Per aspera ad astra: there is no easy road or short cut to collective, spiritual progress. I am not arguing against possible "acts of grace" working on individuals, but the uplift of a race, a class or even a congregation cannot be done by a sort of spiritual legerdemain based on hypnotic suggestion. Individuals may be so swayed for the time being, and, in a few favourable cases, the initial impetus will be carried on, but most human souls are like locusts and flutter earthward when the wind drops. They may have advanced more or less, but are just as likely to be deflected or even swept back again by a change in the wind. Revivalist campaigns and salvation by a coup de théâtre do not encourage consecutive religious thought, which is the only stable foundation of religious belief; second-hand convictions do not wear well in the storm and sunshine of unsheltered lives, and a creed that has to be treated like an orchid is no use to anybody.
If the same amount of earnest, consecutive effort and clear thinking had been applied to religion as has gone to build up civilisation we should all be leading harmonious spiritual lives to-day and sin and sorrow would probably have been banished from the earth, but few people think of applying their mental faculties to religion, and its exploitation by modern mercantile methods is not the same thing at all. Civilisation is an accretion of countless efforts and ceaseless striving to ameliorate existing conditions, whereas religion started as a perfect thesis and has since got overgrown with human bigotry and fantasies while absorbing very little of the vast, increasing store of human knowledge. That is why civilisation has got so much in advance of religion that the latter cannot lead or guide the former, but only lags behind, like a horse hitched to a cart-tail. Missionary writers are rather apt to confuse the gifts of civilisation with the thing itself. A savage can be taught to use a rifle or an electric switch or even a flame-projecter, but this is no proof that he is really civilised. On the other hand, the scholarly recluse and philosopher whose works uplift and refine humanity may bungle even with the "fool-proof" lift which takes him up to his own eyrie in Flat-land, but he is none the less civilised.
They would have us believe that petticoats and pantaloons are the hall-mark of Christian civilisation, and one of their favourite sneers at Arabia (as a proof of its benighted condition and need of their ministrations) is "a land without manufacture where machinery is looked on as a sort of marvel." As a matter of fact, Arabia can manufacture all she really wants, and did so when we blockaded her coasts; nor is machinery any more of a marvel to the average Arabian Arab than it is to the average Occidental. Both use intelligently such machinery as they find necessary in their pursuits and occupations, though neither can make it or repair it except superficially, and both fumble more or less with unfamiliar mechanical appliances. The young man from the country blows the gas out or tries to light his cheroot at an incandescent bulb, and may be considered lucky if he does not get some swift, silent form of vehicular traffic in the small of his back when he is gaping at an electric advertisement in changing-coloured lights. It has been my object, and to a certain extent my duty, on several occasions to try to impress a party of chiefs and their retinue when visiting Aden from the wildest parts of Arabia Felix (which can be very wild indeed). On the same morning I have taken them over a man-of-war, on the musketry-range to see a Maxim at practice and down into a twelve-inch casemate when the monster was about to fire. They never turned a hair, but asked many intelligent questions and a few amusing ones, tried to cadge a rifle or two from the officer showing them the racks for small arms, condemned the Maxim for "eating cartridges too fast" and were much tickled by the gunner-officer's joke that they could have the big cannon if they would take it away with them.
These wild Arabians, when trained, make the most reliable machine-tenders in the East, as they have a penchant for mechanism of all sorts and will not neglect their charge when unsupervised.
We are all inclined to boast too personally of our enlightened civilisation with its marvellous mechanical appliances, but what is it after all but the specialist training of the few serving the wants of the many? If the average missionary swam ashore with an Arab fireman from a shipwreck and landed on an uninhabited island of ordinary tropical aspect, the Arab would know the knack of scaling coco-nut palms (no easy task), the vegetation which would supply him with fibre for fishing-lines and what thorns could be used to make an effective hook, while the missionary would probably be unable to get fire by friction with the aid of a bow-string and spindle.
Missionary literature is very severe on Arabia as a stiff-necked country which has hitherto discouraged evangelical activities. "Hence the low plane of Arabia morally. Slavery and concubinage and, nearly everywhere, polygamy and divorce are fearfully common and fatalism has paralysed enterprise."
This indictment is not only unjust, but it recoils on Western civilisation. Arabia is on a high enough moral plane to refuse drink, drugs and debauchery generally, while prostitution is unknown outside large centres overrun by foreigners, which are more cosmopolitan than Arab. Sanaa, which is a pure Arab city with little or no foreign element, is much more moral than London or New York. To adduce slavery and concubinage coupled with polygamy and divorce as further evidence against Arabia is crass absurdity; slaves are far better treated anywhere in Arabia than they were in the States or the West Indies; concubinage and polygamy, as practised by the patriarchs of Holy Writ, are still legal in that part of the world; there is nothing sinful about them in themselves—a Moslem might as well rebuke Western society for being addicted to whisky and bridge. He might even remind us that divorce is easier in the States than in Arabia and quote the Prophet's words on the subject: "Of all lawful acts divorce is the most hateful in the sight of God." With us a woman can be convicted of adultery in the eyes of the world on evidence that would not hang a cat for stealing cream, but in Islam the act must be proved beyond doubt by two witnesses, who are soundly flogged if their evidence breaks down, and their testimony is declared invalid for the future. This places the accusation under a heavy disability, but it is better than putting a woman's most cherished attribute at the mercy of a suborned servant or two—a far greater injustice to womanhood than bearing a fair share of a naturally hard and toilsome life, which is also a missionary complaint against Arabia. As for fatalism paralysing enterprise there, perhaps it does to a certain extent, but it cannot compare with our own organised strikes in that direction.
Another charge is that Arabia has no stable government and people go armed against each other. Tribal Arabia has the only true form of democratic government, and the Arab tribesman goes armed to make sure that it continues democratic—as many a would-be despot knows to his cost. They use these weapons to settle other disputes occasionally, but Christian cowboys still do so at times unless they have acquired grace and the barley-water habit.
These deliberate misstatements and the distortion of known facts are unworthy of the many earnest workers in recognised mission fields, and they become really mischievous when they culminate in an appeal to the general public calling for resources and personnel to "win Mecca for Christ," and use it and the Arabic language to disseminate Christianity and so win Arabia and, eventually, the Moslem world.
Christianity had a very good start in Arabia long before Muhammad's day, and (contrary to missionary assertion) was in existence there for centuries after his death. Not long before the dawn of Islam, Christian and pagan Arabs fought side by side to overthrow a despotic Jew king in Yamen who was trying to proselytise them with the crude but convincing contrivance of an artificial hell which cost only the firewood and labour involved and beat modern revivalist descriptions of the place to a frazzle as a means of speedy conversion—to a Jew or a cinder.