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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Page 6

    A stouter and more virile figure than Mohammed attempted to establish a similar creed on this continent. He failed to become a world influence, a permanent factor in history, for geographical reasons, mainly. The part of the world in which Brigham Young planted his polygamous creed was not so well adapted to its expansion as the scene of Mohammed’s early activities. Western civilization, following close on the heels of the gold rush, overwhelmed the American apostle and intimate of the Angel Gabriel. The chief reason why Christianity has lost so much ground before Mohammedanism, and is likely to lose much more, is that there has never been much real Christianity in the world.

    The history of the so-called "Christian Nations" has been a long tale of bloody wars, of treachery and robbery, of St. Bartholomew Days and of Catholics martyrized by Protestants; of persecutions, of saints and witches burned at the stake.

 

   [Ellopos' note: Here again Horton refers to the "Christian Nations" as if there wasn't any Orthodox nation... But in the Orthodox East there was no Holy Inquisition and burning of men. If we need to blame something, in the most schematic and immediate way, we can say that for all the infamy of Christianity the main responsible is the Western individualism, coming from papacy and protestantism alike, and based in the lack of real friendship and will to know God, the place of which takes moral discipline - being monogamous and not polygamous, industrial and not lazy, etc.]

 

    And the situation among the "Christian Nations" that allowed the Turks to burn Smyrna and massacre and abuse its inhabitants was such a culmination of infamy and shame as shows that the world is becoming less Christian as the years go by.

    Surely there is no reason to expect God to aid Christian missionaries, after such a disappointment and travesty. If, as the Reverend Bush remarks, the wonderful spread of Mohammedanism can only be explained as some special Providence of God, He may be inspiring the Sennussi to spiritualize their religion and develop the better features of it. If the Christian faith has had so feeble effect upon the conduct of Christian nations and has so little harmony that it lacks the force to convert Mohammedans, then the only alternative open to wisdom, finite or infinite, would be to make the best of some other creed. When our missionaries have finished putting the Turkish administrations "on a sound basis," they might come home and teach us to be better Christians. Unless Christianity is saved in those countries where it still has a nominal existence, it is doomed, and their civilization will go with it. The Bolsheviks understand this, as witness the war they are waging against religion. 

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