Chapter XI: Islam and the Church of Christ

'For a brave man, to know that an evil is, is simply to know that it has to be vanquished.'--A. M. FAIRBAIRN.

'O, it is great, and there's no other greatness, to make some part of God's creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God.'--CARLYLE.

[Sidenote: Livingstone and Stanley.]

On November 10, 1871, two men met in the heart of Africa. One, David Livingstone, intrepid missionary and explorer, had been lost, and reputed dead for years. The other, Henry Stanley, after long months of heroic search, found the 'white man with hair on his face' within sound of the thunderous surf on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, and greeted him with, 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'

The day of that meeting is one of the most significant dates in Africa's history. Stanley returned home to rouse Europe. Livingstone, worn and weakened by illness, remained. At Ilala, a year after Stanley {169} left him, his faithful African boys found 'the great master' kneeling by his bedside, dead.

The life and death of Livingstone is said to have inspired the founding of twenty-two Missionary Societies. Certainly it opened a new chapter in the story of African Missions.

The ears of Europe rang with the tales of Livingstone and Stanley, and the heart of Europe responded to their appeal to heal that great open sore, the slave trade.

[Sidenote: The Slave Trade.]

And who were the slave traders? Our friends the Moslem Arabs. But Stanley and Livingstone, standing in the heart of that Dark Continent, saw plainly enough that something else was needed to lighten the darkness than even the most vigorous suppression of the Slave Trade and its attendant atrocities. Superstition, misery, degradation, cruelty, were everywhere. And as for the Moslems, pouring in from the north in peaceful caravan or devastating slave raid, they were making the situation tenfold worse in every way than it was. It was evident that no healing of Africa's sores could come from them.

[Sidenote: Call to the Church.]

In a famous despatch published in the {170} _Daily Telegraph_, on November 15, 1875, Stanley challenged the Church of Christ to plunge boldly into the heart of Africa, and make the countries of the still pagan tribes south of the Great Lakes centres of light for the whole Dark Continent. The challenge was accepted and the implied prophecy has come true.

[Sidenote: Missions in Central Africa.]

The Universities' Mission to Central Africa (founded in response to an earlier appeal from Livingstone) has built its cathedral at Zanzibar, on the site of the old slave market, and its work has spread inwards through Nyassaland.

The Livingstonia Mission, founded by the Free Church of Scotland after Livingstone's death, has, in a short space of twenty years, seen wild, warlike tribes, whose chief concern was warfare and slaughter, settle down into hard-working Christian communities.

In Uganda, the Mission founded by the Church Missionary Society a little later, has seen the growth of a Church of 98,000 Native Christians supporting its own 3,000 Native Christian workers and sending its own missionaries into the heathen countries around.

{171}

But in each place they were only just in time; and other regions which were not occupied, the Moslem is winning to-day. Thirty years before Livingstone's death, the great German Krapf, working for the Church Missionary Society, had seen the danger, and had challenged the Church to forge a chain of Mission stations from east to west to bind the Moslem to the north.

Many links of that chain have not yet been forged, and the Moslem has streamed down into the Southern Continent till there is hardly a section of Africa in which he may not be found.

[Sidenote: The Niger and Hausa Land.]

Away in the West in the vast Niger districts the same unequal race is going on, but Christendom was later in the field. In 1899, before our British troops had subdued the Hausa states, a little party led by Bishop Tugwell had penetrated 700 miles, even up to Kano. Here the Moslem ruled the land and brooked no interference with his raiding or his slavery. He was engaged in bringing the simple unorganized pagan tribes to heel. Christian missionaries were the last people he wanted. For many months the little defenceless party {172} found no rest for the soles of their feet. If they pitched their tent they were quickly ordered to remove it, the alternative being the executioner's sword. At last, in a little village, they pitched their camp in simple faith among a people of whom not one but wished them gone. Death, and the many fevers of West Africa have worked sad havoc in their ranks, but bravely they kept on, though often one man alone 'held the fort' in Gierku.

A language to be learned and reduced to Roman writing, the Bible to be translated, the suspicions of a hostile people to be allayed, the very _meaning_ of the words truth and purity to be taught, learned Moslem Mallams[1] to be dealt with, men and women, boys and girls, in a bondage to sin, such as we have never thought of in Europe, to be led out into the liberty with which Christ alone makes free--that was the task before them.

That was ten years ago: what is found to-day?

[Sidenote: A Hausa Convert.]

'Last summer a Hausa convert, only one year after his baptism, was travelling, for business purposes, to the old and fanatical city of Katsina, 140 {173} miles from our C. M. S. station in Zaria, almost the earliest stronghold of Islam in this land. He was a young man of considerable ability and well known for his learning; his conversion and baptism had caused some consternation in orthodox circles, where it had been freely said that whatever we might succeed in doing among the illiterate, we should never convert a _Mallam_!

'Soon after his arrival in Katsina, he was sent for by the Emir, who said to him, "We have heard of you, and your reputation has reached here. Why did you leave your own faith and that of your fathers, and become a Christian?" Seeking for God's guidance, our friend quietly gave his reasons, and spoke of his joy and rest in Christ. He then asked permission to expound the Christian faith, that those assembled (a few of the leading men, including the chief religious Mohammedan official and judge) might understand what he had received in exchange for Islam. This was permitted, and for a long time he preached Christ to them.

'From that time, during the rest of his stay in the city, not one day passed but he was invited to the houses of the leading Mallams and chiefs, to explain the Christian faith and read the Scriptures in Arabic. So the gospel was faithfully preached to many in this city where no white missionary has been allowed, by one who had been a learned Mohammedan and whom Christ had saved. This same man and others are fearlessly proclaiming Christ, and with ceaseless energy are seeking and praying to bring in their fellow-countrymen to the Light.'

{174}

So wrote Dr. Miller in June, 1909. It is but a corner of the picture--but it must suffice us.

[Sidenote: Egypt.]

The strength of Islam in Africa is Egypt. The great Moslem University of Al Azhar 'is the centre, literally, from a geographical, and actually from a spiritual point of view of the world of Islam,'--a Moslem University which exists to teach the Moslem faith, with thousands of students, and a training that often covers twenty years, to which men come from every outpost of the Moslem world. 'Far the oldest of the medieval Universities, it is the only one which has remained, and remains, medieval in its curriculum, its methods, its whole aspect'--such is the head and heart of Islam to-day.

Shall this citadel of Islam be left unassailed while the Church passes on to easier work? Or is it a challenge for _picked men_, the best our Western learning can produce, to outlearn the learned, to love the hardest hearts and have patience over wooden heads, to believe in spite of all appearances that Truth is great and will prevail? To-day, through the many {175} pillared porticoes into the great University Court where for long centuries no Christian could so much as enter, Christian missionaries, true enough, men enough for this, pass freely, welcome friends and visitors. From this Moslem of Moslem Universities, 'students and ex-students have been converted to Christianity, and not a few have, as they paced or sat apart, studied there not the Korân, but the Injil Yasu'a al Masih (Gospel of Jesus Christ)'!

[Sidenote: Asia.]

And what of the problem in Asia, the struggle with Islam and its many and various forms there--Islam in undisputed power, Islam plus European influence, Islam under British rule, Islam under Dutch, and French, and Chinese governments, Islam sealing itself against the world, Islam caught in the rush of twentieth-century movements? What is the Church of Christ attempting? What trophies has she won?

[Sidenote: Henry Martyn.]

Just a hundred years ago Henry Martyn, a young brilliant scholar, Senior Wrangler of Cambridge, went out to India as a Chaplain of the East India Company. He was only in India four years before he {176} moved on to Persia, but he left behind him a translation, of the Bible into Hindustani. His life was 'cut short,' as men said, at thirty-one.

The fact of his going out at all was staggering enough for intelligent men of his day. But when it transpired that his purpose in taking the post was that he might work among Hindus and Moslems, they had no words to describe his action but 'madness.' 'Absolutely throwing his life away!' said some. 'Of all the ridiculous ideas!' said others. 'Well, of all the impossible tasks!' said the more thoughtful, to whom, in those days, the conversion of a Moslem to Christianity was unimaginable. Possibly if he had stayed at home he might have lived to grey hairs, a life of learning, wealth, and honour. Instead, he planted a tiny living seed in the field of Islam. Was it worth while?

It is reported that he left in India one, and only one, convert, Abdul Masih, the keeper of the jewels at the Court of Oudh. He lived for fifteen years after Martyn's death, labouring among his Moslem compatriots, the first Mohammedan ordained to the Christian ministry.

{177}

[Sidenote: Imad-ud-Din.]

To-day among the native pastors and Christian preachers and teachers in North India, there are at least 200 who were once followers of Islam.[2]

Let one speak for himself. His name is Moulvie Imad-ud-Din, he is a lineal descendant of the famous Mohammedan saint, Qutab Jamal, who traced his descent from the ancient royal house of Persia: he was born near Delhi, in 1830, and died at Amritsar, in 1900.

'When I was fifteen years of age, I left my friends and relatives for my education, and went to Agra, where my brother, Moulvie Karim-ud-Din, was the Headmaster in the Urdu language. I remained there a long time under him.... As soon as I had leisure from the study of science, I began to wait on Fakirs and pious and learned men, to discover the advantages of religion. I frequented the mosques and the houses set apart for religious purposes, and the homes of the Moulvies and carried on my studies in Mohammedan law, the ceremonies of the Korân and the traditional sayings of Mohammed, and also in manners, logic and philosophy. I knew nothing of the Christian religion. I had some doubts in my mind respecting Mohammedanism in consequence of intercourse I had had with some Christians, but the taunting curses of the Moulvies and Mohammedans so confounded {178} me that I quickly drew back from all such thoughts.... I gave up all thought of disputation, and controversy, and began to take great pains in acquiring knowledge. Without troubling myself about any other concerns, I read steadily night and day and continued doing so for eight or ten years.

When the necessary attainments in the outward knowledge of religion had been acquired, and I had become brimful of Mohammedan bigotry from it, I became entangled in another snare which the learned Mohammedans have placed in the path of the seeker after truth.... The Mohammedans always at first, and for a long period of time, set forth before enquirers the outward rites of their law, and their bodily exercises and unprofitable stories and the affinities of words used in their controversies. They then tie him by the leg with a rope of deceit, in order to make him sit down and rest contented, by telling him that what he has already learned consists merely of the outward ordinances of Mohammedanism, but that if he wishes to prosecute his studies and investigate the realities of religion he must go to the Fakirs and the Mohammedan saints, and remain in attendance on them for many years because they possess the secret science of religion.

'As soon as I was entangled in this subtle science, I began to practise speaking little, eating little, living apart from men, afflicting my body and keeping awake at nights. I used to spend whole nights reading the Korân. I put in practice ... all the various special penances and devotions {179} that were enjoined. I used to shut my eyes and sit in retirement, seeking by thinking on the Name of God to write it on my heart. I constantly sat on the graves of holy men, in hopes that, by contemplation, I might receive some revelation from the tombs. I went and sat in the assemblies of the elders and hoped to receive grace by gazing with great faith on the faces of the Sufies. I used to go even to the dreamy and intoxicated fanatics, in the hope of thus attaining union with God. And I did all this, besides performing my prayers five times a day, and also the prayer in the night and that in the very early morning, and always was I repeating the salutation of Mohammed and the confession of faith....

'The thought of utterly renouncing the world then came into my mind with so much power that I left everybody and went into the jungles and became a Fakir, putting on clothes covered with red ochre and wandered here and there, from city to city, and from village to village, step by step alone, without plan or baggage.

'In addition to the above I wrote the name of God on paper 125,000 times, and I cut out each word separately with scissors and wrapped them up each in a little ball of flour and fed the fish in the river with them in the way the book prescribed....

'I had got into the same state of mind that many learned Mohammedans have been in under similar circumstances. I once had thought that Mohammedanism was the best of all religions on earth. I had, therefore, believed Christianity to {180} be untrue: in short, I was a vehement opponent of the Christian religion. I therefore became convinced in my own mind that all religions were but vain fables, and that it was better for me to live in ease and comfort myself, to act honestly towards everybody, and to be satisfied with believing in the unity of God. For six years my mind remained afflicted with these foolish thoughts....

'I came to Lahore. I here heard of the conversion to Christianity of Moulvie Safdar Ali at Jubbulpore, which greatly amazed me ... gradually I remembered that Ali was a true and just man, and I began to ask myself how he could have acted in such a foolish manner as to leave the Mohammedan religion. I then thought that I ought to begin to dispute with him by letter about it. With this object I procured the Old and New Testaments and asked an English Christian missionary to read the English Testament with me. When I read as far as the 7th Chapter of St. Matthew, doubts fixed themselves upon my mind respecting the truth of Mohammedanism. I became so agitated that I spent whole days, and often also whole nights, in reading and considering the books, and began to speak about them both with missionaries and Mohammedans. Within a year I had investigated the whole matter, chiefly at nights, and I discovered that the religion of Mohammed is not of God, and that Mohammedans have been deceived, and that salvation is assuredly to be found in the Christian religion.

'As soon as this had become evident to me, I made everything known to my Mohammedan {181} friends and followers. Some of them became angry; but some listened in my private chamber to the proof I gave them. They said quite plainly that they knew that the religion of Mohammed is not true; but they asked me what they could do, when they were afraid of the opposition of the world and of the reproaches and curses of ignorant men. In their hearts they said they certainly believed Christianity to be true, and that Mohammed could not be the Mediator of the men of his religion, but they were unwilling to lose the esteem of the world. They urged me not to make my faith public, but to call myself outwardly a Mohammedan, and yet in my heart to believe in Christianity.... The extent of their faith became thus evident to me by their own confessions. I committed them all to God for, besides praying for them, I knew not anything else I could do for them, and I went myself to Amritsar and received baptism.'

Imad-ud-Din entirely omits any reference to his noble decision to decline a lucrative Government position which was offered to him, that he might be ordained to the Christian ministry, and devote his life to the spread of Christian truth among his fellow-countrymen.

'Since my entrance into the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have had great peace in my soul.... By reading the Word of God I have found enjoyment in life. My friends and acquaintances and {182} my disciples and followers and others, have all become my enemies.... I therefore pray for them. May God give them grace and open the eyes of their minds that they may be partakers of the everlasting salvation of the Lord, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.'

Shortly after Henry Martyn arrived in India he had written, 'Even if I should never see a native converted, God may design by my patience and continuance in the Word to encourage future missionaries.' Again, was it worth while?

[Sidenote: Dutch East Indies.]

In the Dutch East Indies alone there are to-day 24,000 Christian converts from Islam, and from 200 to 300 are baptized every year--the fruit of the labours of stout-hearted Dutchmen.

[Sidenote: Persia.]

We have so far been meeting strong men, missionary and convert. Let us take a look at a very different Moslem whom we meet in a Christian Hospital for women in the heart of Persia. The English lady worker has just completed her round of the wards, and we greet with her a former out-patient, one of a group of women converts.

'The first of these was Sakîneh, who entered the Women's Dispensary with her aunt, who was ill. At that time Sakîneh was a bigoted Moslem, but {183} gradually the message touched her heart. A year later she came for treatment for herself, her husband's cruelty having made her ill, for which reason he divorced her. Sakîneh was then eager to learn more of Christ's love. Her father beat her cruelly, but this seemed to increase her desire for teaching.... She declared her faith in Jesus as the only Saviour ... and was baptized. Shortly after she began to try and tell her own family and neighbours.... The news spread in her village, Hoseinabad, that she was a Christian. Then a system of boycotting and persecution began. Her friends no longer saluted her in the streets, she was pelted with mud and stones, hooted at, called infidel, Nazarene, Christian dog, etc. At the Public Baths a woman noticed she had no Moslem charms on, and charged her publicly with being a Christian. At first she was afraid to reply, then answered "Yes." At once she was cast out, and the place declared defiled by her. She was followed down the street by an angry mob, and beaten with a chain used for whipping donkeys.... Her fellow-villagers declared either Sakîneh must be put to death or she and her parents must leave the village. As night came on the mob surrounded the house, threatening to take her life. Her brother-in-law got her over the wall of the village into the desert, and brought her to our house. Sakîneh was unnerved, but kept on repeating, "I have not denied Christ; I want to live and die a Christian."'

It was just twenty years ago that Sakîneh bore her brave witness for Christ.

{184}

[Sidenote: The Christian Church in Persia to-day.]

It is a beautiful picture, and one full of hope, that remains with us as we leave the sad, inert, decadent land of Persia. There among a people, sinful, sensuous, corrupt, and apparently loveless, at almost every place where in school or hospital, in gaudy harem or in humble cottage, the Gospel of purity and love is preached to-day, are little companies of Persian Christians, men and women who, disowned, impoverished, persecuted, in peril of imprisonment and death, count it a joy to suffer for Christ's sake. Truly in Persia are heroic outposts of the Christian Church.

[Sidenote: Ion Keith-Falconer and Arabia.]

We close this chapter with a short picture of one of the noble men who have given their lives to win the way into Arabia.

'See, in the purpose of God for Arabia, that lad of promise, lovable, thoughtful, strong in mind and body, in his noble Scottish home. See him at Harrow, then at Cambridge, rising above his fellows, many-sided, full of fire and life. Watch him at work, passing rapidly from form to form at Harrow, taking a first in one Tripos and then another at Cambridge, good at mathematics, brilliant at languages, a born teacher, so exact in his working that he masters Dutch Grammar in three weeks {185} rather than leave a book in that language, which bore upon a lecture, unread. Watch him at play--bicycling from John o' Groats to Land's End, and winning the Bicycling Championship of England, a man of superb physique and training, "as hard as nails." Watch him at his special hobby--shorthand, an expert verbatim reporter, the chosen writer on phonography in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Down in the slums of Cambridge, or in the East End of London, you may find him too, now raising, or himself giving, funds for some enterprise, now addressing a great meeting, now sitting beside a man who seeks a way to Christ.

'For Ion Keith-Falconer is more than student and athlete--beyond the power of brain and muscle there lies a heart which beats true to its Master, "fervent still after all the turmoil of a great Public School and the more subtle temptations of a great University."

Surely scholarship and Cambridge claim such a man as this? At nine-and-twenty we find him a learned professor in Cambridge, at thirty a missionary to Arabia, at thirty-one, only six months after he left England, we stand by his grave, the black mountainous rocks of Aden lie behind us, and the white sandy shore of Arabia edges the limitless stretch of the ocean beyond.

From one point of view, Keith-Falconer's missionary career was disastrous and a dislocation. From another, his going was the most natural thing in the world. Young, strong, free, a master of Arabic, he had the constraining love of Christ within him, and a vision of the Moslem {186} world--especially Arabia--before. Speaking for the last time before he left Scotland, he said:

'"_While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism, and of Islam, the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by Him to keep you out of the foreign mission-field._"

'The purpose of the strong man to spend and be spent in the Cause shines out in those last short months. We see him building at Sheikh Othman a centre for his work, talking with patients in the mat-verandah, dropping into coffee-shops to meet in friendly intercourse with the Moslems he loved, picking up and carrying with the aid of his devoted colleague a sick man left to die in the street. Then the fever-mists gather, and the scholar-missionary's death claims Arabia for her true Lord.

'The missionary chapter of Ion Keith-Falconer's life closed quickly, but the eyes of Christians were opened to the land for which he died.'

Is there such a thing as waste in God's economy? Is it not written 'whoso loseth his life, the same shall find it'?

QUESTIONS FOR CHAPTER XI

1. Of the heroes mentioned in this chapter, whom do you consider the greatest, and why?

2. What answer would you give to the assertion that Ion Keith-Falconer's life was wasted through his going to missionary work in Arabia?

{187}

3. Estimate the extent of the work done for Africa by Livingstone. How far is it being followed up adequately now?

4. Give some account of the perplexities, hindrances, and difficulties which make it hard for a Mohammedan to become a Christian.

5. Which parts of the Moslem world seem to you in most need of Christian missionaries to-day? Why? What sort of men would you send to each?

[1] i.e. Teachers.

[2] Dr. Wherry, _Islam and Christianity in India._

{188}