avidity by the credulous multitude.”  And he adds:  “Those who profess the Mohammedan faith among the negroes are as ignorant and superstitious as their idolatrous brethren; nor does it appear that their having adopted a new creed has either improved their manners or bettered their condition in life.”  Dr. Schweinfurth also describes the Mohammedan missionaries whom he found at Khartoum as “polluted with every abominable vice which the imagination of man can conceive of.”  In answer to various statements which had been published in regard to the rapid missionary progress made by Mohammedans in West Central Africa, Bishop Crowther wrote a letter to the Church Missionary Society at the beginning of 1888, giving the results of his own prolonged observation.  He describes the methods used as: 

1.  War upon the heathen tribes.  “If the Chief of a heathen tribe accepts the Koran his people are at once counted as converts and he is received into favor, and is thus prepared to become an instrument in conquering other tribes.  But on the refusal to accept the Koran war is declared, the destruction of their country is the consequence, and horrible bloodshed.  The aged, male and female, are massacred, while the salable are led away as slaves.  One half of the slaves are reserved by the chief, the other half is divided among the soldiers to encourage them to future raids.”

2.  Another cause of large increase is polygamy.  “For although but four lawful wives are allowed, there is unlimited license for concubinage.”

3.  The sale of charms is so conducted as to prove not only a means of profit but a shrewd propaganda.  “When childless women are furnished with these, they are pledged, if successful, to dedicate their children to Islam.”

And Bishop Crowther verifies the statement made by others in reference to East Africa, that the priests “besides being charm-makers are traders both in general articles and more largely in slaves."[119]

We have only time to consider one question more, viz., What is the character of Islam as we find it to-day, and what are its prospects of development?  It is a characteristic of our age that no religion stands wholly alone and uninfluenced by others.  It is especially true that the systems of the East are all deeply affected by the higher ethics and purer religious conceptions borrowed from Christianity.  Thus many Mohammedans of our day, and especially those living in close contact with our Christian civilization, are rising to higher conceptions of God and of religious truth than have been entertained by Moslems hitherto.  Canon Taylor, in a little volume entitled “Leaves from an Egyptian Note-Book,” has drawn a picture of Islam which Omar and Othman would hardly have recognized.  In the first place it should be remembered that, as he confesses, his reputation as a defender of Mohammed and his system had gone before him to Cairo, and that he was understood to be a seeker after facts favorable