to his known views.  This opened the hearts of friendly Pashas and served to bring out all the praises that they could bestow upon their own faith.  It appears accordingly that he was assured by them that polygamy is widely discarded and condemned by prominent Moslems in such cities as Cairo and Alexandria, that many leading men are highly intelligent and widely read, that they profess belief in most of the doctrines held by the Christian Church, that they receive the inspired testimony of the Old and New Testaments—­except in so far as they have been corrupted by Christian manipulation.  This exception, however, includes all that is at variance with the Koran.  They advocate temperance and condemn the slave trade.  They encourage the general promotion of education, and what seems to the credulous Canon most remarkable of all is that they express deep regret that Christians do not feel the same charity and fellowship toward Moslems that they feel toward Christians!

Now, making all due abatement for the couleur de rose which these easy-going and politic Pashas may have employed with their English champion, it is undoubtedly true that a class of Mohammedans are found in the great cosmopolitan cities of the Levant who have come to recognize the spirit of the age in which they live.  Many of them have been educated in Europe; they speak several languages; they read the current literature; they are ashamed of the old fanatical Mohammedanism.  Though they cherish a partisan interest in the recognized religion of their country, their faith is really eclectic; it comes not from Old Mecca, but is in part a product of the awakened thought of the nineteenth century.  But Canon Taylor’s great fallacy lies in trying to persuade himself and an intelligent Christian public that this is Islam.  He wearies himself in his attempts to square the modern Cairo with the old, and to trace the modern gentlemanly Pasha, whose faith at least sits lightly upon his soul, as a legitimate descendant of the fanatical and licentious prophet of Arabia.  When he strives to convince the world that because these courteous Pashas feel kindly enough toward the Canon of York and others like him, therefore Islam is and always has been a charitable and highly tolerant system, he simply stultifies the whole testimony of history.  He tells us that his Egyptian friends complain that “whereas they regard us as brother-believers and accept our scriptures, they are nevertheless denounced as infidels.  And they ask why should an eternal coldness reign in our hearts.”

Probably they are not acquainted with Samadu of Western Soudan and his methods of propagandism.  They have forgotten the career of El Mahdi; they are not familiar with the terrible oppression of the Jews in Morocco—­with which even that in Russia cannot compare; they have not read the dark accounts of the extortion practised by the Wahabees of Arabia, even upon Moslems of another sect on their pilgrimages to Mecca,[120] nor do they seem to know that Syrian converts from Islam are now hiding in Egypt from the bloodthirsty Moslems of Beyrut.  Finally, he forgets that the very “children are taught formulas of prayer in which they may compendiously curse Jews and Christians and all unbelievers."[121]