xisting order of Church
discipline, and inclined them to Reform. On the other hand, as we all
know, the invention of printing had caused men to read and the invention
of the New World to travel. Moreover, in the fifteenth century the
Ottoman Turks, then an irresistible power, were invading Europe, and a
new element of contact with an outside world was created, and a new
fear. Christendom certainly at that time was in danger of political
annihilation, or fancied itself to be so, and the apprehensions of
devout persons in Central Europe were roused to a vivid consciousness of
impending evil by the thought that this was perhaps another authorized
scourge of God.

I will not strain the parallel further than it will bear, but I would
suggest that causes somewhat analogous to these are now at work among
the Mussulmans of the still independent states of Islam, and that they
are operating somewhat in the same direction. The Mussulman peasantry,
especially of the Ottoman Empire, are miserable, and they know that they
are so, and they look in vain to their religion to protect them, as in
former days, against their rulers. They find that all their world now is
corrupt--that the law is broken daily by those who should enforce the
law; that the illegalities of those who ruin them are constantly
condoned by a conniving body of the Ulema; that for all practical
purposes of justice and mercy religion has abdicated its claim to direct
and govern. They have learned, too, by their intercourse with strangers,
and in the towns by the newspapers which they now eagerly read, that
this has not been always so, and that servitude is not the natural state
of man or acquiescence in evil the true position of religion, and they
see in all they suffer an outrage inflicted on the better law of Islam.
I was much struck by hearing the Egyptian peasantry last year attribute
the lighter taxes they were then enjoying to the fact that their new
ruler was "a man who feared God."

At the same time the learned classes are shocked and alarmed at the
political decline of Islam and the still greater dangers which stare her
in the face, and they attribute them to the unchecked wickedness and
corruption with which the long rule of Constantinople has pervaded every
class of society, even beyond its own territorial borders. They complain
now that they have been led astray, and believe that the vengeance of
Heaven will overtake them if they do not amend their ways. I