Page:A Prisoner of the Khaleefa.djvu/395

322 Soudan has been in the throes — is still in the throes of one of the greatest religious upheavals known. While this revival of Islam has been in progress in the Soudan proper, the converts at Uganda and elsewhere have been snicking each other's throats to evidence their zeal for the rival Christian creeds. In the Soudan, missionaries have openly avowed to thousands their acceptance of the "true faith" — Islam, the very religion from which they had gone out to convert the Blacks. I have not the slightest hesitation in saying myself that for some time to come religious revivalism in the Soudan will, if permitted to take place, very soon spell Repetition. Time must be given for the bad (?) effect produced on the native mind by the conversion of the Soudan missionaries to die out, and goodness knows the poor country requires a rest. If missionaries must be sent, then let them be honest traders, the best missionaries for savage countries. When the Soudan has again been opened up, and the natives have become a little more civilized through their contact with trade, and so Europeanized that their simple faith, "There is one God, and He is God," is not sufficient for them, but they must needs snarl and fight over creeds, then and only then remove the "No Admittance" signboard.

I trust that no religious body or society of earnest Christians will think from the foregoing that I am either sneering or scoffing at religion, or that their disinterested efforts to spread the gospel of peace to the remotest ends of the earth have not my sincerest sympathy. I have spoken plainly and to the point,