MEASUREMENT, SPIRITUAL
I must see your motives, your disposition, your loves and hates, your aspirations and longings and hopes, before I can say I see you. How tall are you? How much do you weigh? Six feet, you say, and weigh a hundred and fifty pounds? Both of us are wrong. You can’t measure the self by a foot-rule, nor weigh it in iron scales. Every time you aspire and hope and love you escape the body and live in the heights and distances. To estimate you aright I must gather up all your hopes and aspirations and faiths and loves; and if you have been wise enough to reach up and lay hold of the eternal I must weigh and measure the eternal in order to estimate you.—Robert MacDonald.
(1998)
MECCA, INFLUENCE OF
The pilgrimage to Mecca is not only one of the pillars of the religion of Islam, but it has proved one of the strongest bonds of union and has always exercised a tremendous influence as a missionary agency. Even to-day the pilgrims who return from Mecca to their native villages in Java, India, and west Africa, are fanatical ambassadors of the greatness and glory of Islam. From an ethical standpoint, the Mecca pilgrimage, with its superstitious and childish ritual, is a blot upon Mohammedan monotheism. But as a great magnet to draw the Moslem world together with an annual and ever-widening esprit de corps, the Mecca pilgrimage is without a rival. The number of pilgrims that come to Mecca varies from year to year. The vast majority arrive by sea from Egypt, India, and the Malay Archipelago. The pilgrim caravan from Syria and Arabia by land is growing smaller every year, for the roads are very unsafe. It will probably increase again on the completion of the Hejaz railway from Damascus to Mecca. All told, the present number is from sixty to ninety thousand pilgrims each year.—Samuel M. Zwemer, “The Moslem World.”
(1999)
MEDIATION
King Edward III, in 1347, besieged Calais and the French king, very unwilling to lose his town, sought to come to the help of his people, but in vain. King Edward refused to grant any conditions of peace. The people were hunger-bitten because of the protracted siege. The unrelenting king said, “You must give up yourselves to be dealt with as I will. Let six of the chief citizens of the town come to me with halters around their necks, their heads and feet bare, and the keys of the town and castle in their hands. With these I will deal as I please.” Accordingly these six, led by the governor, came to the king. Dropping on their knees before him, they implored him to spare their lives. King Edward refused to grant them mercy and ordered their instant death. His chief counselors and governor entreated him to spare these brave and valiant men, but his purpose was fixt. No merit that they might plead could cause him to change his mind, until finally, his consort, Queen Philippa knelt before him and said: “I pray you, sire, for the love that you bear me, to have mercy upon the men.” Then the king relented, saying: “I can not refuse the thing which you ask in this way. I give you, therefore, these men to do with them as you please.” The men were then taken to clean apartments to be well clothed and fed. (Text.)
(2000)
Medical Missionaries—See [God Sends Gifts]; [India, Medical Opportunities in]; [Missionaries, Medical]; [Surgery in Korea].