nfluence on the form religion takes
in its human manifestation. Missionary literature asserts this clearly
with regard to Islam, describing it, aptly enough, as a religion of
desert and oasis thence deriving its austere and sensual features, but
the thesis applies with equal force to Christianity. The marked cleavage
of hermit-like asceticism and gross sensuality which rock-bound deserts
and the lush Nile valley wrought in Egyptian Christendom has been
described by every writer dealing with that subject, and Arabian
Christianity drooped, and finally died, in the arid pastoral uplands of
Jauf and Nejran long before it succumbed in fertile, hard-working Yamen.

If the East became Christian next week there would be the same rank
growth and final atrophy or disintegrating schism for lack of outside
opposition. Missionaries are quick enough to remark on this process in
Arabia where Islam is practically unopposed, but will not apply it to
Christianity. They do not seem to realise that healthy competition
maintains the vitality of religion no less than trade or any other form
of human effort requiring continuous energy and application. Islam
revivified a decadent Christianity, and the attacks of modern
missionaries are strengthening Islam. They justify these attacks and
urge further support for them on the grounds that Islam is moribund and
now is the time to give it the _coup de grace_, or that Islam is the
most dangerous foe to Christendom in the world and must be fought to a
finish lest it unite three hundred million Moslems against us. I have
seen both reasons given in the same missionary book; both are absurd.
The latter is a mere red herring drawn across the trail of existing
facts, more so, indeed, than the ex-Kaiser's Yellow Peril, for that at
least was trailed from a vast country enclosing within a ring fence a
huge population of homogeneous race and creed. As for crushing Islam by
missionary enterprise, you cannot kill a great religion with pin-pricks,
however numerous and frequent; you can only cause superficial hurts and
irritation, as in a German student's duel. Every religion contains the
germs of its own destruction within itself (which it can resist
indefinitely so long as it is healthy and vigorous), but no outside
efforts, however overwhelming, can do aught but stiffen its adherents.
The early Christian Church was driven off the face of the earth into
catacombs, but emerged to rule supreme in the very city whi