Chapter II (6)

About this latter view there gathers a strange and not unimpressive theory--that Jesus (who, according to the Islamic faith, did not die on the cross) reappears at intervals among different races--now among the Jews, now among the Indians, now among the Arabs--and that He will continue to make these manifestations until the world is ready for the greatest happiness obtainable by man--the establishment of the Kingdom of God.

But not all the disputations of the wise heads of El Azhar can rob the humble of the object of their veneration. Ishmael came from the people, and with the people he will always remain. His blameless life, his touching history, his deep humanity, his simple teaching, and above all his lofty hopes, have made him Sultan of a vast empire of souls--the empire of the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, and the broken-hearted. From the central heart of the East his spirit came as a ray of sunlight, inspiring men in the dark places to live nobly, to die bravely, and to keep up their courage to the last.

_And what of Ishmael's influence in the West?_

_Nothing! European historians have written since his time without saying a word about him. One of them, who devotes long chapters to accounts of the bombardment of Alexandria, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the craven flight of Arabi and his theatrical scene with the Khedive in Abdeen Square, and yet other chapters to the building of the Assouan dam and the construction of the Cape-to-Cairo railway, dismisses Ishmael's pilgrimage from Khartoum in five lines of a section dealing with_ "_Mahdism and Sedition in the Soudan._"

_And indeed, so hard do we find it, in spite of our civilisation and Christianity, to believe that the things of the spirit may be more helpful in sustaining our steps and shaping our destinies than any forces we can weigh, measure, and calculate, that it is difficult to think of any real welcome in the cities of the West for one whose only teaching was that great wealth is an inheritance taken by force from the Almighty; that property beyond the proper needs of civilised human life is pillage; and that God so loves the world that He will come in person to govern it and to save mankind from its suffering and the consequences of its sins._

_Certainly the mere thought of any one holding these opinions, least of all an Arab, the son of a boat-builder, born on the Libyan desert, brought up in the depths of the Soudan, educated in the stagnant schools of El Azhar, wearing sandals and a turban, and probably eating with his fingers--the mere thought of such a one, in the present year of grace, forcing his way into the Cathedrals and Parliament Houses of Westminster, Washington, Rome, Berlin, and Paris, where Archbishops officiate in embroidered copes and Ministers prepare budgets towards the re-paganisation of the world, would at least provoke a smile._

_Nevertheless there are some who think that the world is not ruled by its great men but by its great ideas; that these ideas are few and very old; that when humanity needs to renew itself it has only to go back to them; and that it is not so often in the "sick hurry" of civilised communities as out of the calm solitude of the desert that we hear the sublime but simple notes of the World's One Voice._

THE END

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