"You think Ishmael Ameer a regenerator, a reformer, a redeemer of Islam; and if his preaching prevailed it would send the Grand Cadi back to his Sultan—isn't that so?" But the Chancellor made no reply.
"It would also send England out of Egypt—wouldn't it?" said Gordon, but still the Chancellor gave no sign.
"It would go farther than that perhaps—it would drive Western civilisation out of the East—wouldn't that be the end of it?" said Gordon, and then the Chancellor replied—
"It would drive a corrupt and ungodly civilisation out of the world, my son."
"I see!" said Gordon. "You think the mission of Ishmael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even Europe, and says to humanity in general, 'What you call civilisation is killing religion, because the nations—Christian and Moslem alike—have sold themselves to the lust of empire and the greed of gold'—isn't that what you mean?"
The Chancellor bowed his grave head, and in a scarcely audible voice said, "Yes."
"You think, too," said Gordon, whose breathing was now quick and loud, "that Ishmael Ameer is an apostle of the soul of Islam—perhaps of the soul of religion itself without respect of creed—one of the great men who come once in a hundred years to call the world back from a squalid and sordid materialism, and are ready to live, aye, and to die for their faith—the Savonarolas, the Luthers, the Gamal-ed-Deens—perhaps the Mohammeds and" (dropping his voice) "in a sense the Christs?"
But the Egyptian soul, like the mirage of the Egyptian desert, recedes as it is approached, and again the Chancellor made no reply.
"Tell me, O Sheikh," said Gordon, rising to go, "if Ishmael Ameer came to Cairo, would you permit him to preach in El Azhar?"
"He is an Alim" (a doctor of the Koran); "I could not prevent him."