Chapter IX: 'the Challenge of Islam'

'Man's part
Is plain, to send love forth, astray, perhaps,
No matter:--He has done his part.'
ROBERT BROWNING.

If this book has carried its readers along any distance at all they will have recognized two facts: Islam's tremendous power, not only as a sword, but as a creed, and Islam's failure to lift nations and men up to a higher life.

There is one truth yet which we must face, and perhaps we shall see its meaning best if we turn it into parable.

[Sidenote: A Parable.]

There was a great university once that numbered many teachers and a myriad scholars. The teachers were, for the most part, wise and good and apt to teach, but the wisest would confess that there was much he did not know, whole realms of knowledge he had never seen. Their teachings varied very greatly; but most of the {137} wisest and best agreed in foretelling a Teacher to come, wiser and truer than them all, teaching not as they from their own little corners of the truth, but gathering up, as it were, the light of their shaded and coloured lanterns into the white light of a glorious sun. So they foretold Him, and so He came. And when He taught, the scholars said: 'Did ever man speak like this Man?' and as they read His life they saw the Truth in practice. Men were no more just creatures of this earth: they had come from God, and God had come from Heaven to win them back to Himself.

The good and the wise teachers of the university then no longer pointed on to the One Who should come: rather they took up His words and His life, taught them and expounded them, and ever found new meaning and new teaching there, and pointed ever up to Him.

Till at last there arose another teacher, who, learning something of what the Great Teacher had taught, began to think that because he knew a little he was all-wise--yes, even wiser than He. Men gathered to listen to his teaching. And what did he proclaim? Something of the truths of {138} the Great Teacher, with a difference. And what was that difference? No thoughtful man has ever yet been found to maintain that his teaching was more sublime, _but it was easier_.

Had the Great Teacher taught that there was one God? So did he--the later teacher--but his God was more of a despot than a Father.

Had the Great Teacher taught a Heaven of spiritual life? He promised a Heaven too, but one of carnal pleasure.

Had the Great Teacher taught men to worship in spirit and in truth? He taught prayer, but he added that a prayer at Mecca was worth more than elsewhere.

Had the Great Teacher taught men to pray without ceasing? He taught men to pray five times a day.

Had the Great Teacher called men to be pure in heart? He made provision for men unwilling to be pure.

Had the Great Teacher raised Woman's position? He gave her certain rights over property, but no honour.

Had the Great Teacher sent his followers out to preach the kingdom and heal the sick? He sent his followers on {139} a similar errand, by the method of raiding caravans.

Had the Great Teacher taught men to rule their bodies? He only forbade his followers to take strong drink.

The Great Teacher had bidden men, 'Love your enemies.' He instituted a brotherhood embracing 'believers.'

The Great Teacher had sought men's hearts. He was content with a confession of belief.

The Great Teacher had taught principles. He left precepts for the guidance of his followers.

The Great Teacher had been tempted as all men are tempted, but had never faltered, never stumbled, never failed. The later teacher claimed a 'divine' indulgence for his sins.

The Great Teacher suffered and laid down His life for men--the other decreed that his dominion should be extended by the sword.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's Claim to supersede Christ.]

Islam is the one religion which throws down a challenge to the Gospel; others came before and knew not the Christ. Mohammed alone of all religious teachers has measured himself beside the holy JESUS, {140} and, coming after Him, _claims to supersede Him_. That is Islam's challenge to the Church of Christ to-day.

[Sidenote: The Crusades.]

That challenge, if not in its full meaning, at least in its terror, was a very real and threatening thing to European Christendom in its early centuries, when Saracens and Turks had almost surrounded the Mediterranean, had conquered Spain, threatened France, sacked Moscow, and held Damascus and Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Olivet. And Christendom took up the gauntlet. If Islam attested its right by its conquests, so then would the Church. And the Christian countries of Europe poured forth their earnest, ignorant rabble and the glory of their chivalry, with crosses on their sword-hilts, and banners with '_Dieu le veult_' floating above them, to the Holy War, to recover Jerusalem from the Turks. Hundreds of thousands of the nobility and yeomen of Europe laid down their lives with a feverish zeal in each Crusade, and a long and ghastly line of bones whitened the roads through Hungary to the East.

The Crusades present at once one of the grandest pictures of misguided zeal, {141} and one of the blackest crimes in history; for they were the very denial of the Gospel for which they contended, and the arms of Christian knights were stained with acts of barbarity and cruelty more heathenish than those of their Turkish foes. Christendom was repulsed, fighting with the Moslem weapon, and it seemed to many as though the Church had tried in vain her _only_ weapon--the weapon of force. Popes there were, and monks and priests, and those who should have been the shepherds of the flock, yet none saw that the Church had cast aside the one method that never fails.

The Turks were true to their religion, and were following the example and teaching of Mohammed, when they took the sword; the Crusaders claimed to be followers of Him Who said, 'My kingdom is not of this world, else would My servants fight'; 'Love your enemies'; of Whose life it is written that 'He went about doing good,' and Whose disciples learnt and learnt out their Master's lesson--'Love never faileth. The greatest of these is love.'

Did we say _none_ saw it? Yes, there {142} were just a few, a mere handful. For God never leaves Himself without witness. But there was one--for all that history tells us--who had the courage of his faith.

[Sidenote: Raymund Lull.]

The son of a Christian knight and noble in the Spanish island of Majorca, Raymund 'is acknowledged by all writers on the history of missions to be the main connecting link between the apostles of Northern Europe and the leaders who followed the Reformation.' Read the story of the thirteenth century in Europe, and realize the days in which he lived. The spirit of the Crusades is still alive, the conflict between Islam and Christian Europe is still raging. Tales of knightly purity shine out from a background of gross sensuality, and hymns of devotion are written in strange contrast to Bacchanalian revel songs. The world-power of Rome is declining, the general state of morals, even among popes and clergy, is very low; superstition is rife. The Inquisition has just come into play.

Towering high above his day, like some unexpected mountain peak soaring above an unbroken land of stagnant marsh, stands the figure of this man, Raymund Lull, who {143} dared to believe in love, to preach love, to live love.

[Sidenote: 1. Early Life.]

He was brought up in luxury and ease amid the splendour of the Spanish court, 'popular in the world, a lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God.' 'He had everything this world could give him: brilliant, versatile, splendidly successful; knight, poet, musician, scholar, nobleman, courtier, gallant.' So, till he was in his thirty-second year. To him, then, there came the vision of Christ crucified. In the light of that Cross the glories of this world faded, and a new glory entered his life. The Turkish question lay heavy on his soul; and, full of a great longing towards the Turks, he desired to 'conquer' the Holy Land. But here was his proposal which he boldly set forth to the astonished Crusade-going, Turk-hating Church:

'I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas, and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms; but in the end all are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. _Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought not to be attempted except in the way in which Thou and Thine Apostles acquired it, namely, by love and prayers and the pouring out of tears and blood._'

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This marvellous man was, indeed, a missionary of the most up-to-date kind. Nine years of preparation he gave himself, mastering Arabic, studying and writing on Christian philosophy, learning geography, the pioneer 500 years before his day of twentieth-century missionary study! And all this with scarcely a friend who believed that his missionary call was anything more than a piece of chimerical fanaticism!

[Sidenote: 2. Service.]

Long years of hard and lonely service followed, preaching to Moslems, holding friendly discussions with them, writing Christian pamphlets for them, then standing before the leaders of the Roman Church--popes and kings and councils, lecturing before universities on behalf of the Moslem world and the new crusade of love, alternately missionary and missionary deputation! Looking back over these years, he said:

'I had a wife and children; I was tolerably rich; I led a secular life. All these things I cheerfully resigned for the sake of promoting the common good and diffusing abroad the common faith. I learned Arabic. I have several times gone abroad to preach the Gospel to the Saracens. I have, for the sake of the faith, been cast into prison and scourged. I have laboured for forty-five years to {145} gain over the shepherds of the Church and the princes of Europe to the common good of Christendom. Now I am old and poor, but still I am intent on the same object. I will persevere in it till death, if the Lord permits it.'

Like some young man, full of the burning fire of a fresh enthusiasm, he sets out for Africa at the age of fifty-six. Yet, like that same young man, he is very human. And it seems to bring Lull very near us when we read that at the last, as his ship was about to cast loose from Genoa, his courage fails and the ship sails without him. 'The agony that his soul was suffering oppressed his body, out of measure even unto death, so much so that his friends carried him away from a second ship in which he had embarked, certain that his life could not last out the voyage. News of yet a third ship was brought, and he finally determined to push forward. From that moment, he tells us, he "was a new man."'

[Sidenote: 3. Death.]

In North Africa he remains two years, disputing, winning, shepherding; is imprisoned, sentenced to death, and finally banished. But only to fresh labour. Much has yet to be filled in to the closing years {146} of this long, hard life. He is preaching in Crete, he is exhorting Christians in Armenia, he is back in Africa again, he is shipwrecked on the coast of Italy, then back again in Bugia, in North Africa, where at last a raging mob drags him, like Stephen. outside the city wall and stones him to death on June 30th, 1315.

'The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar;
Who follows in His train?

Who best can drink His cup of woe,
Triumphant over pain;
Who patient bears His cross below,--
He follows in His train.

They climb'd the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train!'

[Sidenote: Comparison of Lull's Methods with those of the Crusaders.]

We look back now across nearly twelve centuries to that scene in North Africa: the old, worn-out man preaching, striving, agonizing, praying, loving to the last, stoned by the hands of the Moslems he loved, leaving behind him a few scattered converts {147} here and there, a number of learned treatises since gone out of date, a Church still heedless of his call, and not one friend to follow him.

Then we turn our eyes to the countries on the other side of the Mediterranean, and think again of the First Crusade, where half a million men poured out their lives to recover Jerusalem, only to have it wrested from their hands again; or to the Crusade of splendour led by Richard of the Lion Heart to ignominious failure. We think of the new 'machine' the Church was then inventing for the heretic and Turk--the Inquisition. Who, then, had found the better way? Which was the right path? Which had found the true solution of the problem of Islam? Which had found the true answer to Islam's challenge--dauntless Crusader, arrogant Pope, or this man with the fire and the devotion of a Crusader, but with a brother's love for the Moslem?

We listen to him again to-day. His message has not gone out of date, and never will. He has left us the motto of his life:

'HE WHO LOVES NOT, LIVES NOT, AND HE WHO LIVES BY THE LIFE CAN NEVER DIE.'

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He might have lived in this twentieth century when he wrote the following prayer with which he closes one of his books:

'Lord of heaven, Father of all times, when Thou didst send Thy Son to take upon Him human nature, He and His Apostles lived in outward peace with Jews, Pharisees, and other men.... And so, after Thy example, should Christians conduct themselves to Moslems; but since that ardour of devotion which glowed in Apostles and holy men of old no longer inspires us, love and devotion through almost all the world have grown cold, and, therefore, do Christians expend their efforts far more in the outward than in the spiritual conflict.'

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER IX

1. Contrast the teaching of Christ and Mohammed, as worked out in the parable.

2. By what methods did Mohammed's followers spread their religion?

3. By what methods did the Crusaders seek to withstand the Mohammedans? Illustrate your answer, showing how far a Crusader's life was noble.

4. By what methods did Raymund Lull seek to withstand Islam? Illustrate your answer.

5. What was the motto of Lull's life? Describe his setting out from Genoa on his mission to Africa at the age of fifty-six? How and where did he die?

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