[[2]] Dr. Wherry, Islam and Christianity in India.
CHAPTER XII
ISLAM AND THE CHRISTIAN
'So while the World rolls on from change to change
And realms of thought expand,
The letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man's hand.
While as the life-blood fills the glowing form,
The spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages, fresh and warm,
More felt than heard or read,'
MILNES' 'PALM LEAVES'
(quoted in Stanley's Eastern Church).
The Story of Islam.
We have reached the end of the telling of our story. Let our minds move over it again once more. Thirteen hundred years ago in Arabia, an insignificant, untamed, untaught 'Land of the Desert,' there arose an Arab man who, forsaking idols, believed utterly in God. His followers poured forth into the world with a Faith that carried all before them. That Faith broke the great imperial civilizations of its day, and bore down the timid standards of a corrupt and palsied Church. Occupying the Mediterranean countries and the sites of the ancient empires, it established itself as the greatest ruling force the world had ever known. In spite of the rise of younger nations, the magnificence of medieval Europe, the growth of science and the arts of civilization and of war, in spite of many rival empires in the modern 'scramble for the world,' Islam still holds with its tenacious grip the thoughts and hearts of men. It dominates to-day one-seventh of mankind, moving still to fresh conquests of the Faith. We have traced that Faith in history and seen it settling like a deadly blight upon the nations, chilling and paralyzing the moral life of man. We have examined it in its essential meaning and significance.
Islam rises up before us in its tremendous rugged strength, leagued with the wild nature of 200 millions of our fellow-men, and overshadowing Christendom.
The Challenge of Islam.
'The only one of the great religions to come after Christianity: the only one that categorically denies the truth of Christianity: the only one that has in the past signally defeated Christianity: the only one that seriously disputes the world with Christianity: the only one which, in several parts of the world, is to-day forestalling and gaining on Christianity.'[[1]]