.

Another charge is that Arabia has no stable government and people go
armed against each other. Tribal Arabia has the only true form of
democratic government, and the Arab tribesman goes armed to make sure
that it continues democratic--as many a would-be despot knows to his
cost. They use these weapons to settle other disputes occasionally, but
Christian cowboys still do so at times unless they have acquired grace
and the barley-water habit.

These deliberate misstatements and the distortion of known facts are
unworthy of the many earnest workers in recognised mission fields, and
they become really mischievous when they culminate in an appeal to the
general public calling for resources and _personnel_ to "win Mecca for
Christ," and use it and the Arabic language to disseminate Christianity
and so win Arabia and, eventually, the Moslem world.

Christianity had a very good start in Arabia long before Muhammad's day,
and (contrary to missionary assertion) was in existence there for
centuries after his death. Not long before the dawn of Islam, Christian
and pagan Arabs fought side by side to overthrow a despotic Jew king in
Yamen who was trying to proselytise them with the crude but convincing
contrivance of an artificial hell which cost only the firewood and
labour involved and beat modern revivalist descriptions of the place to
a frazzle as a means of speedy conversion--to a Jew or a cinder.

Christianity lasted in Yamen up to the tenth century A.D. It paid
tribute as a subordinate creed, like Judaism, but had far more equable
charters and greater respect among Moslems. In fact, it was never driven
out, but gradually merged into Islam, as is indicated by the
inscriptions found on the lintel of ruined churches here and there,
"There is but one God."

The published statement of a travelled missionary that the Turks stabled
their cavalry horses in the ruins of Abraha's "cathedral" at Sanaa is
misleading. The church which that Abyssinian general built when he came
over to help the Arabs against the Jew king of proselytising tendencies
has nothing left of it above ground except a bare site surrounded by a
low circular wall which would perhaps accommodate the horses of a
mounted patrol in bivouac. The Turks probably used it for that purpose
without inquiry.

What is the use of bolstering up a presumably sincere religious movement
with these puerile and mischievous statements? Apart from the rancour
they excite among ed