Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/381

308 got into a hopeless tangle, and were left so. Whatever the cause, there is no gainsaying the fact that Father Ohrwalder is credited with the expression of opinions which he, as a priest and missionary, ought to be one of the last on this earth to give utterance to. That he did not appreciate to the full the real import of the opinions he is credited with, I feel certain of after my long interview with him, when, with the Bible in one hand and a copy of "Ten Years' Captivity" in the other, we compared the Opinions expressed in the latter with the teachings of Christ in the former.

Father Ohrwalder may or may not have been illadvised in omitting or suppressing the relation of well-known incidents, which accounted for Gordon's attitude in certain cases. It was only by omitting to mention these incidents that the criticisms on Gordon were rendered possible, or I should say that, had those incidents been included, the criticisms would not have lived a day. It would have been far better to tell everything to the generous and sympathetic world which he and Slatin met when they escaped, and to leave it to condone, if any condoning was called for, and to sympathize with them in the parts force of circumstances compelled them to act, which must have been so repugnant to them; for to omit, when criticizing Gordon, the relation of the very acts which compelled him also by force of circumstances to act as he did, was, to say the least of it, very unwise.

In "Ten Years' Captivity" the reader is led into a maze of opinions, and left there. Once inside, you