406 THE LAND OF THE LION 
family of free men. No man can enslave him, he is a mem- 
ber of a great brotherhood. Further than that, in the vast 
majority of cases, I do not think the matter goes, but this 
simple religion or beginnings of a religion, is not without 
evident effect in his life. He is at least as truthful, as clean 
in his manner of living, and certainly more sober, than the 
Christianized native. 
Of the doctrine of Mohammedanism he knows nothing 
except that he must stand by his brother religionists, and 
must not eat meat that has not been “hallalled.”* He 
remains, of course, a polygamist. There will doubtless 
be many who maintain that such a religion is no religion at 
all, and that it measures no practical advance whatever. 
I can but say that this is not so, and that for the native it 
measures perhaps as great an advance as at present he is 
capable of. Lift him too high, force him too fast, and 
reaction certainly ensues. 
Mohammedanism is born of the East and understands 
the East better than we of the West do. We foolishly 
flatter ourselves that we have, in our Western Christianity, 
evolved the pure, the final, the universal religion. Some of 
us are profoundly doubtful that as yet we have attained 
so great a goal. At any rate, we have not sent forth our 
missionaries empowered to teach a religion so simple, so 
universal, so fundamental that it can meet the needs of 
these newest, least developed, and most pathetically needy 
children, of the dark land. 
A brotherhood as simple, as universal as that Moham- 
medanism has offered him, we might have offered. He 
might have been invited to membership in the white man’s 
religious family, given a real, even if the lowest, place in it. 
What has been done, what is being done, is that he is set to 
learn, told to believe, things that though they are simple 
enough to us, are quite beyond his powers of understanding. 
*Throat cut before animal is actually dead. 
