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THr. REV. S. M. ZWEMER, M.A., D.D., 



Islam was. And it was well to realize the difference between 

 theoretical Islam and actual, practical, modern Islam. It had often 

 been said that the usual plan of controversialists, in comparing two 

 faiths or two sets of doctrines, was to take one at its ideal best and 

 the other at its practical worst and compare the two in that way; 

 Too often that was done in comparisons drawn between Christianity 

 and Islam. Islam was taken at its theoretical best, i.e., the best 

 pronouncements of those who were authorities in their faith, and 

 then Christianity was taken at its practical worst — everything 

 that could be raked in from the most unchristian practices on the 

 part of nominal Christians — and was regarded as representative of 

 Christianity. Therefore it was well to know from such an authority 

 as Dr. Zwemer what extraordinarily superstitious, ignorant, and 

 malignant doctrines and practices formed part of the beliefs of 

 Moslems. 



Dr. Zwemer declared the object of his paper to be to show that 



" there are many animistic ideas in the Moslem creed and ritual 

 to-day, which can best be understood by a comparison with 

 similar beliefs in the Pagan world." 



That, no doubt, was a very valuable purpose, but he (the speaker) 

 very much wished they had had the author of the essay present, 

 because there were several points in the paper which seemed to go 

 rather wide of that description. He described animistic belief as 



" that stage in human development in which man believes in the 

 parity of all existences so far as their possession of sentient life is 

 concerned." 



He (the speaker) thought it must have struck everyone that there 

 were a great many instances given of superstitious beliefs among 

 Moslems which had very little connection with any such definition 

 as that. He would have liked Dr. Zwemer to explain how he 

 connected those things. He said they were " doubtless " of 

 animistic origin, whereas considerable doubt arose on this point in 

 his mind. Again, he wished they could have had an intelligent 

 Mohammedan present to criticize such a presentation of Islam. He 

 would have found, he thought, a great many openings for main- 

 taining that in Christian countries there were beliefs which virtually 

 correspond with some of those referred to, more particularly in 

 countries like Portugal and South America. We would be rather 



