15

IN considering the task of evangelizing the Moslem world we must record at the same time great sacrificial effort and apparently small visible result. Looking back to the early pioneers such as Raymond Lull and Francis of Assisi, or down the past century to Henry Martyn's day, what is there to show for all the tears and blood save the patience of unanswered prayer. Like Simon Peter, the lonely worker at Tangier or Tanta, at Adana or Aden, at Khartoum or Kairwan, might well say, "Master, we have toiled all night and taken nothing, nevertheless, at Thy word we will let down the net." A confession of faithfulness-" We have toiled." A confession of failure-" We have taken nothing." A confession of dauntless faith-" Nevertheless we will let down the net."

These three short phrases on the lips of the Fisherman-Apostle express actual Conditions in the world of Islam. In Peter's boat there doubtless were a few little sun-fish and some eels entangled in the net, but in fisherman's vocabulary, in the parlance of the market-place, Peter spoke the truth when he said, "Master, we have toiled all night and taken nothing."

It is true that there are converts from Islam; in Java and Sumatra, no less than 45,000, won by faithful preaching and by witness for Christ; and yet the Dutch and the German missionaries do not think their work very successful among Mohammedans, because among the cannibal tribes, and Animists, they have won for Christ in less than a century well-nigh 900,000 converts. In India, too, there are thousands of Mohammedan converts; in every field there is some proof, thank God, that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation also to Mohammedans, and yet when we report facts the

paucity of converts in every one of these fields is the great outstanding fact.

Mr. Findlay Andrew writes from Western China: "Islam has been referred to as a Challenge to Christian missions; once a Moslem, always a Moslem in Western China. During the past years but few Moslems have been reached with the Gospel and after a profession of faith been accepted as church members or enquirers, the number has been very small, and of those who have got the faith only about one remains in church fellowship at the time of my writing."

In Persia there are beginnings of a movement toward Christ among Mohammedans, and yet, after fifty years and more of missionary effort, there are fewer than 300 converts from Islam.

In Arabia, where men and women have toiled for thirtyfour years, the total number of Mohammedan converts who are professing openly that they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and are His followers, is less than the number of years of toll and tears and patience and prayer poured out on those desert acres.

Turn to Turkey, and Dr. McCallum testifies: "All our work is practically destroyed; not a single church of Moslem converts in existence in all the Turkish area after a hundred years of foreign missions."

In North Africa, including Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, the total number of Mohammedans who profess and call themselves Christians must still be put at less than five hundred.¹

Many reasons are given for the paucity of converts. Some

¹ "Although there are 438 missionaries in Egypt, and although some of the mission bodies are working almost exclusively for the Moslems, and although there are about 19,000 Evangelical Christians in Egypt with good church organizations and a well-educated ministry, and although there are in the various mission schools approximately 2,500 Moslem students continuously receiving instruction in Bible study, the visible result of the missionary work for Moslems is not very great. At the present time we probably could not point to more than 150 living converts from Islam in Egypt. If the Moslem converts were distributed among the missionary workers there would be about one convert for every three missionaries. If the comparison is made with the Evangelical Church, there would be about one for every congregation in Egypt. Every missionary method known to man has been tried and is being tried, but until the present neither the missions nor the Evangelical Church have whereof to boast in the face of this great and baffling problem."- Missionary Survey 1924.

blame the church for lack of faith; others the missionaries for lack of love. The reason, others say, is that we have tried to win by controversy rather than by kindness, and our difficulty is one of method. Again, we are told that the time is not yet, the hour has not struck, the harvest is not ripe.

In some cases hope deferred has made the heart sick. "I venture the opinion," wrote such an one, "that Islam is perhaps reprobate. Since the apostasy was subsequent to God's offer of grace in Christ, He has withdrawn them from his sphere of activity. Perhaps corporately Islam has sinned against the Holy Spirit. I have toiled here two years, living in this Moslem home, thinking and talking like a Moslem, knowing their inner life as perhaps few do. Why is it, I wonder? To be quite candid, I expected that coming here in absolute simplicity and poverty, living amongst them, as near as possible as I believe Paul did, without committees or funds, I asked and expected God to give the increase, and yet, comparatively speaking, we have caught nothing."

Now all the reasons given above for the meagreness of direct results in work for Moslems have a measure of truth, yet none of them are sufficient. It is our conviction that among the many reasons for the small number of converts to the Christian faith in Moslem lands there is, perhaps, none so important, and yet concerning which so little is accurately known, as the Moslem law regarding apostates. Every convert to Christianity is an apostate from Islam, and although there have been apostates throughout all the centuries, and we know of cases even during the life-time of Mohammed the Prophet, the law of apostasy has become fixed in Islam, and for thirteen centuries has exercised its dread, if not its power, under all conditions and in every land. The apostate dies to his faith and is regarded by his family as worse than dead.

What the feeling is in Egypt, for example, may be judged if from the following notice sent out on black-edged paper and a funereal envelope, by a Moslem father, notifying his friends of the apostasy of his son. It was dated October 30, 1909, and in every respect resembled a polite and formal notice of decease.

Whereas the Christians who belong to the Protestant Church have officially recorded a disgraceful act which cannot be wiped out and never shall be wiped out, by depriving me of the sight of my son, the favourite of my heart, even from a single glance of his portrait, and he being of the age of twenty-two years and seventy days ending on the day of his unhappy marriage, therefore let anyone who has any religion, and everyone, whatever may be his religious persuasion, shrink back from assisting these ravening wolves- especially those who share with them in their joys on the coming Sunday, to-morrow, in the Church of Al Miniya (which is Called the Evangelical Church), because they are consciously renewing the age of persecution under Nero. "(Signed) M. ABDULLAH."

During the war there was grave suspicion that a leading Moslem in Cairo deliberately arranged to have his son meet with a tramway accident rather than permit his public baptism. There have been cases in Egypt of relatives sending those of their family who had leanings towards Christianity into asylums for the insane, with the connivance of local authorities. The penalty of public confession in countries like Arabia and Afghanistan is well known.

Islam, from the earliest times and according to the teaching of the Koran, has always made it extremely easy to enter the Moslem brotherhood, and extremely difficult for those who once enter its fold to find exit. It is not an exaggeration to say that the doors of this vast temple reared by the Arabian Prophet swing only inward, not outward. Like a cunning trap, everything yields to the slightest pressure from without, but these very yielding doors are securely barred and barbed to lacerate those who attempt escape. Dr. D. S. Margoliouth called attention to this in his first lecture on "The Early Development of Mohammedanism" :¹

"It is a noteworthy fact about the Mohammedan system, that since the Migration it has demanded no qualifications for admission to its brotherhood. To those who are outside its

¹ The Early Development of Mohammedanism, London, 1914, p.1.

pale it in theory offers no facilities whatever for the study of its nature; a man must enroll himself as a member first, and then only may he learn what his obligations are. The Koran may not be sold to Unbelievers; soldiers are advised not to take it with them into hostile territory for fear the Unbeliever should get hold of it; and many a copy bears upon it a warning to Unbelievers, 'Not to be touched '. Pious grammarians have refused to teach grammar to Jews or Christians, because the rules are apt to be illustrated by quotations from the sacred volume. The Unbeliever is by one of the codes forbidden to enter a mosque; and even when permission is granted him to do so, he is an unwelcome guest. The crowning ceremony of Islam, the Pilgrimage, may be witnessed by no Unbeliever; the penalty for intrusion is death.

"It follows that such periods of instruction and probation as are enjoined by some other systems upon neophytes are unknown to Islam, and indeed there is no occasion for them. Their purpose is to test the neophyte's sincerity in the first place, and his moral worthiness in the second. Against in-sincerity the system is sufficiently armed by the principle that whosoever abandons Islam forfeits his life; there is then little danger of men joining for some dishonest purpose and quitting the community When that purpose has been served. A Moslem who is in peril of his life may indeed simulate perversion, and no difficulty is made about readmitting the repentant pervert; but where Islam can be safely professed the pervert cannot legally hope to be spared. And it follows from this principle that martyrdom in Islam means something very different from what it means to the Christian. The Christian martyr is the man who dies professing his faith, but not resisting; the Moslem martyr is one who dies for his faith on the battlefield; more often in endeavouring to force it upon others than in defending his own exercise thereof. For his sacred book expressly permits him to refrain from confessing where confession will result in death or torment."

In his history of the American Mission in Egypt (1854-1896) Dr. Andrew Watson states that during this period as many as seventy-five Mohammedans were baptized, most of them from the poorer classes; but all of them were subject

to persecution because the idea of personal liberty-freedom of conscience-has no place in Moslem law, whether religious or civil. "To this very day, relatives will bring about by secret poisoning or other means the death of those whose Christian proclivities cannot be removed by arguments or by promises." He mentions among others a graduate of one of the Government colleges who became interested in the study of the Bible and witnessed for Christ. "Efforts were made to reclaim him, but the learned men of his former religion could not stand before his clear reasoning and strong arguments. Force was then resorted to, and he was seized by a mob and dragged to the kadi's court. There he was not only maltreated, but, contrary to law, imprisoned. His goods were seized, his wife divorced him, and he himself sent to the Government hospital on the plea that he was insane. His arrest was promptly brought to the attention of Her Majesty's representative in Egypt, but Sharif Pasha, the Prime Minister, persuaded Her Majesty's Consul-General that the young man's presence as a converted Moslem would be the cause of excitement and disturbance and a possible religious mob, and he consented to a temporary removal of the young man from the country, or to what was in reality his banishment from his native land; and all because he had read his Bible, had become convinced of its truth, and dared to say so. Two other persons from the upper Country, on its becoming known that they were attending Christian assemblies, were seized, beaten and imprisoned. Still persisting in their adherence to the Christian faith, they were sent to Cairo and kept in prison until, through the representations made to the Government through Sir Evelyn Baring (now Lord Cromer), they were brought to the American Mission in Cairo."

Of other cases we read that they were beaten, imprisoned, exiled, or in many ways deterred from embracing Christianity for fear of social persecution and family alienations. Correspondence received this year (1923) from a score of native pastors in Egypt seem to indicate that this spirit of persecution and intolerance is almost as prevalent as it was in the past. Any revival of nationalism seems to result in Islamic pride and manifestations of intolerance toward minorities.

The following letter, written by a Moslem Convert in Cairo, shows better than any argument could do the conditions that obtained in Egypt in 1878. It was written on January 21st of that year. The writer afterwards escaped from Egypt, received a medical education in Scotland, and has had a remarkable career as a medical missionary in China

"TO HER HIGHNESS, THE MAHARANEE DULUP SINGH.

"As your Highness is a convert of the American Mission School in Cairo, and as you have much interest in all who love the Lord Jesus Christ in this city and in this land, I wish to take the liberty of telling you of my persecutions since I became a Christian five months ago. I am an Egyptian, and was a pupil in the American School five years, and also a teacher the last two years. My father is a strict Mohammedan, but when I was teaching and reading the Bible I found that the Mohammedan religion is not the true one. I searched many months for the true religion of God, and read the Bible very much, and some other books; and when I found that Christianity is the true faith, I rejected my father's religion.

"Fearing that my father and relations would murder me, I intended to fly away from their faces; but when I consulted Dr. Lansing and Dr. Watson, the two missionaries in Cairo, they persuaded me that Cairo would be safer for me than any other place. So it was arranged that I should come to Dr. Lansing's house for protection. I sent letters to my father and brothers about the reason for my leaving home and embracing Christianity. I wished very much to show my love to Christ and to profess His name, and so I was soon baptized in the Mission Chapel by my name Ahmed -

"My brothers and friends and sheikhs and learned men came often to see me and made much controversy with me, but by the help of God I was always victorious, which made them very angry. For fear of them, I never went out excepting to teach in the school, which is only a few steps from Dr. Lansing's house, and in a very public place. They had spies watching me for several days, and after five weeks, on coming home one afternoon, I was surrounded by ten persons, three of them being my brothers. They caught me, and putting their hands

on my mouth and eyes, thrust me in a closed carriage in a very violent manner.

"There was a cafe very near, and when some men saw this they came forward to stop the horses from going and to help me; but my uncle, who was standing near, called out 'Let them alone; this is by the order of the Government.' They took me to my father's house, assuring me that if I did not tell him that I was a Mohammedan when he asked me, he would kill me. I did tell him, however, that I was a Christian, and he brought the most learned philosopher in Cairo and a very learned man, and with many others present they talked with me very hotly eight hours, until I Was sick and vomited.

"After three days of continued controversy, seeing that I would not yield, they then threatened me with immediate death according to their law, and in such a way I was certain it would be done. Now the great trial had come, and I began to feel a little weak. They wrote a paper saying that I had returned home of my own will and also to Mohammedanism, and forced me to put my name to it. They next took me to the police house and compelled me to write with my own hand to the same effect. After this they took me to the English Consulate, where I was again forced to say the same thing, as my brothers were secretly armed to kill me or any one who would defend me if I did not do so. Although after all this had been done they knew I was still a Christian at heart, it was proclaimed that I had returned to Mohammedanism, and they made a great feast to deceive and to take away the disgrace of the family. The controversy still continued, and after a month, when I wished to have my freedom and go to teach in the school they refused, I showed them even more strongly that I am still a Christian, and insisted upon my rights. But knowing the danger that I was now in, the Lord helped me to escape out of their hands; when I again sought refuge at Dr. Lansing's house, to whom I am certainly indebted for his kindness because of his giving me to eat and treatment as his own beloved son.

"Now I wish to tell your Highness that I am again a prisoner, unable to go out at all or even to step on the balcony; because they are so excited and Watching me night and day, desiring to

quench their thirst with my blood, the blood of the helpless young Christian. My brothers, according to their law, often assured me that if they murdered me they would be martyrs for doing so. I thank God who delivered me out of the hands of my Government, which I fully believe is watching me and allowing my relatives to do whatever they please and wish, so that I may be destroyed. Oh, would that God would bring freedom and justice here very soon. How dreadful is such injustice and oppression. How freedomless is this miserable country. How many persecutions for embracing God's true religion I have suffered I cannot tell, and how many troubles I have endured. As I have no freedom and no prospect of liberty or safety, may I ask your Highness to have compassion on me; and, for the sake of Christ and of Justice, to help me and deliver me out of the hands of such wicked and barbarous people.

"I hope your Highness will excuse me for troubling you so much; but you will see that I am in great distress and need help. I know that you love Christ very much, and also all the people who suffer for His sake. As you are a friend of Her Majesty, the Good Queen of England, would you do me the great favour to beseech her to use her exalted power to help me, as I believe nothing else will avail. I wish her to know also, that I not only ask her help for myself, but for many others who wish to embrace Christianity, but cannot for fear of persecution and death. I am very anxious to study the Holy Bible in the theological school, that I may, with the help of God, preach to the ignorant people in this land. I do not wish the Government to hear of this letter of your servant, lest it should tear me into pieces. I wish your Highness to pray for me that I may be strong and endure much, and all this help I ask for the sake of the Lord Jesus, for Whose name I have suffered much.

"I am your Highness' most obedient and most humble servant, etc.,"

A. F.

"P.S.-Since writing the above this morning I have received a secret visit from a true friend of my family, whom I can trust, begging me not to leave this house, assuring me that my life

will not be spared. My father has given orders to my brothers constantly. You thus see my perilous state. May God help and all to kill me if they meet me and they are watching me constantly. You thus see my perilous state. May God help me, and shield me from the power of my many enemies." A. F.

"Sent Jan. 21st, 1878."

This letter is typical not only of past but of present conditions; from every part of the Moslem mission field the testimony is positive and accumulative that one of the chief causes for the paucity of converts and the difficulty of securing public confessions on the part of secret disciples is the intimidating power of this attitude towards apostates. A missionary of long experience in Egypt writes: "I should say that certainly the Moslem law on apostates seems to be a very real cause for the hesitation on the part of converts to pass over from their Islamic connections to become Christians. I do not say that it is a cause for the paucity of converts, but rather for the paucity of open confession in a legal way. I think we have every reason to be quite assured that, if that law were in some way annulled, there would be a very, very decided change."

"I think there can be very little room for doubt," writes the Rev. W. T. Fairman, "that the Moslem law concerning apostates is one of the factors to explain the paucity of converts from Islam to Christianity. Death, forced separation from wife and family, loss of property and legal rights, naturally cause many who are convinced of the truth of Christianity to hesitate to profess faith in Christ."

President C. F. Gates, of Robert College, Constantinople, states: "The fear of death is certainly one cause for the fewness of converts from Islam to Christianity. Every Moslem knows that his life is in danger if he becomes a Christian. I have known a good many instances of Moslems who would secretly assert themselves as Christians, but would make no open statement because of the danger attending it."

Another missionary writes as follows : "As far as Turks are concerned, the Moslem law of apostasy has been the great cause for the paucity of converts. I have this on the testimony of several of my Turkish friends. And Moslems who have accepted

Christianity here have always felt that they were endangering their lives by doing so. Theoretically the penalty of death has been abrogated, but, as a matter of fact, it still exists in actual practice. The only difference being that before its abrogation executions under this law took place in public, and now all usually known is that converts disappear."

The Rev. William Miller once asked a convert from Islam this question, "Is the law of apostasy a cause for the fewness of converts?" He replied, "It is the cause!" Mr. Miller says, "Persians know that some years ago scores of Babis and Bahais were killed in Yezd and elsewhere for having left Islam: and there is a universal fear that such a fate may await any one who dares apostatize. Bahaism enjoins taqiyet (concealment of faith) as a duty, but Christianity demands public confession; and hence in Persia it is far easier to become a Bahai than to become a Christian. The law does not prevent earnest men from becoming Christians, but it prevents many weaker seekers for the truth from pressing on to a thorough study of Christianity."

The same testimony comes from lands where British or French rule has been established, and where we might expect a change in the attitude toward the apostate. "In my Indian experience," writes the Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht-Stanton, D.D., "the direct operation of this law is confined to the Northwest Frontier and to Afghanistan. Even in the districts under British administration, however, the spirit of the Moslem death penalty for apostasy is operative. The life of Pennell furnishes instances. Abdu'l Karim was done to death in British territory, and he was not the only one. Unquestionably, the absence of converts in Afghanistan, and their paucity in the North-west Frontier Province, as compared with the Central Punjab, is due to the peril to life and limb which the convert suffers in the former, but is protected from in the latter."

"If apostasy, according to the Koran, is death, then the Moslems of Algeria have no legal right at present to enforce such a law," says Mr. Alfred R. Shorey. "Attempts have been made, however, to poison converts and persecute them. A case which came directly under my notice was that of a young Arab from Tunisia, who was brought to Christ, I believe, through Mrs. Flad of Tunis. The young fellow's relatives tried

to poison him. He went to England and found work there for a few months; and then through the good offices of Mrs. Parker, wife of the celebrated Dr. Parker, City Temple, London, he was sent to Canada, and finally became a naturalized Canadian. After twelve years' absence he returned to North Africa, and went to see his parents; but he was even then afraid that his father might poison or kill him. Another case was that of a Kabyle girl, a baptized Christian, and now married to a Christian Kabyle. She was twice poisoned, either through jealousy or Moslem fanaticism; probably through both, for she openly confessed faith in Christ. The second time she was very ill, and at death's door; but was raised up, we believe, in answer to prayer. To my mind, the chief cause of paucity in the number of converts is fear of persecution and lack of moral courage."

Mr. James L. Lockhead writes as follows: "Algeria being under French law, and there being liberty of conscience, I do not think that we can say that the Moslem law regarding apostates accounts for the paucity of converts. Yet there is always the deep-rooted idea in every one brought up in Islam that to leave Islam for another religion is an awful and unpardonable sin. I do not know of any convert here who has been put to death for his faith in Christ. This is because Moslems are afraid of French law; but many of the fanatical Moslems would fain put the converts to death and have said so. I was walking on the street in Tunis with Sidi Elbeddai, our Bible Depot-keeper there, and two Moslem students from the mosque passed. In passing they spat on the ground as they saw Sidi El Beddai, and said, 'Dog, son of a dog.' This indicated their feelings. Another convert from Tunis left there a number of years ago for Canada. After an absence of a few years he returned on a visit to his parents who were still in Tunis. He refused to live with them, and through fear of treachery was very careful of what food he partook. I do not consider that it would be very safe for one of our converts to go into a country alone, or to be much in the Arab town after dark. He could be done away with, and it would be most difficult to trace the culprits. It seems to me that the case of women converts, especially among the middle or upper Classes, is even

more dangerous. If a woman convert took a decided stand as a Christian in the face of fanaticism she could be disposed of easily."

We are told that in Tunisia the Moslem law for apostates is not directly a cause for the paucity of converts. "I do not know that the law has ever been formally abolished or annulled," writes Mr. Evan E. Short, "but under French protectorate its operation is unimaginable. There is sometimes, however, a certain fear of what the Moslem authorities might do, and this hinders inquirers. But the strong deterrent cause is fear of family, social and business boycotting and persecution; which might even bring about death."

Even when our correspondents do not state that the law against apostates is the cause of timidity in confessing Christ, they point out that the attitude toward a convert who has left the fold is one of secret, and often open, hostility. Miss I. Lilias Trotter says "As to your query about the effects in Algeria of the Moslem law in regard to converts, we do not think that it has much to do with their paucity and timidity, for appeal can always be made to the French law. We have known several cases of threatened disinheritance, and of converts who have had to relinquish their share of income that might have been theirs; but their affairs are, apart from Christianity, so apt to be in a tangle, and the proceeds of property are so difficult to obtain unless those interested are on the spot, that we have never taken those matters very seriously; and the breaking of Ramadan does not, as a rule, involve more than being hooted at in the street. In Tunisia it is different; and we have known of two of three cases of deliberate injustice on the part of the families of converts, from which there seemed to be no appeal. The latest, in this year, was the case of a North Africa Mission convert, who went to his native town to claim his share of his father's inheritance, but was violently opposed by twelve of his relations on account of his confession of Christ, and was thrown into prison for three days and then sent off empty-handed. On his way back to his station in another Tunisian town, he was again put in prison for three days for breaking Ramadan. Here in Algeria our trouble is

not so much this open opposition as it is the brain-drugs or probably hypnotism, which are used to 'will' the converts away; and if the life in them is weak and faltering, they are often brought thus into a paralysed state of soul. We believe that three-fourths of the cases of backsliding might be traced to this source, if the full truth were known." In Java and in China, where Buddhism and Confucianism have largely modified the exclusiveness and intolerance of Islam, we yet find traces of the same spirit toward any Moslem who abandons his faith.

"If I did not know I would myself be put to death for it," said a Mohammedan in Java to one of his relations who had been converted to Christianity, "you would not leave this house alive, you wretched dog of a Christian."¹

Another instance is given by Simon, which is pathetic in its pregnant significance; "One of our finest Mohammedan Christians passed through a very dark time for years. One misfortune followed upon another, and he was exposed to constant persecution at the hands of his Mohammedan relatives. At last his wife also died after the birth of a child. He could not find a Christian wife. His Mohammedan relations found him a Mohammedan woman. He could not stand against this great temptation; he fell away. He, of course, received the wife only on condition that he himself became a Mohammedan. He then wrote his missionary this characteristic letter: 'The sorrow God has sent upon me is too great, and the temptation too severe. I cannot endure. I have become a Mohammedan that I may again have a wife. I have received my portion from God, like the Prodigal Son. I will consume it with riotous living. The good seed has fallen with me among thorns and been choked by them. I am now a lost sheep, which is lost in the wilderness. May other Christians not imitate my conduct. I have not become a Mohammedan because I really consider the religion of the Mohammedan a good one. I know that the Lord Jesus is alive and sitting at the right hand of God in heaven. Five of my people have already died as Christians. My purpose used to be never to be parted from them. My prayer now is

¹ Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra, by Simon, p.285.

that master (the missionary) and his wife would help me to lead my wife over to Christianity, so that I, like the Prodigal, may return from the far country to God our Father."¹

In his recent book, The Crescent in North-west China, Mr. G. Findlay Andrew sums up this baffling difficulty in words which might be used of other lands as well as of China. "Islam has often been referred to as the Challenge to Christian Missions. 'Once a Hwei-hwei (Moslem) always a Hwei-hwei' may rightly be said to be a direct challenge to the Church of Christ to-day. During the past years a few Hwei-wei have been reached with the Gospel, and after a profession of faith have been accepted either as Church members or as enquirers. The number has, however, been very small, and of those who 'have kept the faith' only about one remains in Church fellowship at the time of writing. In one station in the far west of the province four Hwei-hwei were baptized a few years ago on confession of their faith in Jesus Christ as a personal Saviour. The persecution they had to endure was great, and in some cases life itself was threatened. This possibly was the cause of their falling away after having run well for a season."²

The first Moslem convert I myself ever met was Kamil Abdel Messieh. He found Christ in Syria, was baptized at Beirut, and was a faithful, brave pioneer evangelist along the coast of Arabia in our Mission (1890-1892). And then-the law of apostasy was applied, and he died of poison at Busrah, and was buried in a Moslem grave. The story of his life was told by Henry H. Jessup, D.D., in The Setting of the Crescent and the Rising of the Cross (Philadelphia, 1898). As I pen these lines, thirtytwo years later, at Cairo, a Moslem student has just left my study, whose father turned him out-of-doors and threatens to kill him if he continues to read Christian books. He asked me, "What shall I do then with the words of our Master, 'Whosoever denies Me before men'?" And then the homeless lad looked with pitiful longing for an answer as we prayed together. He knew the Moslem law regarding apostates.

¹ Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra, by Simon, p. 323.

² The Crescent in North-west China, by Andrew, p. 110.

"The Grand Vizer of Turkey in 1843, in an official letter to Lord Ashley stated : The laws of the Koran compel no man to become a Mussulman but they are inexorable both as respects a Mussulman who embraces another religion, and as respects a person who, having of his renounced that faith. No consideration can produce a commutation of the capital punishment to which the law condemns him without mercy.

W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, in Missionary Review.

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