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 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.'
So wrote Dr. Miller in June, 1909. It is but a corner of the picture—but it must suffice us.
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 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)'!
Asia.