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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Page 5

    To-day the Christian world is about evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics, rival sects, showing little spirit of compromise. Recent statistics, given by "Whittaker’s Almanac", place the total number of Catholics in the world at 272,860,000 and of Protestants and other denominations, (like the Eastern Church), who deny the jurisdiction of the Pope, at 290,000,000. Any one who has lived for any time in countries where missionaries are active will testify to the saintly character of Catholic Sisters, and the devotion of the Brothers. They will equally bear witness to the high character, courage and beauty of life of Protestant missionaries, men and women. But the two sects are antagonistic.

 

    [Ellopos' note: Horton here considers the Orthodox as a part of the Protestant churches which leads to the scheme: the Pope and the rest. This is not true, the history of Christianity does not confirm it. This is not the place to give the details, but anyone who has studied ecclesiastical history knows that Protestants come from the decay of the Western Church due to Pope's faults and autarchy, while in the East there wasn't any clash between the members of the Church. From the ancient times we speak about a Church when there is a eucharistic community with a bishop. When this community breaks, whether because of the bishop or not, we have protestantism, but in the East there was no 'revolution' against any of the four Patriarchs. The four Eastern Patriarchates remained united in themselves and with each other. This is why we can speak about a schism between the East and the West, but in the case of Protestantism we should not speak of a schism but of an explosion of the West itself. The Protestants broke up with the whole tradition, they formed a new church out of nothing, which is the reason why they recognise 'only Scripture' as the basis of their teaching. In the case of the schism between the Latin East and the Orthodox West we have a disease, which may be cured or not. In the case of Protestantism we have the creation of a Utopia.]

 

    In Smyrna during the Greek administration, a Y. I. C. A. was started and was doing excellent work, as also a Y. W. C. A. A notice was posted in all the Catholic churches that such institutions were of darkness and not of light and that all true Christians must keep away from them. A Catholic teacher in the Y. W. C. A. who was being paid a good salary and who needed it was compelled to resign her post. This is but one instance of many that could be given. When a Mohammedan is asked to be a Christian, a common answer is, "What kind? There are so many kinds of you, each warning us against the others." There is less hope today of pan-Christianity than of pan-Islamism. Says Kurtz, already referred to: "To-day Mohammedanism is the one rival of Christianity to become a world religion," and a writer in the "Moslem World" for January, 1925: "The Christian Church, after thirteen centuries of hard struggle finds Islam still a most baffling problem. It is true historically that Islam has been born after Christianity and has displaced it almost wherever it has spread. The history of the whole of North Africa, Palestine and Syria, and present Asia Minor shows this plainly."

    The Reverend George Bush in his "Life of Mohammed", published by the Harpers in 1830, makes the following reflection:

    "Indeed in this, as in every other instance where the fortunes of an individual are entirely disproportionate to the means employed, and surpass all reasonable calculation, we are forced to resolve the problem into the special Providence of God. Nothing short of this could have achieved such mighty results"

    If there is no other explanation of Mohammedan success, it is evident that the Divine intention has not varied in the last ninety years. This is the view-point of the deeply religious man, who believes in God’s personal management of all the affairs of this world, attributing to reasons of Divine wisdom matters too deep for human penetration. The student of history will understand the spread of Mohammedanism at the expense of Christianity, and the chief reasons have appeared or will become plain in the course of this narrative.

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