520 MOHAMMEDLSM 



ing in that church the fundamental conceptions of Islam, we know 

 little what were the stranger influences upon them by which they, 

 in great part unconsciously, were swayed. Murmurs we hear of John 

 of Damascus and his school of theology, the Euchites and the 

 Hesychasts, the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Stephen bar 

 Sudaili drift dimly across the stage. That the Christian Aoyos doc- 

 trine is at work is certain, and Christian conceptions of the ascetic 

 life, in spite of the denunciations of Muhammad, sway Islam as they 

 had swayed heathen Arabia. But how these worked, what precise 

 kinship of doctrine they produced, what was the extent of their 

 influence, what the place of that influence and its TTOV arrw, none has 

 yet arisen fully and clearly to answer these questions. 



And why it has been so is simple enough. The man who studies 

 Arabic and its literature has small leisure for anything else. Yet 

 Arabia, through all this period through which we have run, calls for 

 scholarship of the most varied character. He who would study the 

 pre-Muslim times must know the theology of the early Syrian 

 church in all its welter of sects and heresies; he must be able to 

 detect the influence of Judaism and discern its precise kind and 

 phase; he must be able to disentangle from the old Arabian poems 

 all their religious references and, in the light of Semitic heathenism 

 and more narrowly of the inscriptions of Syria and Arabia, to build 

 them into a mirror for their time; he must know the later Zoroas- 

 trianism, its theological concepts and phrases; the Ethiopic language 

 and the theology of the Abyssinian church must be simple to him; 

 even Egypt, both Coptic and Greek, will not come amiss cannot 

 be wholly neglected; in truth, this island of the Arabs, set amid its 

 encircling sands, was bare to the most mingled winds of doctrine 

 that ever beat upon a land and people. 



Again, he who would know Islam itself in its early days must 

 advance still further on all these paths and be able to trace all their 

 influences. Especially he must have absolute control of the theology 

 of the Greek church, both its systematic theology and the mystic 

 and ascetic life which was its soul. Further, another constellation of 

 influences will rise upon his horizon and lead him still on into far 

 lands. India and Central Asia, through ascetic Buddhism, will begin 

 to work on Muslim thought. The threads of life run out now to 

 Balkh and Samarcand, and there is need of the Sanscritist and the 

 student of Indian religions to play the interpreter. 



But all this, it is plain, no one brain can handle. So it meets well 

 the object of this congress to emphasize the absolute fact that little 

 true progress can now be made in the study of the Muslim develop- 

 ment without collaboration. None can be an Arabist and be at home 

 in all these fields. Few who know any of these will undertake as 

 well to learn Arabic and penetrate the mystery of the Muslim life 



