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 it actually dead. 



