Page:The Moslem World Vol XI.djvu/118

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98
THE MOSLEM WORLD

New Testament teaching—a fuller conformity to Jesus, whom even the best Christians have never yet overtaken.

Finally, Dr. Mann does not favor Christian missions to Moslems. He regards them as both a failure and an impertinence, because, he thinks, they are purveyors of Western culture. Education, commerce, literature, travel, material exploitation from the West—these are legitimate as bringers of fertile stimulus to indigenous development, but the Gospel is the great hindrance because it is Western! He lauds the mission schools of Turkey, for their "superb and gigantic accomplishments in education," but is in desperate haste to have them superseded by national schools, ere they contaminate the land with Western civilization. Dr. Mann thinks of Christianity in terms of limitation. H« misses the glory of its universal mission, and the world-wide duty of Christians. He would bar the Gospel at the Bosphorus, except among Christian communities of the Near East. But where indeed does the West begin? Does Dr. Mann not observe that the whole East is astir with Occidental leaven? As to the forms of the future Oriental culture, no one wants them to be Western. But if the Moslem East should be reborn with a Christian soul, would that not be something far transcending the further culture of the obsolescent? Dr. Mann leaves us unconvinced that anything less than the spiritual regeneration which Christ alone can impart, will meet the present need of the Moslem world.

This manual will never serve as a mission study text-book on Islam. (That function, even in Germany, must continue to be discharged by the works of Dr. Zwemer, Canon Gairdner and Dr. Gottfried Simon). But German readers will find here a delightful possession. To Englishspeaking students wishing to acquire a reading-knowledge of German in order to acquaint themselves at first-hand with the standard authorities in that language the book is especially commended, as an introduction to the larger works of Wellhausen, Weil, Miiller, Goldziher, et al. It contains the whole vocabulary of the subject, in most attractive setting.

Mohammed's truth lay in a holy book,
Christ's in a sacred life.

So while the world rolls on from change to change
And realms of thought expand,
The letter stands without expanse or range,
Stiff as a dead man's hand.

While as the life-blood fills the glowing form,
The spirit Christ has shed,
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,
More full than heard or read.

Charles T. Paul.

College of Missions,
Indianapolis J Ind.

The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy. By Lothrop Stoddard, A. M. Ph. D. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1920; pp. 320. Price $3,00.

From the introduction written by Madison Grant to the last page of this important but inconclusive study, we have a note of alarm and the voice of a prophet of pessimism who sees in the rising tide of color a challenge of white world-supremacy which spells disaster.

"Now that Asia, in the guise of Bolshevism with Semitic leadership and Chinese executioners, is organizing an assault upon western Europe, the new states—Slavic-Alpine in race, with little Nordic blood —