RELIGION IN MESOPOTAMIA. 



183 



14. The economic development of these countries will make it.,- 

 impossible for the present artificial divisions to last. Com- ' 

 mercial enterprise and engineering schemes will in time open up 



a waterway from the mouth of the Orontes near Ancient Antioch 

 to the head of the Persian Gulf, and some of the waters of the 

 Upper Euphrates will be continued westward to the mouth of 

 the Orontes. 



15. Religious beliefs are stereotyped largely by political 

 conditions and social environment ; they are greatly affected 

 by facilities of communication with the outside world and 

 contact with other forms of religious thought. 



16. Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Eastern 

 Churches have been under bondage to the political dominance of 

 Islam. Now they are free, and as they emerge from their 

 captivity they are hastening to divest their communities of 

 excrescences alien to the Faith and are strengthening the bonds 

 of union in the spirit of that fellowship quietly and consistently 

 emphasized throughout the ages by the still small voice of Divine 

 Revelations. 



17. The Assyrian Church was one of the smallest of the 

 Eastern Christian Communities, and one of the most inaccessible, 

 living in the fastnesses of Kurdistan. Driven out by the war, 

 they were sheltered in a refugee camp near Baghdad. Here 

 the children learned English, the young men were enlisted as 

 soldiers and learned the use of modern weapons, while the whole 

 community learned many new things by its contact with the 

 outside world. The new administration in Mesopotamia cannot 

 ignore these sturdy mountaineers, for they acquitted themselves 

 valiantly when fighting under Russian and British officers during 

 the Great War. They will help to police the frontiers and guard 

 the new oilfields. 



18. The Moslem Arabs will largely cling to agricultural 

 pursuits, but labour is necessary, as well as security, for developing 

 the resources of a country that holds the key to the world's 

 future, and the Christians, the Jews, the Sabeans and the Yezidees 

 will supply the need. They will no longer be slaves, they will 

 enjoy freedom for the first time in half a millennium under 

 circumstances that will assuredly affect their religious beliefs. 



My conclusion is briefly tliis : — 



That Western civilization, its commerce, government, laws, 

 education, science, religion and the upheaval of a great world 

 war, have broken the power of religious fanaticism in the East 



