Paradise, 
 and who carry their Moslem principles 
 with them wherever they go. 
 
56 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 In Dutch India, Mohammedanism is ad- 
 vancing steadily. Dev. Dr. Sclireiber ot 
 the Dhenisli Missionary Society stated in 
 the London Missionary Conference in 1878 
 that “ there are several regions where Mo- 
 hammedanism is steadily winning ground, 
 but perhaps no place can be found where 
 that progress is faster, and at the same 
 time more astonishing and puzzling, than 
 it is in Dutch India, because there it goes 
 on not only in spite of the government of 
 a European Christian nation — nay, it would 
 appear that this government itself serves 
 to foster and forward Mohammedanism as 
 far as its boundaries extend.” He states 
 that this is the work of Moslem Malay 
 officials in the service of the Dutch gov- 
 ernment. He also says : “ There are few 
 proper Mohammedan missionaries in India, 
 but every Moslem, being zealous in fulfill- 
 ing his religious duties and very ardent to 
 propagate his creed, all of them do the 
 work of missionaries, especially the so-call- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 57 
 
 ed hadjis, whose number increases year by 
 year on account of the passage to Mecca 
 by steamer being now very cheap and easy. 
 In 1875 there were no less than five thou- 
 sand six hundred hadjis (pilgrims) from 
 Dutch India.” 
 
 In the African continent it should be re- 
 membered that the pagan tribes find Islam 
 a much easier creed to accept than Chris- 
 tianity. King Mtesa can retain his hun- 
 dred wives and be a good Moslem still. 
 Christianity comes with its severe moral 
 code — its demand of a full surrender of 
 the world, its insistence upon holiness of 
 life — and the pagan says, “This religion is 
 too narrow and severe for me.” 
 
 One of the weapons which the Moham- 
 medans are borrowing from Christianity in 
 fighting Christianity is the printed page. 
 The freedom of the press afforded by the 
 British government in India has opened 
 the way for spirited controversy between 
 the Christians and Mohammedans on the 
 
58 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 claims of Christianity and Islam. Dr. 
 Pfander wrote a book called Mezan el Hoc 
 — “The Balance of Truth ” — defending 
 Christianity and exposing the errors of 
 the Koran. This was replied to in a 
 ponderous volume styled Izhctv el Hoc 
 “Manifestation of the Truth — in which 
 the author defends the Koran and assails 
 the Bible and Christianity, quoting the oft- 
 refuted infidel arguments from the time of 
 Julian down to Voltaire. This book has 
 been translated into Arabic and introduced 
 into Egypt and Syria, although the Turkish 
 government has forbidden the publication 
 of Mezan el Hoc. Under the new Anglo- 
 Turkish treaty we may hope for new liberty 
 of the press and for full permission to reply 
 to Moslem controversial attacks upon Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 It is now our pleasant task to consider 
 the other side of the picture — the features 
 in Islam as a doctrine and a system which 
 may be called favorable to the future ac- 
 ceptance of Christianity and the Bible by 
 Mohammedans, together with certain provi- 
 dential facts which tend toward the same 
 consummation. 
 
 § I. The first is their belief in the unity 
 of God. 
 
 This is certainly a great advance on 
 polytheism and paganism. It is the rock, 
 the citadel, of their strength. “ There is 
 no God but God ” is a sublime expression 
 of faith. The outward reverence of the 
 Moslems for the one God, Allah, is most 
 impressive. The one hundred names or 
 titles of God are written in letters of gold 
 
 59 
 
60 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 around the cornices of the richly-ornament- 
 ed rooms and courts of Damascus, Cairo 
 and other Moslem cities. Among these 
 names are — the Omnipotent, the Eternal, 
 the Infinite, the Exalted, the Hearer, the 
 All-present, the Good, the Merciful, the 
 Compassionate, the King, the Only One, 
 the All-knowing, the Judge, the Kevealer, 
 the Kewarder, the Searcher, the Everlast- 
 ing, etc. In their belief of God’s unity 
 they proclaim eternal hostility to polythe- 
 ism and all association of another with God 
 in acts of worship. 
 
 It has been asserted by recent writers that 
 holiness is nowhere ascribed to God in the 
 Koran. This is incorrect. In Sura lxii. 1 
 we read: “All that is in the heavens and 
 all that is on the earth uttereth the praise 
 of God, the King, the Holy, the Mighty, 
 the Wise.” And in Sura lix. 23 : “ He 
 is God, beside whom there is no god : he 
 is the King, the Holy, the Peaceful, the 
 Faithful, the Guardian, the Mighty, the 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 61 
 
 Strong, the Most High.” And when we 
 remember the constant identity between 
 passages of the Koran and the Talmudic 
 perversions of scriptural histories and rab- 
 binic moral precepts, and the fact that 
 Mohammed had either seen or heard the 
 Psalms (as is proved from the quotation 
 of Ps. xxxvii. 29 in the Sura xxii. 105 — 
 “And now have we written in the Psalms 
 that my servants the righteous shall inherit 
 the earth”), it would be strange indeed had 
 he entirely omitted the title of holy from 
 among the names of God. Yet it is true 
 that the Mohammedans have no conception 
 of a holy God nor of holiness of life. The 
 moral standard of Mohammed himself was 
 so low that we cannot expect true ideas of 
 holiness among his followers. 
 
 It is impossible to determine whether 
 Mohammed would not have led his follow- 
 ers directly into Christianity had he under- 
 stood the meaning of the New Testament 
 doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity 
 
62 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 of Christ. The Moslems do use the name 
 “Word of God” and “Spirit of God,” but 
 are unable to explain what they mean by 
 the terms. The time will come, and has 
 already come to not a few of them, when 
 they will understand their need of a divine 
 Saviour, and cast themselves into the out- 
 stretched arms of Christ. 
 
 § II. The second favorable feature is their 
 reverence for the Old and New Testament 
 Scriptures. 
 
 It is an oft-mooted question* whether the 
 Bible was translated into Arabic before Mo- 
 hammed. St. Paul went to Arabia. A ery 
 early there were Christian martyrs and bish- 
 ops in Arabia. The first Arabian council 
 was held in 229, when Beryllus, bishop of 
 Philadelphia, was convicted of entertaining 
 wrong opinions of Christianity. Another, 
 in 247, condemned Arabians who held that 
 the souls of men die, and will come to life 
 
 * See Biblical Monuments. W. H. Rule, D. D., and J. C. 
 Anderson. London : 1871-73. 
 
MISSION All Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 63 
 
 again with their bodies. It is natural to 
 believe that the Arabian bishops would 
 have insisted on a due regard for the 
 written word of God. They must have 
 had Arabic copies of the Scriptures, or 
 read the Syriac and explained it in 
 Arabic. 
 
 It is said that during the lifetime of 
 Mohammed, between the years 569 and 
 632, Warka, the son of Nofel, translated 
 the Bible or some part of it into Arabic, 
 but that the version is no longer to be 
 found. It is unquestionable that Mo- 
 hammed knew of the Pentateuch and the 
 Psalms, which are sometimes written to- 
 gether in Arabic manuscripts, and that 
 he had knowledge of the Gospels. In 
 general terms he speaks of these collec- 
 tively as the Scriptures. 
 
 Beland published in Arabic, with a Latin 
 translation, a native Arab account (Relandus 
 de ReJig tone Mohammedica Ultrajecti , 1705, 
 pp. 19-25) of the religion of the Moham- 
 
64 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 medians, wliicli, whatever was its age, coin- 
 cides with the Koran itself in relation to 
 our present subject, and contains an express 
 acknowledgment of divine inspiration in 
 the sacred books of Jews and Christians, 
 as well as in their own. “Concerning the 
 divine books,” it says, “ faith in the books 
 of God consists in our being persuaded in 
 our mind and confessing with our tongue 
 that these glorious books, which he sent 
 down from heaven to his prophets, come 
 from God ; which ‘ sending down ’ from 
 heaven, or inspiration, has taken place 
 without creation, and from eternity without 
 material production. In these books are 
 contained the commands of God, with his 
 prohibitions and decrees, promises and 
 threatenings, and declarations of what is 
 lawful and unlawful, what is of obedience 
 and what is of rebellion, and where he 
 points out retributions both by rewaid and 
 punishment. All these books are the aeiy 
 word of God most high — a word which is 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 65 
 
 read with tongues, written down in books, 
 treasured in the minds of men. This word 
 of God is distinct from letters and written 
 words, but these letters and words are call- 
 ed by metaphor the ‘ word of God,’ because 
 that is what they truly indicate. . . . There 
 are one hundred and four of these books, 
 of which the most high God gave to Adam, 
 ten; to Seth, fifty; to Enoch (Idris), thirty; 
 to Abraham, ten ; to Moses, one, which is 
 the Law (Tourah) ; to Jesus, one, which is 
 the Gospel (Enjeel) ; to David, one, wdiicli 
 is the Book of Psalms ; to Mohammed, one, 
 which is the Koran al Furkan, or ‘ Decider.’ 
 “ He who denies these volumes, or doubts 
 any part of them, whether section or sen- 
 tence or word, surely he is an infidel. O 
 God, keep us safe from infidelity !” 
 
 It would be difficult to doubt that Mo- 
 hammed found both the Old and New Tes- 
 taments in the hands of the Arabs when he 
 gave them his own book, which he pretended 
 to be divine. He may have heard of certain 
 
G6 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 apocryphal Jewish or other books, and at- 
 tributed them to Adam and Seth and Enoch, 
 as did the Sabians. 
 
 The Koran was not to be translated, nor 
 could it be carefully read by any but be- 
 lievers in Mohammed, who declared himself 
 the last and greatest prophet oi God. 
 
 About 680 an Arab prince moved John, 
 patriarch of the Jacobites, to translate the 
 four Gospels from Syriac into Arabic. 
 Syriac had lost its ground as a lh ing 
 language. Mariana the historian affirms 
 that Juan, the prelate of Seville m the 
 reign of Favila the Goth, in 737, trans- 
 lated the Bible into the Arabic language 
 with the intention of helping both Chris- 
 tians and Moors. “ There are some copies 
 of this translation,” says Mariana, “which 
 have been preserved even to our time, and 
 are to be seen in some parts of Spain. 
 Mariana, Historia General de Espana, lib. 
 7, cap. 3. 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 67 
 
 “ When Hernando de Talavera, archbish- 
 op of Granada, one of the best of men, had 
 actually prepared an Arabic version of the 
 Bible for the instruction of the Moorish 
 population of the city, newly captured by 
 the army of Ferdinand and Isabella in 
 1492, the cardinal and inquisitor Ximenez, 
 the inquisitor-general Beza, and the pope, 
 Julius II., not only rebuked Hernando for 
 this godly work, but gave him a cruel pen- 
 ance of three years’ imprisonment as an 
 atonement for his sin.” 
 
 Sir William Muir lias published a list of 
 one hundred and thirty testimonies from 
 the Koran to the divine authority of the 
 Old and New Testaments. Among- them 
 are these (Sura v. 77) : “Oh, ye people of 
 the book (Jews and Christians), ye are not 
 grounded upon anything until ye observe 
 the Tourah (Old Testament) and the En- 
 jeel (New Testament), and that which hath 
 been revealed unto you from your Lord.” 
 Sura xxi. 105 : “ Verily, we have written 
 
68 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 in the Psalms, after the Law, that my ser- 
 vants the righteous shall inherit the earth.” 
 Sura vi. 90 : “ The Jews and Christians are 
 they to whom we have given the book and 
 wisdom and prophecy.” Sura iii. 2: “God! 
 there is no god but he, the living, the eter- 
 nal. He sent down the Tourali (Old Testa- 
 ment) and the Gospels from before, foi the 
 guidance of mankind.” Sura v. 50: “And 
 we caused Jesus the son of Mary to follow 
 in their (the prophets’) footsteps, attesting 
 the Scripture of the Tourali, which preceded 
 him ; and we gave him the Gospel, wherein 
 is guidance and light, which attests the 
 Tourali that preceded it, and a direction 
 and an admonition to the pious.” Sura 
 ix. 113: “And whether the believers slay 
 or be slain, the promise of God thereupon 
 is true in the Tourali and in the Gospel 
 and in the Koran.” 
 
 The only serious difficulty in the way of 
 a general reception of the Bible by the 
 Mohammedans is the charge by Moslem 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 69 
 
 writers that Christians have corrupted the 
 Bible. If you can convince a Moham- 
 medan that you have the genuine Old and 
 New Testaments mentioned in the Koran, 
 he will press it to his lips and his forehead 
 and read it with reverence ; and thousands 
 of copies of the Bible have already been 
 sold among them. 
 
 § III. They also reverence Christ as the 
 greatest of all the prophets before Mo- 
 hammed. 
 
 They always speak of him as Sayidna 
 Aiesa, “our lord Jesus,” as they say “our 
 lord Moses ” and “ our lord Mohammed.” 
 On the great mosque of Amweh in Damas- 
 cus is a beautiful minaret called “the min- 
 aret of Jesus the son of Mary ;” and the 
 Moslems believe that Christ will descend 
 upon this minaret at the Last Day to judge 
 the world. I once knew a Mohammedan 
 pasha to bastinado a Moslem for cursing 
 the name of Christ. 
 
 § IV. Again, although they regard all 
 
70 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 but themselves as infidels, they have espe- 
 cial respect for Christians and Jews as 
 the “ people of a hook ” — Ehel Kitab. 
 
 At the time of the massacre of the Chris- 
 tians in Damascus in 1860 by a fanatical 
 mob of Druses, Moslems, Turkish soldiers 
 and Ivoords, Abd-ul-Kadir, the Algerine 
 emir, a man learned in the Koran and of 
 high personal character, charged down upon 
 the bloodthirsty mob with his faithful body- 
 guard of one hundred Algerines, crying, “ I <3 
 are the infidels. A\ ill ye massacre the peo- 
 ple of a book, who are paying tribute to our 
 sultan and theirs?” He turned the tide of 
 blood and rescued twelve thousand Christians 
 from a terrible death, and when the news of 
 his noble conduct reached Christian lands 
 he received decorations from all the govern- 
 ments of Europe, and from the United States. 
 
 § V. It is also a favorable feature that 
 the Mohammedans hate idols and idolatry 
 with perfect hatred. 
 
 Never was such an iconoclastic uprising 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 71 
 
 as that of the followers of Khalecl and Omar 
 in their conquest of Syria and Egypt, and 
 of successive Moslem leaders in Asia and 
 Africa. When the king of Lahore in the 
 year 997 begged the victorious Mahmoud 
 of Ghuzni to spare the temple of Tannas- 
 sar, the most holy place, the very Mecca, 
 of the Hindoos, Mahmoud replied that “the 
 followers of Mohammed were vowed to root 
 out idolatry.” The shrine of the god was 
 pillaged and the image of Juggoom smash- 
 ed into a thousand atoms, which were sent 
 to pave the streets of Ghuzni, Mecca and 
 Baghdad. The old Greek and Roman 
 statues still remaining in Syria, Palestine 
 and Egypt in the time of Mohammed were 
 thrown down, decapitated and defaced. No 
 less than ten thousand Oriental Christian 
 churches filled with pictures and images 
 ■were condemned to the same fate as idol 
 shrines, and either destroyed by being 
 pulled down or purged of idols and con- 
 verted into mosques. 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 72 
 
 The same spirit marks their course to-day 
 in Central Africa, in Dutch India and in 
 China. For ages they believed that all 
 Christians were equally idolatrous in the 
 use of images and pictures as objects of 
 worship, and they hated all alike. It is 
 only within the past half century that they 
 have learned that there is a vast body ot 
 Christians who believe in Christ and hate 
 idolatry as earnestly as themselves. When 
 the time comes for their conversion to 
 Christianity, as it must come, it will not 
 be to Latin or Greek Christianity, but to 
 the simpler and purer form ol the 1 rotest- 
 ant evangelical faith. 
 
 § VI. Another characteristic of Moham- 
 medans is their reverence for laic. 
 
 Their laws are religious, embodied in the 
 Koran, the Sunna and the opinions of the 
 imams. They are trained to obedience to 
 law. Many of their laws are good, though 
 better adapted to a primitive pastoral or 
 nomad state of society than to the modern 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 73 
 
 state witli its commercial and international 
 relations. Intense as is their adherence to 
 the Koran, yet when the existing govern- 
 ment, whether Mohammedan as in Turkey, 
 or Christian as in India, enacts a law, they 
 are ready to obey, and whenever there is a 
 seeming conflict between the old Koranic 
 law and the modern code, their muftis stand 
 ready with legal opinions to reconcile the 
 apparent or real contradiction, set aside the 
 old and legalize the new. This regard for 
 law makes them readily acquiescent in the 
 existing order of things, whether the ruler 
 be Mohammedan or Christian. 
 
 § VII. Again, it is greatly in favor of the 
 Mohammedans that as a rule they practice 
 total abstinence from intoxicating drinks. 
 
 One of the chief reasons which moved 
 Mohammed to prohibit the use of wine 
 was undoubtedly to make them different 
 from Christians, Jews and pagans, all of 
 whom used wine. Abstinence on the part 
 of the Moslems is a part of their ritual. 
 
74 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 They are promised rivers of wine in Para- 
 dise, but forbidden its use on earth. The 
 orthodox will hardly cultivate grapes, fear- 
 in g the evil effects of wine. The use of 
 coffee as a universal beverage in the East 
 has had much to do with the temperate 
 habits of the people ; coffee is always offer- 
 ed to guests and transient callers. There 
 are many of the official class, especially 
 among the Osmanli Turks, who drink to 
 excess, but they are the exceptions to the 
 rule. I have known the Mohammedan 
 pashas repeatedly to shut up every grog- 
 shop in the town, and only allow them 
 opened again by the protests of some 
 European consul whose proteges were en- 
 gaged in the traffic. 
 
 § VIII. It is also an important element 
 in Mohammedan character that they all be- 
 lieve in the need of a religion and in the 
 certainty of future retribution. 
 
 They have no respect for a man who has 
 no religion. 
 
MISSION AR Y PROBLEM. 
 
 75 
 
 § IX. The doctrine of fate, and of abso- 
 lute surrender to the decree and will of 
 God, are elements of strength in the Mos- 
 lem character. 
 
 In times of pestilence, when others flee, 
 the Moslems stand at their posts. What- 
 ever may be said of the wisdom of remain- 
 ing in crowded cities during a pestilence 
 when a salubrious mountain-climate is near 
 and accessible, one cannot fail to admire 
 their fearless firmness in the hour of dan- 
 ger. This doctrine of fate may yet play 
 an important part in restraining the fanat- 
 ical passions of the Moslem multitude when 
 great movements toward Christianity begin 
 to take place among them. Were the Arab 
 Moslems to hear to-morrow that the sultan 
 himself had become a Christian, it is not 
 unlikely that the only thought would be, 
 “It is the decree of God;” “It is mukod- 
 dar, kismet “ Let the will of God be 
 done !” 
 
 ^ X. Another favorable feature in the 
 
76 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 case is the predominant and growing influ- 
 ence of Christian nations in Mohammedan 
 countries. 
 
 In the fifteenth century the Crescent 
 ruled from Burmah to Gibraltar and in 
 all Central Asia and Northern Africa. 
 Since then not less than fifty millions of 
 Mohammedans have passed under Christian 
 rule. The Moslem princes of India yield 
 loyal obedience to a Christian queen ; Abd- 
 ul - Ivadir, the emir of Algiers, lives in 
 Damascus on a pension from Christian 
 France ; the emir Abd-er-Raliman of At- 
 cheen in Sumatra has just been exiled, on 
 a pension from the Holland government, 
 to reside in Mecca; and the family of 
 Schamyl, the Circassian chief, are under 
 Russian support and protection — to say 
 nothin 0 ' of the other Central Asian chiefs 
 who are now subjects ol Russia. 
 
 Of the estimated one hundred and sev- 
 enty-five millions of Mohammedans in the 
 world — 
 
MISSION A R Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 77 
 
 England in India 
 Russia in Central Asia 
 France in Africa 
 
 rules over 41,000,000 
 
 “ 6,000,000 
 
 “ 2,000,000 
 
 Holland in Java and Celebes “ 1,000,000 
 
 Under Christian governments, 50,000,000 
 
 It is religiously wrong to pay tribute to 
 infidels, and yet nearly one-third of the 
 Mohammedan world is under infidel rule. 
 
 It is generally conceded that the political 
 power and unity of Islam is to-day the chief 
 remaining pillar of its strength. When this 
 is broken, and Moslems can no longer col- 
 lect tribute from infidels, wage against them 
 successful wars, replenish their polygamous 
 hareems with slave-girls, and enforce their 
 own politico-religious calendar of fasts, feasts 
 and civil regulations upon others than their 
 own sect, they will be far more accessible to 
 argument and reason. When the scimitar 
 falls their confidence in their own system 
 will fall. A highly-educated Mohammedan 
 Egyptian recently remarked to Rev. T. P. 
 
THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Hughes, an English missionary, “No intel- 
 ligent man believes in the teaching of the 
 Moslem divines, for our religion is not in 
 keeping with the progress of thought.” 
 
 Islam is losing its vital power in its old 
 seats. Mr. Hughes justly remarks : “ The 
 Arabian prophet over-legislated, and, as we 
 now see in Turkey, it is impossible for civ- 
 ilized Mohammedans to be tied hand and 
 foot by laws and social customs which were 
 intended for Arabian society as it existed 
 twelve hundred years ago ; whilst, on the 
 contrary, Christianity legislates in spirit, 
 and can therefore be adapted to the spir- 
 itual and social necessities of mankind in 
 the various stages of human thought and 
 civilization.” 
 
 § XI. Another interesting feature in the 
 relations of Islam to Christianity is the fact 
 that, widely extended as is the Mohammed- 
 an religion, it is completely encircled by 
 Anglo-Saxon, Christian political and civil 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 79 
 
 England holds Gibraltar, Malta and Cy- 
 prus ; controls the navigation of the Suez 
 Canal and the Red Sea ; holds Aden on the 
 south coast of Arabia ; the whole of India, 
 with three hundred millions of people, of 
 whom forty-one millions are Mohammedans ; 
 Singapore and Hong-Kong ; the island-world 
 of Australia ; New Zealand, Cape Colony, 
 Natal, the Transvaal and Sierra Leone ; 
 and to-day colonies of Anglo-Saxon Chris- 
 tian men are pushing their way inward 
 from the eastern coast of Africa to that 
 great lake-region of Central Africa discov- 
 ered by Burton, Baker and Speke, Living- 
 stone and Stanley. And not only does 
 British power thus encircle Islam, the 
 queen of England ruling over more Mo- 
 hammedans than the sultan and the shah 
 combined, but there is another fact of no 
 less importance which will have a direct 
 bearing on the future of Islam. It is 
 this : that everywhere the Moslems hold 
 the English — the Amdiz — in the highest 
 
80 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 esteem. At the time of the annual pil- 
 grimage to Mecca, when hundreds of thou- 
 sands of pilgrims often meet together from 
 all parts of Asia and Northern Africa, they 
 compare notes and interchange views with 
 regard to their respective countries. The 
 Mohammedans of India testify to the Mos- 
 lems of the West that they have in India 
 what no other Moslems possess — a just 
 government and an incorruptible judiciary. 
 Say they : “ We have British judges who 
 decide according to the law and the facts, 
 whom no money can bribe, and before whom 
 a Hindoo is as good as an Englishman, and 
 a poor man as good as a rich man.” I have 
 heard Mohammedans in Syria say, “Would 
 that we had British judges here!” This con- 
 fidence in English veracity and integrity is 
 so decided that Lord Macaulay forty years 
 ago stated, in his essay on Lord Clive, that 
 “ the entire history of British India is an 
 illustration of the great truth that the most 
 efficient weapon with which man can en- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 81 
 
 counter falsehood is truth. During a long 
 course of years the English rulers of India, 
 surrounded by allies and enemies whom no 
 engagement could bind, have generally act- 
 ed with sincerity and uprightness ; and the 
 event has proved that sincerity and upright- 
 ness are wisdom. English valor and Eng- 
 lish intelligence have done less to extend 
 and to preserve our Oriental empire than 
 English veracity. No oath which supersti- 
 tion can devise, no hostage however precious, 
 inspires a hundredth part of the confidence 
 which is produced by the ‘Yea, yea’ and 
 ‘Nay, nay’ of a British envoy. The great- 
 est advantage which a government can 
 possess is to be the one trustworthy gov- 
 ernment in the midst of governments 
 which nobody can trust. This advantage 
 we enjoy in Asia.” 
 
 And this advantage the English enjoy 
 to-day to a tenfold greater degree than in 
 the days of Lord Macaulay. Wherever an 
 Englishman or an American may travel 
 
82 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 among Mohammedans (for they call both 
 Angliz, as having the same language and 
 religion) he will be received with hospi- 
 tality. Let him journey among the Koords 
 of Armenia, the Shea Moslems ot Persia, 
 the Bedawin Arabs ol the Desert, the moie 
 cultivated Mohammedans of Damascus, Cairo 
 and Baghdad, the semi-savage and fanatical 
 Yezbeks of Asia Minor, the hardy mountain- 
 eers of Albania, or the merciless Circassians 
 now scattered all over the Turkish empire, 
 and his English name will everywhere en- 
 sure him a friendly welcome. 
 
 At the close of the late Russo- Turkish 
 war, when the victorious legions ot Russia 
 crossed the Balkans, the tens of thousands 
 of Circassians who had been engaged before 
 and during the war in the massacre ot the 
 Bulgarian Christians and the pillage of then- 
 towns and churches fled panicstricken toward 
 Constantinople and the Bosphorus. Nearly 
 three hundred thousand of these wild fanat- 
 ics threatened the peace of the capital, until 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 83 
 
 the sultan, at the urgent request of the Euro- 
 pean ambassadors, ordered their removal by 
 steamer to Asiatic Turkey. Fifty thousand 
 were assigned to Syria, and two hundred and 
 fifty thousand to Asia Minor, and, to our dis- 
 may, the Austrian Lloyds steamers began to 
 land them by thousands at the Syrian ports. 
 Twenty-five hundred were landed in Beirut 
 and quartered in the mosques and khans, 
 and afterward sent to Damascus and vicin- 
 ity. Seventeen thousand were landed at 
 Tripoli and sent to the region of Hums 
 and Hamath. 
 
 I was at the port of Tripoli in March, 
 1878, when five thousand Circassians were 
 landed from two Austrian steamers, and 
 walked down to the shore with the Amer- 
 ican missionary, Mr. Hardin, to see the 
 strange sight. A crowd of their emirs 
 or chiefs stood by us watching the de- 
 barkation. All of these immigrants were 
 armed ; each one had a sword, dagger, rifle 
 and two Colt’s navy revolvers. I asked 
 
84 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 one of the chiefs to show me his revolver. 
 He handed me one, and as I returned it 
 lie patted my shoulder and said, “ Angliz ? 
 El Angliz wa es Shirkas sowa-sowa.” He 
 spoke in Turkish, and a native Syrian 
 standing by translated it into Arabic : 
 “ Are you English ? The English and 
 Circassians are all one." I did not feel 
 complimented by the kind declaration, but 
 it was a relief to know that these wild 
 creatures, who hate the Russians with 
 deadly hatred and have little regard for 
 the sultan, do hold the English in the 
 highest esteem. But for this fact they 
 would form an element of the most men- 
 acing character in the population of Syria. 
 
 When the port of Batoum was ceded to 
 Russia the Mohammedan Lazis of the vi- 
 cinity, to the number oi thousands, refused 
 to evacuate the town, and prepared tor war. 
 The sultan in vain ordered them to leave. 
 At length a word from the British ambas- 
 sador in Constantinople induced them to 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 85 
 
 abandon hostilities and return to their 
 homes in peace. 
 
 They swear by the word of an English- 
 man, and look on the English as their 
 friends. At the opening of the Afghan 
 war the official Mohammedan journal of 
 Constantinople declared that if the Af- 
 ghans fought England they would forfeit 
 the confidence and sympathy of the whole 
 Mohammedan world, as they would be 
 fighting against the friends of the Mo- 
 hammedans. 
 
 Another fact which has increased the 
 confidence of Mohammedans in Syria in 
 the Angliz has been the residence among 
 them of some representatives of that no- 
 blest style and stamp of man, the British 
 Christian merchant. More potent than the 
 sermons or the tracts of missionaries has 
 been the silent influence of British mer- 
 chants I might name, who, in the tempta- 
 tions of trade, the crookedness, duplicity 
 and corruptness of native merchants and 
 
86 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 officials, liave maintained their integrity 
 untarnished, until the highest and most 
 sacred oath a Moslem can swear, even 
 above the oatli by the beard of the 
 Prophet, is by the ivord of an English- 
 man ! All honor to those pure-minded 
 and upright Britons who have thus taught 
 the corrupt and immoral Orientals that 
 there are men who will stand to their word 
 even to their own loss, and whose word 
 becomes the synonym of truth, integrity 
 and purity ! 
 
 I once stood in a Moslem shop in the 
 ancient Hamath and overheard a Moham- 
 medan near by emphasizing his word by 
 the most solemn oath he could command, 
 and he finally clinched his assertion by 
 swearing on the word of Mr. B , the 
 Englishman in Beirut. 
 
 This extraordinary confidence in the 
 English, taken in connection with the re- 
 cent British protectorate extended over 
 Asiatic Turkey, is an element of the 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 87 
 
 greatest importance in the future relations 
 of Christianity to Islam. 
 
 It is not a mere accident that so many 
 millions of men, or at least the chief 
 nations among them, should have given 
 their confidence to the leading Christian 
 colonizing and civilizing power of the 
 world. 
 
 § XII. And connected with this is their 
 belief that Protestant Christianity is the 
 • purest form of faith in the world, the 
 nearest in doctrine and worship to their 
 own. 
 
 Up to a comparatively late period the 
 Moslems looked on all Christians as alike 
 creature - worshipers and idolaters. They 
 have now found out their mistake. They 
 say that a Protestant is a man who tells 
 the truth and worships God and follows 
 the Book. They perceive that Protestants 
 alone are zealous in the distribution of the 
 Scriptures, and that they abhor every trace 
 and vestige of creature-worship. This fact 
 
88 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 will not be without its weight in the com- 
 ing missionary age of work among the 
 Mohammedans. 
 
 § XIII. Another important fact in con- 
 nection with the relations ol Islam to Chris- 
 tianity is the confidence beginning to be 
 reposed in American missionaries by the 
 people and the rulers in Mohammedan 
 countries. 
 
 Forty years since no Mohammedan sheikh 
 would teach the sacred Arabic to a foreigner, 
 yet the leading Arabic Mohammedan scholar 
 in Syria aided Dr. Van Dyck for years in 
 the translation of the Bible into Arabic, and 
 now Mohammedan boys are studying Arabic 
 under Christian teachers in American mis- 
 sion-schools. 
 
 In the sad battle-summer of 1860, that 
 bloody year of massacre and civil war, Mr. 
 Calhoun of the Syria mission was at his 
 station in Abeili (Ahbay), Mount Lebanon. 
 That town is the home of several noted 
 families of Druse beys and sheikhs. The 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 89 
 
 Druses and Maronites were in deadly strife, 
 and the Maronite men had all fled to Beirut, 
 leaving their women and children behind. 
 Before leaving, however, they brought all 
 their treasures to the house of Mr. Calhoun. 
 Bags and bundles of gold coin and jewels, 
 silk raiment and household treasures, were 
 brought and thrown down in the court of 
 Mr. Calhoun’s house, without a receipt and 
 with scarcely a label ; and there they were 
 safe. The war went on. Day by day vil- 
 lages were burned and the whole country 
 was sickened with dreadful stories of bloody 
 massacre and outrage. Yet every morning 
 and evening the Druse beys and sheikhs 
 called at Mr. Calhoun’s house to assure him 
 that no one should molest him, and that not 
 a house in Abeili should be burned or in- 
 jured. They kept their word. Then the 
 tide turned. All Europe was aroused by 
 the news of Syrian massacres, and a British 
 fleet and a French army of six thousand 
 troops came to Beirut. The French army 
 
90 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 moved into Lebanon, and with it the refu- 
 gee Maronites returning full of vengeance 
 against the Druses. The Druses now fled 
 to Hauran, east of the Jordan. But before 
 leaving they in turn brought their treasures, 
 their gold and jewels, to the house of Mr. 
 Calhoun for safety. 
 
 During the late Russo-Turkisli war the 
 town of Eski Zagra fell alternately into the 
 hands of the Russians and the Turks. The 
 American missionaries, Messrs. Bond and 
 Marsh, had conducted themselves with such 
 prudence and kindness toward all parties 
 that when the city was given over to massa- 
 cre, pillage and conflagration the Mohamme- 
 dan neighbors not only protected them from 
 the uplifted sword of a Circassian, but went 
 to the Turkish military head-quarters and 
 obtained a guard oi regular troops, who 
 watched over them during that terrible 
 night of July 31, 1877. An old Moslem 
 had) a (teacher) pleaded with the Circassian 
 robber until the sweat ran down his face, 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 91 
 
 and finally bribed him to leave the premises 
 undisturbed. The Turkish governor also 
 treated the missionaries with the greatest 
 kindness, and they escaped, after great pri- 
 vation and suffering, safely to Constanti- 
 nople. 
 
 At a recent dedication of a Protestant 
 church edifice in a Syrian village, where the 
 workmen had been molested by some of the 
 “ baser sort ” of Mohammedans and a riot 
 had been threatened, twelve of the principal 
 Moslem sheikhs and old men attended the 
 dedication-service, joining in the singing and 
 behaving with the greatest decorum. They 
 had come to show their regard for the mis- 
 sionary and to ensure good order on the 
 occasion. 
 
 The town of Zeitoon in Asia Minor is a 
 rough mountain-village, inhabited by Arme- 
 nians, all of whom are armed, brave and 
 resolute, and for years not only threatened 
 to kill any missionary or Protestant who 
 should visit them, but defied the Turkish 
 
92 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 government itself. Years passed. They were 
 subdued by the Turks, and some of them 
 embraced the gospel. At length the exac- 
 tions of the Turkish local rulers became in- 
 tolerable. One hundred men took up arms, 
 refused to pay the money levied upon them, 
 attacked the police, released a multitude of 
 their townsmen unjustly imprisoned, and 
 took refuge in the mountain-fastnesses. The 
 Turkish local governor telegraphed for troops 
 to subdue Zeitoon again. Moslem fanaticism 
 was appealed to, and a massacre was immi- 
 nent. Just at that time Kamil Pasha, one 
 of the most enlightened of Turkish officials, 
 long governor of Beirut, and who has a son 
 in the Beirut College, was waly, or governor- 
 general, of the province of Aleppo, which 
 included Aintab, Marash and Zeitoon. He 
 telegraphed to Rev. Id. Marden, the American 
 missionary in Aintab, requesting him to go 
 to Zeitoon and act as commissioner from the 
 Turkish government to arrange peace with 
 the Zeitoon rebels without a resort to arms. 
 
MISS TON A R Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 93 
 
 Mr. Marden accepted the proposal, and set 
 out for Zeitoon, attended through the robber- 
 fastnesses of the mountains by a Turkish 
 cavalry-guard ; but when they reached the 
 confines of Zeitoon the guard turned back 
 and Mr. M. went on alone. He was kindly 
 received. The wild people of Zeitoon, who 
 had no confidence in the Turkish govern- 
 ment, had perfect confidence in the mis- 
 sionary. The Turkish waly, who had no 
 confidence in the Zeitoonites, trusted im- 
 plicitly in the missionary. After full con- 
 ference with the Zeitoon people by day and 
 with the rebel chiefs by night, peace was 
 settled. The arms and horses captured from 
 the police were given up to Mr. Marden, 
 to be taken back to Marash. All agreed 
 to submit to the government on condition 
 that they be relieved from oppression. Mr. 
 Marden’s report was accepted. The army 
 was recalled, the local governor removed, a 
 Christian governor appointed over the town, 
 and the waly telegraphed his thanks and the 
 
94 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 thanks of his government for what he had 
 done in the interests of peace and humanity. 
 
 Quite recently Dr. Barnum, an American 
 missionary in Ivharpoot, Eastern Turkey, 
 lias been appointed by the Turkish govern- 
 ment as a member of the board of education. 
 
 A volume might be filled with facts and 
 incidents illustrating the same general truth. 
 
 § XI Y. Again, in the conflict between 
 civilization and barbarism Islam must be 
 the loser. 
 
 The religion of Mohammed and its legal 
 code are adapted to a simple pastoral or 
 nomad state of society. It is not only not 
 adapted to modern commerce and civiliza- 
 tion, but is in direct conflict with them. 
 Interest, commissions and banks are con- 
 trary to the letter and the spirit of Mo- 
 hammedan law. Quarantines are religious- 
 ly illegal. And yet there are an Imperial 
 Ottoman Bank, a code of new laws regu- 
 lating interest, notes, commissions and com- 
 merce, and a system of rigid quarantine 
 
3IISSI0NAEY PROBLEM. 
 
 95 
 
 lias been established throughout the Mo- 
 hammedan empire. The sultan and his 
 officers are constantly obliged to obtain 
 new fetwas or legal decisions legalizing 
 what is religiously illegal and contrary to 
 the convictions and belief of the readers 
 of the Koran. The advance of education 
 and popular knowledge will expose the 
 absurdities of many parts of Mohammedan 
 doctrine and practice. It is a sin to sub- 
 ject the sacred name of God to pressure 
 in a printing-press. Geography will teach 
 them that there are quarters of the globe 
 where the observance of the fast of Rama- 
 dan would be impossible, and the growth 
 of Christian political power will convince 
 them that the Jehad, or religious war for 
 the faith, has been fought for the last 
 time. 
 
 § XV. Another fact which places Islam 
 at a disadvantage is the superior facilities 
 and methods in the hands of Christians , 
 and which are the outgrowth of Christian- 
 
96 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 ity, for tlie propagation of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 The Moslems have no tract or Bible so- 
 cieties, and nothing corresponding to any 
 extent to our modern missionary literature 
 and material and intellectual appliances 
 for enlightening and benefiting the world. 
 The Koran cannot be translated. It may 
 be paraphrased, as in the Urdu, the Javan 
 and Malayan languages, but only when in- 
 terlineated in the Arabic original. There 
 is no attempt to print and distribute the 
 Koran. There are no Koran societies or 
 funds. They will not even sell the book 
 to a known unbeliever. Ordinarily they 
 would scorn the proposition to explain 
 their system to a Christian. Their chief 
 propagandism in our day is among rude 
 and barbarous tribes, as in Africa or the 
 East Indies, where the iconoclastic spirit, 
 carried by force of arms, enables them to 
 force their doctrines upon the people. 
 
 § XVI. Another favorable fact bearing 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 97 
 
 on the future of Islam is the fact that the 
 Bible is now translated into the Arabic, the 
 sacred language of the Koran, and into the 
 Osmanli Turkish, the court language of the 
 sultan, the caliph of Mohammed. 
 
 More than fifty years ago the first band 
 of American missionaries landed on the 
 then little known and inhospitable shores 
 of Syria. They found themselves con- 
 fronted by the difficult Arabic language, 
 strange customs and the united and des- 
 perate hostility of Christian ecclesiastics 
 and Mohammedan rulers. The Christian 
 population was sunken so low in intel- 
 lectual attainments that hardly a Maronite 
 or Greek could be found capable of giving 
 instruction in the Arabic language ; and 
 such was the fanatical exclusiveness of the 
 Moslem ulema that for years not one of 
 them would teach the Arabic grammar to 
 a European, or even to a native Christian. 
 There were no readers excepting the Mo- 
 hammedans taught in the medrisehs at- 
 
98 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 taclied to tlie mosques, and no books but 
 Arabic manuscripts ot a religious or scho- 
 lastic character. The missionaries offered 
 to the Mohammedans two things — the 
 Bible and the Christian religion. The 
 Bible was the old Arabic translation made 
 by the Propaganda in Borne and printed 
 in London. The Moslems replied: “This 
 Bible cannot be the word of God ; bad 
 grammar cannot be inspired. And as to 
 
 o 
 
 Christianity, we have lived among Chris- 
 tians for twelve hundred years, and we 
 want no such religion. Look at Greeks 
 and Maronites bowing down in their 
 churches to pictures and images, offering 
 incense, burning candles and abjectly kiss- 
 in 0 ’ in idolatrous homage the work of 
 their own hands. There is no God but 
 God !” 
 
 What were the missionaries to do? Two 
 things were to be done : the one, to translate 
 the Bible anew into the Arabic language; 
 and the other, to found a pure evangelical 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 99 
 
 Church in the Turkish empire which would 
 show to the Mohammedans the Christian 
 religion in its purity, in a pure morality, 
 and in worship free from idolatry and 
 creature-worship. These two things have 
 been done. An evangelical Church was 
 formed. It has grown until there are a 
 hundred evangelical churches, with a mem- 
 bership of thousands, all over the empire, 
 and the Armenian, Greek and other Ori- 
 ental churches are agitated with plans and 
 projects for reform brought forward by 
 their young men enlightened and edu- 
 cated in Protestant schools or inspired 
 with the influence of Protestant literature 
 and enterprise. 
 
 The work of Bible translation was under- 
 taken at an early day, and after twenty 
 years of labor by those distinguished Arabic 
 scholars, Drs. Eli Smith and Van Dyck, the 
 Arabic Bible was completed in 1865. The 
 Bible has also been translated into ten other 
 languages in the empire ; and it is a signifi- 
 
10(3 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 cant fact in the providence of God that just 
 at the present juncture of political affairs, 
 when, by the Treaty of Berlin, liberty of 
 conscience has been asserted to be the law of 
 the Turkish empire, the revised translation 
 of the Bible into the Osmanli Turkish is 
 printed and ready for the Mohammedan 
 Turks. 
 
 The preparation of the Bible in the Arabic 
 language and in the various vernacular dia- 
 lects of the Moslem nations gives the Chris- 
 tian a vast advantage in the coming strug- 
 gle with Islam. "We not only have the testi- 
 mony of the Koran to the Scriptures, but 
 the Scriptures themselves in a translation 
 classical and accurate, printed in a cheap 
 and attractive form, electrotyped and printed 
 from duplicate plates in New York, London 
 and Beirut, and ready for the whole Arabic- 
 speaking and Arabic-reading world. And 
 in this appears the providence of God in 
 the wide spread of the Arabic language. 
 Wherever Mohammedanism has extended 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 101 
 
 it carried with it the Koran, and the Koran 
 has carried with it the Arabic language. 
 According to the Moslem doctrine of in- 
 spiration, every sentence, word, letter and 
 vowel-point in the Koran was written in 
 heaven by the finger of God and given to 
 the angel Gabriel, by whom it was given to 
 Mohammed. The inspiration thus resting in 
 the very words and letters, the Koran cannot 
 be translated. The Arabic is the sacred lan- 
 guage. If you would ensure the acceptance 
 of the Bible by a Mohammedan, offer it to 
 him in the sacred Arabic. Sixty millions 
 of men speak the Arabic as their vernacular, 
 and one hundred and seventy-five millions 
 read the Koran, if at all, in the Arabic. 
 The new Arabic Bible is looked upon by the 
 Mohammedans with reverence, and many of 
 them regard it as the long-lost Old and New 
 Testaments, now recovered in their original 
 purity. 
 
 The Bible is now entering the ranks of 
 Islam throughout Africa and Asia. From 
 
102 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Peking; in China to Sierra Leone on the 
 Atlantic, throughout one hundred and twenty- 
 degrees of longitude, this living word ot life 
 is being distributed and read. We believe 
 that the day is not far distant when the Bible 
 will be sold in Mecca itself. But it is not 
 a little gained when we can say that there 
 is hardly a Mohammedan in Asia or Africa 
 who, when he reads in the Koran the words 
 already quoted, “ The promise of God is true 
 in the Tourah and in the Gospel,” cannot 
 find that Tourah and Gospel already trans- 
 lated into the sacred Arabic of the Koran, 
 if not in his own vernacular. It is on sale 
 in Arabic in Jerusalem and Damascus, in 
 Alexandria and Cairo, in Constantinople 
 and Aleppo, in Mosul and Baghdad, in Te- 
 heran and Tabriz, in Delhi and Agra, in 
 Calcutta and Bombay, in Shanghai, Canton 
 and Peking, in Zanzibar and Khartoom, in 
 Algiers and Tunis, in Liberia and Sierra 
 Leone. 
 
 In addition to the work of Bible trans- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 103 
 
 lation and distribution, the missionaries in 
 Syria and other parts of Turkey have pre- 
 pared and published in the language of the 
 people hundreds of volumes of religious, 
 educational and scientific books, have opened 
 hundreds of common schools, besides found- 
 ing five colleges, nearly a dozen female semi- 
 naries, six theological seminaries and a med- 
 ical college. These schools have stimulated 
 other sects and communities to found schools 
 of their own, so that the work of popular 
 education is advancing with great rapidity. 
 
 There are now in Syria proper, not in- 
 cluding Palestine or Asia Minor, eleven 
 thousand children in evangelical schools, of 
 whom nearly one-half are girls. In the 
 city of Beirut alone are nearly nine thou- 
 sand children in the various schools, of 
 whom thirty-three hundred are under Prot- 
 estant instruction. Tw r enty years ago there 
 were not probably three hundred children at 
 school in that entire city. There are now in 
 Beirut twelve printing-presses, of which five 
 
104 
 
 THE M OH A M MED A N 
 
 belong to Protestants. There are nine news- 
 papers and magazines, of which six are Prot- 
 estant. The number of pages of Arabic 
 printed at the American press in Beirut in 
 the year 1877 was 12,630,000, and the whole 
 number of pages printed from the first has 
 been 172,441,000. 
 
 In addition to all these statistics, and 
 others which we have not space to mention, 
 it should be borne in mind that there is a 
 gradual leavening process going on in society 
 throughout the East, removing the old prej- 
 udice against Protestant Christianity ; a won- 
 derful awakening of the popular mind in 
 favor of female education ; a desire for books 
 and periodical literature ; a willingness to 
 read the Bible; a relaxation of priestly 
 and ecclesiastical opposition and persecuting 
 power; and, in fine, a widespread prepa- 
 ration for the preaching and teaching of 
 evangelical truth, such as has not been 
 known since the days of the apostles. 
 
 § XVII. And, lastly, it is the universal 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 105 
 
 belief of the Modems that in the latter day 
 there will be a universal apostasy from 
 Islam, when the true faith will cease to 
 exist. 
 
 The signs of the latter day are various, 
 and among them that the sun will rise in the 
 west, and a cold, odoriferous wind blow from 
 Syria which will sweep away the souls of all 
 believers and the Koran itself. There is 
 no prophecy or expectation that all the 
 world will be converted to Islam. The old 
 doctrine of carrying the Koran by force of 
 arms into all nations is going into disuse. 
 In Christianity the belief that the world 
 belongs to Christ is a tremendous power, 
 giving life and hope to the Church. The 
 promises of Christ and his command to 
 teach all nations imply that all nations are 
 to be taught. The promise to Moses, given 
 in the darkest hour of Israel’s history and 
 confirmed with the oath of the Almighty, 
 “ As truly as I live, all the earth shall 
 be filled with the glory of the Lord” 
 
106 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 (Num. xiv. 21), has been ringing through 
 the Church in all ages, and is a pledge that 
 God’s glory and the religion of Christ shall 
 hi] the whole earth. 
 
 The Mohammedan has no such hope. He 
 is the victim of a pessimist philosophy. He 
 hates idolatry, and will fight against it, and 
 thus clear away the rubbish of paganism and 
 prepare the way in a measure for Christian- 
 ity ; but it is with him a work ot despe- 
 ration. Every new province wrested from 
 Mohammedan sway, every new defeat of 
 Mohammedan arms, every new exhibition 
 of Christian superiority in civilization and 
 in moral, intellectual and material progress, 
 is only a new proof of the rapid approach 
 of the inevitable apostasy. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 § XVIII. Probable effects of the British 
 Protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. 
 
 We have already alluded to the con- 
 fidence reposed by Mohammedans in the 
 English-speaking races. This great fact 
 involves us, who represent the Anglo-Saxon 
 race among the people of the East, in great 
 responsibility. It throws an immense re- 
 sponsibility upon the churches, the public 
 men and the government of Great Britain 
 in these critical and eventful times. Such 
 confidence, the growth of years, the result 
 of great overruling providences, the key to 
 the hearts and the minds of millions of 
 our race, should be wisely used, and not 
 abused. It is but one step in that great 
 march and progress of events which is to 
 
 107 
 
108 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 lead on to results the most wonderful in 
 the future history of the Church. 
 
 In the wise providence of God, who 
 causes even the wrath of man to praise 
 him, an Anglo-Saxon Christian queen, al- 
 ready the ruler of forty-one millions of 
 Mohammedans in India, stands up before 
 the world as the protectress of the whole 
 Turkish empire in Asia. As we are not 
 writing from the political standpoint, but 
 only from the position of students of the 
 divine providence, we cannot hut look on 
 with wonder and gratitude to God. The 
 question has already passed from the do- 
 main of mere politics to that of a great 
 and momentous providential fact, to which 
 we do well to take heed. 
 
 With all these -things in view — the geo- 
 graphical extent of the Mohammedan re- 
 ligion, the work of literary and religious 
 preparation already accomplished, the vast 
 expansion of Anglo-Saxon Christian power 
 and population, and the confidence felt by 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 109 
 
 Moslems everywhere in the religious and 
 civil institutions of Protestant Christianity 
 — let us inquire what are some of the 
 beneficial results likely to flow from the 
 new policy of the British government in 
 the Turkish empire. 
 
 I. One result, for which joyous and grate- 
 ful acclamations will arise from millions of 
 the oppressed, will be the abolition of the 
 exaction and extortion inseparably connect- 
 ed with the system of farming the tithes of 
 the agricultural productions of the empire. 
 It is difficult for an Anglo-Saxon freeman 
 to comprehend what is meant by collecting 
 the tithes in the Turkish empire. The 
 attention of Europe has often been called 
 to the horrors and outrages incident to this 
 relic of barbarism. Many of the most 
 humane and honest of the officers of the 
 sultan have tried in vain to effect its abo- 
 lition. The sultan himself has proposed 
 it, but to no effect. In practical working 
 it is somewhat after this fashion : Some 
 
110 
 
 TIIE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 wealthy Syrian, desiring to increase liis 
 wealth at the expense of his conscience, 
 attends the annual auction at the head- 
 quarters of the province and bids for the 
 privilege of collecting the tithe, we will 
 suppose, in the Baalbek district. If the 
 tithe of that district is estimated at five 
 thousand pounds, he will bid six thousand 
 pounds for the privilege of collecting five 
 thousand pounds. At harvest -time the 
 wheat and barley of each village are gath- 
 ered on the village threshing-floors. After 
 the tedious labor of threshing and winnow- 
 ing is finished the grain lies in heaps in 
 the open air, awaiting the arrival of the 
 multezim of the tithes. Days pass on 
 and he comes not. The people become 
 desperate. The last year’s supply of wheat 
 is exhausted; there is no bread in the 
 village; the children are hungry. Finally, 
 the old men of the village go as humble 
 petitioners to beg the multezim to come to 
 their relief. He answers that he is busy — ■ 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 Ill 
 
 he cannot come for a month, or at the least 
 a fortnight. They beg and entreat, but all 
 in vain. At length they offer him one- 
 eighth of the crop if he will come. He 
 is inexorable. If the district be remote 
 from the influence of Europeans, they maj 
 be obliged finally to give the merciless 
 extortioner one-fifth, one-fourth, or even 
 one-half, of their crop ; and from his de- 
 cision there is no appeal. He is accom- 
 panied by armed horsemen, and the peo- 
 ple have no way but silent, despairing 
 submission. 
 
 And this system of extortion falls as 
 heavily on the Moslems as on the Chris- 
 tians. I know of a Mohammedan village 
 not far distant from the city of Tripoli, 
 Syria, in which the entire income of the 
 people was derived from their fruit. The 
 village was surrounded with orchards and 
 gardens of olive, fig, mulberry, quince, 
 apricot, orange, lemon, pomegranate and 
 plum trees, and luxuriant vineyards. For 
 
112 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 several successive years tlie tax levied on 
 this village exceeded tlie entire income 
 from all its fruit, and the people were 
 obliged to borrow money at thirty per- 
 cent. interest from the Tripoli usurers to 
 pay the tax. Such a state of things could 
 not long; be endured. The men of the 
 village assembled and decided what to do. 
 They cut down every tree in and around 
 that village, and then said to the extor- 
 tioners, “ What are you going to do now?” 
 I rode by that village with my brother the 
 following year, and the sight of that scene 
 of desolation was enough to bring tears 
 from a stone. I thought, “ What will those 
 poor people do?” 
 
 I would like to be the messenger to go 
 through that oppressed empire and pro- 
 claim to the people that this diabolical sys- 
 tem of tithing is to be abolished for ever. 
 
 The abolition of this inhuman system 
 will be as life from the dead to the op- 
 pressed subjects of the sultan, and the 
 
MISSION A II Y PR OB LEM. 
 
 113 
 
 word lias already gone out through the 
 towns and villages of that empire that 
 through the intervention of Christian 
 England this dreadful curse is to be for 
 ever removed. Did no other good than 
 this result from the late war, it would 
 seem to be enough. 
 
 II. A second result will be the curbing of 
 the numerous wild and semi-barbarous tribes 
 which infest large districts of the empire. 
 These are the Ivoords, Yezidees, Turkomans, 
 Nusairiyeh, Ismailiyeh, Bedawin Arabs and 
 Circassians. The destructive and irritating 
 policy of pitting these tribes against one 
 another, on the “ divide et-impera” principle, 
 has kept the peaceably-disposed peasantry 
 in terror and the empire in constant danger 
 of conflagration. That same respect for 
 England and the British people to which 
 we have alluded above will prove a potent 
 aid in keeping these wild, discordant tribes 
 in order. 
 
 When the Circassians arrived in Syria in 
 
114 
 
 TIIE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 1878 the entire Christian population was 
 filled with alarm, lest these wild Mohamme- 
 dan spoilers should see fit to add the Syrian 
 Christians to the list of their victims. When 
 I left Beirut, on the 11th of April, 1878, the 
 most of them had been removed to the in- 
 terior, but the gravest apprehensions were 
 expressed by both Christians and Moslems 
 as to their future behavior. The subject 
 gave me more anxiety than any other one 
 feature in Syrian affairs on my departure 
 for America. 
 
 But the Anglo-Turkish treaty has dis- 
 pelled these alarms. The British consular 
 a events and other officials throughout the em- 
 pire can calm these turbulent spirits almost 
 by a word. They believe in the Angliz with 
 a tenacity of faith that is amazing. 
 
 The same fact is true of all the wild Mos- 
 lem and semi-pagan tribes of the empire. 
 The English name is a spell. No other 
 nationality has such power over them ; and, 
 difficult as the task may seem which Britain 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 115 
 
 lias undertaken in keeping that empire in 
 order, she can do it with wonderful facility, 
 when any other nation or people might fail. 
 
 III. A third result will be actual liberty 
 of conscience to Moslem converts to Chris- 
 tianity. Heretofore, this liberty has not 
 existed. Moslem converts have either been 
 secretly put out of the way, officially ban- 
 ished or forcibly thrust into the army and 
 treated with cruelty and injustice. Accord- 
 ing to a well-known fetwa or legal opinion 
 of the Mohammedan muftis, “ all the sects 
 of infidelity are one.” It matters not to 
 them how many Armenians, Greeks, Jews 
 or Maronites become Protestants, as they 
 simply pass over from one infidel sect to 
 another. But when a Mohammedan be- 
 comes a Christian the case is regarded as 
 utterly different. 
 
 The army of the sultan is the army of the 
 caliph of Mohammed. It is an army of 
 believers. No Christian up to the present 
 year could be admitted to it, for how can 
 
116 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 an infidel fight the battles of the Prophet? 
 The military conscription being thus con- 
 fined to the one sect of the Mohammedans, 
 it is regarded by them as a grievous and 
 heavy burden which they are all bound to 
 share. Whenever, therefore, a Mohammedan 
 becomes a Christian, he puts himself outside 
 the military population liable to the con- 
 scription. He is a deserter, a renegade from 
 the draft, the enemy of his country, guilty 
 of high treason, and hence punishable with 
 death. The officials who arrest him in such 
 a case would deny that he is punished on 
 account of religion. Not at all ; he is pun- 
 ished for treason. As long as the military 
 system of the empire continues to be ex- 
 clusively a sectarian Mohammedan system, 
 this state of things will continue. The 
 sword thus hangs over the heads of Mos- 
 lem converts to Christianity, although the 
 “death-penalty” is nominally abolished. 
 
 But when once the late firman of the 
 sultan is executed and Christians are ad- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 117 
 
 mitted to the army, this regime of terror- 
 ism and persecution will cease. No matter 
 how many Mohammedans become Christians, 
 they will still be liable to the conscription, 
 and the one great official ground of perse- 
 cution will have passed away for ever. That 
 the enrollment of Christians in the army 
 will speedily be brought about under the 
 advice and protection of Great Britain I 
 have no question. 
 
 In India at the present day there is free- 
 dom of oral and printed discussion between 
 Christians and Mohammedans. It does not 
 compromise the government nor endanger 
 the public peace. Moslems have the right 
 to argue against Christianity, and Christians 
 to argue against Islam. It is fair play, and 
 all are satisfied. Up to the present time in 
 Turkey, Mohammedans have printed books 
 against the Bible and the Christian religion, 
 and we have no right or privilege of reply- 
 ing. As we have already stated above, Me- 
 zan el Hoe, a Christian argument against 
 
118 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Islam, is a prohibited book, but Izhar el 
 Hoc, a bitter invective against tlie Bible 
 and Christianity, is printed and circulated 
 by Moslems without restraint. 
 
 All that we ask is fair play and protection 
 to all men in worshiping God according to 
 the dictates of their own consciences. Under 
 the wise and firm and resolute protection of 
 British representatives, the Mohammedans 
 of Turkey will soon learn to respect the re- 
 ligious sentiments of those who rely for the 
 defence of their cause on argument and not 
 on the sword, and Moslems converted to 
 Christianity will be unmolested. 
 
 IV. There will be new and real liberty 
 of the press. The present restrictions upon 
 the press are a clog and a barrier to the 
 expression of opinion. Criticism of the in- 
 justice and venality of government officials 
 is punished as a crime. Liberty of the 
 press in such a state of society must differ 
 in some respects from what it is in Great 
 Britain and the United States, but there is 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 119 
 
 room for reform of the most fundamental 
 character, and there can he no doubt that 
 in this respect a thorough reform will he 
 effected. 
 
 A respectable and well - known foreign 
 resident in the empire was obliged to bring 
 the certificate of half a dozen chiefs of 
 police that he had never committed a 
 crime in their districts, and finally to 
 bring a certificate that his portrait was not 
 in the “ rogue’s gallery ” of noted scoun- 
 drels of the city, before he could obtain 
 permission to establish a newspaper. An 
 important press in the empire was once 
 threatened with being shut up for six 
 months for having printed a little tract 
 on the duty of telling the truth and the 
 evil of lying. The gravamen of the 
 
 charge was that the tract was an attack 
 on the government. 
 
 Until the journals of the empire are al- 
 lowed to publish and expose the ways and 
 crimes of corrupt officials there will be lit- 
 
120 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 tie hope of reform. Nothing will so surely 
 and rapidly do away with bribery and cor- 
 ruption as a free and protected press; and 
 this we are sure will result from the British 
 protectorate. 
 
 Y. Another result will be a new devel- 
 opment and extension of the means and 
 appliances of education. We would not 
 withhold credit from those to whom credit 
 is due among the officials of the Ottoman 
 government who have striven to promote 
 education throughout the empire. There 
 are a few who, by word and example, by 
 attending the public examinations of native 
 and foreign schools, and even sending their 
 own children to them for education, have 
 done all in their power to help in the edu- 
 cation of the people. Conspicuous among 
 these is Midhat Pasha, the new governor- 
 general of Syria. But these men are the 
 honorable and honored exceptions. There 
 are vast districts of the empire destitute of 
 schools, and the higher institutions now ex- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 121 
 
 isting are crippled in tlaeir influence by the 
 want of the proper governmental encour- 
 agement. Here is room for immediate, 
 easy and most useful reform, and there is 
 every reason to expect that a new era is 
 about to dawn on the Turkish empire in 
 the multiplication, enlargement and eleva- 
 tion of the existing schools, to the incal- 
 culable benefit of the people and the ad- 
 vancement of light, truth and true religion 
 among them. 
 
 VI. Another essential reform, of vital 
 necessity, and yet among the most certain 
 to be made, is the reconstruction of the 
 judiciary and the admission of Christian 
 testimony in the courts. 
 
 What would be said of a law which should 
 make no testimony admissible in the courts 
 of Great Britain and the United States un- 
 less it were offered by members of the Bap- 
 tist or Methodist Church ? Yet this is the 
 state of things iii Turkey. Testimony is a 
 religious act, and the mahkameh, or Mo- 
 
122 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 hammedan court, is a court of religious law. 
 None, therefore, but reputedly religious per- 
 sons can be allowed to testify; and as all 
 Christians, Jews and Pagans are classed as 
 infidels, it is impossible for them to offer 
 testimony. And such is the case in Tur- 
 key. Firman after firman lias guaranteed 
 to the Christians the right of testifying in 
 the courts, but the right is still withheld. 
 The most respectable Christian in Beirut 
 may enter a court and give evidence, hut 
 it will be recorded that “ Klrowaja So-and- 
 so made a statement as follows.’ But if the 
 lowest and most worthless Moslem donkey- 
 driver is brought into court and gives evi- 
 dence on the other side, it will be recorded 
 that “ His lordship the Say y id Ali testified 
 to the face of God,” etc. Consequently, 
 whoever has a case in court must take good 
 heed to provide himself with Mohammedan 
 witnesses, or he will have no hope of success. 
 
 The firmans of the past must be executed 
 in fact before there will be the first elements 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 123 
 
 of true equality in Turkey. To insist upon 
 this will be the most important and, I be- 
 lieve, the cheerfully -performed, duty of those 
 who represent Great Britain in carrying ont 
 the new Anglo-Turkish treaty. 
 
 In intimate connection with this stands 
 the question of a -pure judiciary. Often, 
 when hearing of the high, unsullied repu- 
 tation of British judges in India — a repu- 
 tation echoed and proclaimed by Moslems 
 and Hindoos wherever they go — I have 
 longed and prayed for some divine inter- 
 position which would give a British judiciary 
 to the long-wronged and despoiled people 
 of Turkey. And not unfrequently have I 
 heard Mohammedans in Syria give utterance 
 to the same longing with the greatest earn- 
 estness. I have known important cases tried 
 in the enlightened city of Beirut before a 
 judge who could neither read nor write 
 his own language, the Turkish, and who, al- 
 though the trials were conducted in Arabic, 
 could neither speak nor write Arabic. The 
 
124 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 venality of the kadis or judges is well illus- 
 trated in the popular story constantly told 
 by the Arabs of Syria in their coffee-houses 
 and their homes. It is as follows : The 
 sheikh Omar had a case in court against his 
 neighbor Mohammed. He visited the kadi 
 and placed a small coin in his hand, when 
 the kadi assured him that on the trial the 
 following day the case should be decided in 
 his favor. Meantime, Mohammed, hearing 
 of Omar’s success, went to the kadi’s house 
 at night bearing thirty gold dinars, each 
 having on it the image of an old man 
 leaning on a staff. The porter at the door 
 refused Mohammed admittance until he had 
 given him one of the golden coins. He 
 then ushered him into the presence of the 
 kadi, to whom he gave the twenty-nine 
 pieces. The kadi at once assured him that 
 he had not understood the case before, and 
 the decision should now be in his favor. 
 Omar was astounded the next day in seeing 
 his opponent victorious, and asked the kadi 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 125 
 
 for tlie reason. Said the kadi, “ The reason 
 is this : new evidence has appeared. Last 
 night after dark twenty-nine venerable old 
 men, each leaning on the top of a staff, came 
 to my house and testified to the validity of 
 Mohammed’s claim.” — “Yes,” added the 
 porter, “ and one of them was too old and 
 infirm to ascend the stairway, so he remained 
 with me at the door.” 
 
 This story illustrates the popular idea of 
 the character of their judges; and it is, 
 alas ! too true. 
 
 The salaries of the highest judges are con- 
 temptibly small, and, as they are obliged to 
 live respectably, they supplement their sala- 
 ries by selling justice to the highest bidder. 
 
 A thorough reorganization of the judici- 
 ary, with courts of appeal in the hands of 
 British judges, would be a blessing of un- 
 speakable value to millions in Turkey. Let 
 us pray that so great a blessing may not be 
 withheld when it is in the power of Britain 
 so easily to bestow it. 
 
126 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 VII. The last benefit we shall mention as 
 resulting from the new state of things is the 
 virtual and, we trust, final abandonment of 
 the policy of non-intervention. When the 
 European powers in 1856 bound themselves 
 in solemn treaty not to interfere in the do- 
 mestic concerns of the Turkish empire, they 
 entailed upon the people of Turkey a regime 
 of suffering which none could desire to be 
 restored or perpetuated. It is not necessary 
 for me, nor would it be becoming, to impugn 
 the motives of those who made that agree- 
 ment. It has passed into history. But it 
 is a comfort and a cause of gratitude to 
 think that the woes, the massacres and the 
 disorders suffered to go on in that empire 
 under the non-intervention policy will not 
 now be likely ever to occur again. 
 
 In the year I860, during the civil war 
 of Lebanon, when the Druses and Turkish 
 soldiers fraternized with the Moslem popu- 
 lace in the plan of massacring and exter- 
 minating the Christian and foreign popula- 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 127 
 
 tion of Syria, news reached us in Beirut 
 that about eight hundred Greek, Maronite 
 and Protestant Christians, disarmed and 
 confined in the castle of Hasbeiya, were 
 surrounded by a Druse army who stood 
 ready to massacre them in cold blood, while 
 the Turkish colonel sat at the gate waiting 
 to give them the signal to enter on the 
 work of destruction. Dr. Eddy and Dr. 
 Bliss of the American mission went to the 
 British consul-general, and asked him to 
 furnish them with an armed kawass or 
 janissary from the British consulate to go 
 with them to the rescue of the beleaguer- 
 ed Christians. A kawass of the American 
 consulate would have been of no use, and, 
 owing to the state of the country, it would 
 have been certain death to them to have 
 gone an hour’s ride from the city alone. 
 But a kawass from the British consulate 
 would have given ample protection any- 
 where, and both Druse and Moslem would 
 have respected the presence of two such 
 
128 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 men accompanied with the representative 
 of the British consulate. 
 
 They appealed to the consul as the only 
 person in Syria who could have aided them 
 in saving; seven hundred men from massacre. 
 But he felt obliged to decline their request. 
 He said he sympathized with the poor men 
 exposed to danger and death, “ but he ivcis 
 officially forbidden to interfere in the do- 
 mestic affairs of the Turkish empire? He 
 had no option in the matter, and, bound 
 by the principle of non-intervention, felt 
 obliged to leave the poor wretches to their 
 fate. 
 
 A few days after a crowd of men came 
 running to the door of my house in Beirut. 
 They were leading along a shocking-looking 
 specimen of humanity, covered with matted 
 clots of blood from head to foot. It was 
 Jebran Hoslab, one of the few survivors 
 of the dreadful massacre of Hasbeiya. He 
 said that on a signal from the Turkish 
 colonel the Druses rushed into the castle- 
 
MISSION A B Y PB OB LEM. 
 
 129 
 
 gate and fell like wolves upon tlie unarm- 
 ed Christians. Laying aside their guns to 
 save their ammunition, they hewed their 
 victims in pieces with their swords and 
 battle-axes, striking down Abu Monsoor, 
 the Protestant deacon, while in the act of 
 praying for his murderers. Jebran escaped 
 by throwing himself down and covering 
 himself with dead bodies, and at midnight 
 let himself down from a window in the 
 castle-wall, and escaped across the moun- 
 tains to Tyre, whence he came to Beirut 
 in an Arab schooner. 
 
 That was the working of the principle 
 of non-intervention. A more humane and 
 noble - hearted body of men could hardly 
 be found than the British consuls in Tur- 
 key as a class, but how often the inflexible 
 principle of non-intervention has compelled 
 them to refrain from doing what their own 
 humane instincts would have prompted them 
 to do, none could speak more eloquently than 
 themselves. 
 
130 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Now, thanks be to Him who maketh even 
 the wrath of man to praise him, if I inter- 
 pret aright the new policy of the British 
 government, that feature at least of non- 
 intervention is for ever at an end. There 
 will be no more Syrian massacres, no more 
 holocausts of human victims in Hasbeiya, 
 Heir el Komr and Damascus. Humanity 
 and policy will now concur, in the good 
 providence of God, under the benign sway 
 of a Christian queen, in restraining that 
 “ remainder of wrath ” which has so often 
 burst forth like a pent-up volcano. 
 
 These and many other incidental benefits, 
 which time will not allow us to mention, 
 will no doubt flow from the new order of 
 things now being inaugurated in the East. 
 
 Well does it become us to inquire in con- 
 clusion, What are the moral and religious 
 obligations arising from this state of things 
 which rest upon the Christians of Great 
 Britain and America? 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 131 
 
 A great work has been initiated by the 
 missionaries, American and British, already 
 on the ground. It will be the duty of the 
 American churches to increase the number 
 of their missionaries, to supply their colleges 
 and seminaries with an able, experienced 
 and devoted corps of instructors ; to push 
 forward the work of missionary itineracy ; 
 to increase the efficiency of the press and 
 the extent of Bible distribution ; to train a 
 native ministry ; and in every way to meet 
 the invitations of Divine Providence, and 
 enter the “ wide and effectual doors ” which 
 are opening on every side, even though there 
 lie “ many adversaries.” 
 
 It is not an easy task for me to suggest 
 what are the duties of our British brethren 
 and sisters in a crisis like the present in the 
 East. Would that my feeble voice could 
 be heard among all those who love our 
 Lord in sincerity, calling upon them to 
 pray earnestly for the salvation of the 
 perishing in that interesting land ! See 
 
132 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 to it, Christian men and women, that the 
 present guarantees of religious liberty be 
 carried out in very deed — that converts to 
 Christianity from every sect and nationality 
 in that empire be assured of protection and 
 liberty to read and practice the word of 
 Cfod. Give a cheerful support to your own 
 brethren and sisters who are engaged in 
 various parts of that empire in preaching 
 the gospel and educating the young. 
 
 You would have rejoiced to see a sight 
 ■which greeted my eyes on the 11th of last 
 April, when I met on the premises of an 
 English lady in Beirut a company of Arab 
 o- his assembled to bid me farewell on my 
 departure for America. Fifteen hundred 
 Arab girls, from the ages of six to sixteen, 
 stood around me, three hundred of them 
 Mohammedan girls. One after another the 
 different schools sang hymns of praise to 
 Christ, and at the close of a brief address 
 to them in Arabic we united together in 
 prayer. Just before that I had received a 
 
MISSIONARY PE OB LEM. 
 
 133 
 
 farewell letter signed by eight hundred and 
 seventy-five Arab Sunday-school children, 
 bidding me an affectionate farewell. Shall 
 not these Christian laborers and enterprises 
 be sustained ? 
 
 In the new growth of the missionary and 
 educational work in the East new endow- 
 ments, new scholarships and new buildings 
 will be needed. If the demand for schools 
 and books has been great and increasing 
 under the old regime, what may we not 
 anticipate under the new ? The demand 
 for the English language and an English 
 education, already great, will become great- 
 er year by year. Heretofore British Chris- 
 tians have wisely preferred to aid the exist- 
 ing American missions in the Turkish em- 
 pire, instead of complicating the work by 
 establishing separate missions of their own. 
 We rejoice in this proof of fraternal con- 
 fidence and Christian love. Let us work on 
 thus together. Let the two great branches 
 of the christianized Anglo-Saxon race go 
 
134 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Land in Land to the great work assigned 
 us in tLe evangelization of the Mohamme- 
 dau world. Let us go on in tLe Spirit of 
 our Lord and Master, wLicL is tLe Spirit 
 of love. 
 
 We Lave thus sketclied in rapid outline 
 tlie salient points in tlie relations of Islam 
 to Christianity. God Las been preparing 
 Christianity for Islam, and now lie is pre- 
 paring Islam for Christianity. Tlie prob- 
 lem now demanding the attention of the 
 Christian Church and the Christian min- 
 istry everywhere is, How to give greater 
 efficiency to missionary agencies already 
 employed in Mohammedan countries, and 
 Low to bring new forces and appliances to 
 bear upon Islam. 
 
 TLe Christian Church cannot regard with 
 indifference the welfare of one hundred and 
 seventy-five millions ol our race. Hie moial 
 degradation, the spiritual blindness, the deep 
 religious needs ol so many men, the pitiful 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 135 
 
 condition of Moslem women, the want of all 
 that we hold dear and sacred in the Chris- 
 tian home, and the utter lack of anything 
 like a provision for human redemption, — 
 should awaken our deepest sympathies and 
 enkindle new zeal in every Christian breast. 
 
 We have only begun to work for the Mo- 
 hammedan world. The prospect is cheering. 
 God’s word is ready ; the promises of Christ 
 are ours ; God is overturning among the 
 nations, and every turn in the wheel of 
 providence moves the nations forward, while 
 Mohammedan prestige and power sink rap- 
 idly out of sight. In the Russian war the 
 greatest enemy of the Moslems inflicted one 
 crushing defeat on the political power of 
 Islam, and in the Afghan war England, 
 the greatest friend of Islam, has inflicted 
 another. Christian missions are planted in 
 and around the very citadels of Islam. 
 Converted Moslems in India are ordained 
 ministers of the gospel. Thousands of 
 Moslems in Turkey have purchased the 
 
136 
 
 THE MOHAMMEDAN 
 
 Christian Scriptures. Church - bells from 
 Christian edifices are echoing the very 
 muezzin-cries from the minarets of towns 
 and cities. Mohammedan pashas are send- 
 ing their sons to Christian schools and col- 
 leo-es, and hundreds of Mohammedan ghB 
 are being educated by Christian teachers in 
 the pure morality and the inspiring hopes 
 of the gospel. One thousand Mohammedan 
 girls to-day are receiving instruction m 
 Christian schools in Syria alone. 
 
 In conclusion, I know of no bettei sum- 
 mary of the crowning, imperative want of 
 the Mohammedan world, and of all the 
 missionaries who are engaged in laboring 
 for its conversion to Christ, than that con- 
 tained in the terse expression of my own 
 beloved instructor in the Union Theological 
 Seminary, the now sainted Henry B. Smith, 
 contained in the synopsis of Ins System of 
 Christian Theology— the belief in “an in- 
 carnation in order to a redemption.” This 
 
MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 137 
 
 is the great truth which Mohammed utterly 
 failed to grasp, and which his followers for 
 twelve centuries have been groping after 
 in vain. 
 
 Let every Christian missionary insist upon 
 the great scheme of redemption, the atoning 
 sufferings and death of Jesus the son of 
 Mary ; and when the Mohammedan feels, 
 as many have already felt, that he is a lost 
 sinner and under the righteous displeasure 
 of an offended God, he will gladly and 
 gratefully take refuge in the conviction 
 and the faith that man needs a Saviour 
 from sin, and that Jesus the son of Mary 
 in order to be a Saviour must also be the 
 Son of God. 
 
 A famous Bedawiu sheikh from the land 
 of Bashan once visited Beirut, and asked 
 permission to see the American steam 
 printing-press. I took him through the 
 various parts of the building and showed 
 him the processes of type-casting, type- 
 setting, electrotyping, lithographing and 
 
138 MOHAMMEDAN MISSIONARY PROBLEM. 
 
 bookbinding; and at length we entered the 
 press-room. He stood with his Bedawin 
 companions gazing in mute wonder at the 
 steam-press with revolving cylinder rolling 
 out the printed sheets with the greatest ra- 
 pidity and precision. He stood in silence 
 for a time, and at length turned to me and 
 said, “ Khowadja, you Franks have con- 
 quered everything but death. In that re- 
 spect you and the Bedawin stand on a 
 level, for death conquers us all.” I re- 
 plied, “Yes, we are conquered by death, 
 but there is One who has conquered death 
 for you and for me — our Lord and Saviour 
 Jesus Christ.” 
 
 My brethren, that is the gospel which 
 all men need. That gospel ot salvation 
 through Christ let us preach at home and 
 abroad, until the kingdoms of this world 
 are become the kingdom of our Lord, and 
 he shall reign for ever ! 
 
 THE END. 
 


 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
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