§ 12. It is a rash thing to venture to predict the future of Islam, but it seems to me at least that the hopeful pictures which European enthusiasts have drawn of a reformed and purified Islam

Future of Islam.

co-existing with Christianity are merely imaginary. We may well believe that the progress of education and the leavening influence of Christianity will lead to the formation in the Muhammadan world of more and more numerous reformed and non-orthodox sects. These, while still professing Islam, will strive more and more to get rid of the Traditions and to eliminate many of the manifest absurdities of the popular creed. Many statements of the Qur'an will be explained away and others mystically interpreted. The fall of the Religion will thus for many years be postponed, just as that of Hinduism has been by the Brahmo Samaj and its branches, and as Neo-Platonism infused a slowly-fading life for a time into the trembling limbs of Graeco-Roman Paganism in days of yore. The most earnest men will gradually draw nearer and nearer to Christianity, and the end will come gradually and almost imperceptibly, the darkness fading into twilight and the twilight vanishing in the full glory of the dawn of the Sun of Righteousness. Those Muslims who are unwilling to follow this path will find—as not a few even now do—that their Faith is opposed to their Reason, and will gradually lapse into unbelief and Atheism. But for all this the only cure lies, not in attempting to bolster up the decaying Faith of

Islam, but in the full and free preaching of the Gospel of Christ.

§ 13. In the days of our fathers once and again did the cry of Peter the Hermit and others like him resound throughout Europe, calling on all true Christians to go forth in their might and rescue

Conclusion.

the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem from the hands of the Infidels. History tells us how the summons awoke an electric thrill in every heart, and how noble and serf, gentle and simple, man and woman and even children, responded to the appeal, and went forth from home and country prepared to conquer or die in what they fondly regarded as an enterprise blessed of Heaven. We know how great an error this was, and how fearfully these Crusades failed. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, and they that take the sword must perish with the sword. Yet we admire the zeal and devotion, however misdirected, which animated our crusading ancestors; and even at the present day our hearts are stirred within us by an enthusiasm nobler than is generally felt in this matter-of-fact age when we hear the recital of their prowess or see the monuments of the Crusaders in our Abbeys,—the cross

A grander Crusade in our own days.

on the shield and the crossed legs still testifying to their devotion to a noble cause. Yet in our own day and generation a grander call is sounding forth,—not that of a weak and mistaken though zealous man, but the voice of our Risen Lord Himself. He calls us to a nobler Crusade, a more glorious contest. It is