fc^ Missio Pblifies in Asia 'Robert E;S peer 4 /Af. PRINCETON, N. J. Purchased by the Hammill Missionary Fund. BV 3150 .S6 1898 ^ Speer, Robert E. 1867-1947. Missions and politics in Asia Missions and Politics in Asia WORKS BY Robert E. Speer. STUDIES OF ''The Man Christ Jesus." Long i8mo, cloth, 75c. Studies of what Christ was, His character, His spirit, Himself. STUDIES IN The Gospel of Luke. i8mo, paper, net lOc; cloth, net 20c. STUDIES IN The Book of Acts. i8mo, paper, net 25c.; cloth, net 40c. Studies given to Bible Classes at Prince- ton and Northfield, designed for use as Bible Text-books for classes or for personal study. Postpaid on receipt of price. STUDENTS* LECTURES ON MISSIONS Princeton Theological Seminary M DCCC XCVIII Missions and Politics in Asia Studies of the spirit of the East- ern peoples, the present making of history in Asia, and the part therein of Christian Missions BY ROBERT E. SPEER Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company M DCCC XCVIII Copyright, 1898 BY Fleming H. Revell Company TO THE MISSIONARIES IN HAMADAN, PERSIA Preface The lectures composing this volume were sug- gested by the studies and observation of an ex- tended tour in Asia, in the years 1896 and 1897. They are printed substantially as they were de- livered to the faculty and students of Princeton Theological Seminary in February, 1898. Their object was to sketch in broad outline the spirit of the Eastern peoples, the present making of history in Asia and the part therein of Christian Missions. They are at once the fruit and the ground of the conviction, vindicated by the obvious facts of history and of life, that Christ is the present Lord and King of all life and his- tory and their certain goal Contents Lecture I— Persia 13 The Present Politics of Asia. Its interest. Ancient Persia. Zoroastrian- ism. The Arab conquest. Its results. The origin of Shiahism. Its doctrines. Relation of Church and State in Persia unlike their relation in Turkey. The doctrine of the Imam. The Babis. Reactions against Shiahism. The Sufis. Omar Khayam. The Wahabis. The present situation. The condition of religion : (i) Its moral fruits ; (2) Its political failure. The utter ruin of the country and its religion. The forces shaping the future : (i) Political ; (2) Missionary. History. Grounds of toleration. The non-Moslem peoples. The character of the missionaries. Lecture II — Southern Asia 67 Bagdad. Turkish rule, (i) It is corrupt and should be ended. (2) Its oppression of Christians. (3) Its dependence upon Christian Nations for existence. (4) Dismal prospect. (5) Feebleness of the Mission force. Arabia. The influence of Aden. The problem of India. The situation, (i) The want of Indian unity at the time of the British conquest. (2) The conditions and character of the conquest. (3) The unification of India under British influence, and the great perils thereof. (4) England's failure to guard against these in her education of India. (5) This failure in a measure atoned for by Missions. Their great power and influence. Indo- China and Buddhism. Lecture III — China 119 The Character OF THE Chinese. Burlingame's view of it. Its greatness. Its idiosyncrasy. Its impressiveness. How has it been produced ? The isolation of the Chinese. The education of the Chinese. The civil service. Confucianism. The attitude of China toward outside nations. The contact of China and the West. The opening of the country. The nature and result of its foreign intercourse since. The situation hopeless so far as concerns (i) the Chinese religions. (2) China's political and civil institutions. (3) Western trade and diplomacy. Hope in Christian Missions. Their history in China. Their obstacles, (i) The difficulty of adjustment to the Chinese mind. (2) Political entanglements. Mr. Norman's criticism and condemnation of Missions. 9 Contents Lecture IV — Japan 169 The Contrast with China. Japan's historic debt to China. Original features of Japanese civilization. Contact with the West. Three stages of Japanese history since Perry's visit. "Foreign intercourse" the directing principle. Different courses of Japan and China. The forces moulding Japan. The place of Christianity in shaping the new insti- stutions. The present temper of the people, (i) Industrialism. (2) National pride. (3) Militarism. (4) Nationalism and foreign antag- onism. (5) Moral bewilderment and irreligiousness. The course and effect of the Christian movement. The defects of the Japanese. The prospect hopeful. Lecture V— Korea 219 The Eastward Movement of the Eastern Question. Its location in Korea. The historic relations of Korea to China and Japan. The opening of Korea to other nations. The part of Missions therein. Roman Catholic Missions. America's relations to Korea. Japan's part in unlocking the land. The causes of the China-Japan war. The Tong Haks. The sequel of the war. Russia's unearned prize. The political situation. The place and influence of the Korean Church. Its patriotism. The outlook. Conclusion. The bearing of such a study as this upon Mission method. Its dangers. Its bearing on Mission motive. The Kingdom of God the goal. 10 LECTURE I Persia 11 Persia, that imaginary seat of Oriental splendor ! that land of poets and roses ! that cradle of mankind, that tin con laminated source of Eastern manners lay before me. . . . I will not say that all my dreams were realized ; for perhaps no country in the world less comes up to one^s expectations than Persia, — whether in the beauties of nature, or the riches and magnificence of its inhabitants. . . . A distinct line must ever be drawn between " the nations who wear the hat and those who wear the beard'''' ; and they must ever hold each other's stories improbable, until a more general inter- course of common life takes place between them. What is moral and virtuous with the one, is wickedness with the other, — what the Christian reviles as abominable, is by the Mohajnmedan held sacred. Although the contrast between their respective manners may be very amusing, still it is most certain that the former will ever feel devoutly grateful that he is neither subject to the Mohammedan rule, nor educated in Mohainmedan prin- ciples ; whilst the latter, in his turn, looking upon the rest of mankind as unclean infidels, will continue to hold fast to his bigoted persuasion until some powerful interposition of Provi- dence shall dispel the moral and intellectual darkness which, at present, overhangs so large a portion of the Asiatic world. James Morier, Hajji Baba of Ispahan. 12 LECTURE I PERSIA "Praise be to God, the Lord of all creatures; the most merciful, the king of the day of judg- ment. Thee do we worship, and of thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way, in the way of those to whom thou hast been gra- cious; not of those against whom thou art in- censed, nor of those who go astray." Though not chronologically first, this is the opening Sura of the Koran, ^ and it is the characteristic note of the noblest assertion ever made by man of the sovereignty of God, and of His lordship over hu- man history, — ''The Lord of all creatures. . . . The king of the day of judgment . . . the most high; who hath created and completely formed His creatures; and who determineth them to va- rious ends and directeth them to attain the same" (Sura Ixvii.). And the words with which the Koran begins, suggest the thought which will give shape and bounds to what will be said in these lectures. I believe in the Lord, the living, the powerful, in whose hand our life is, and by * Sale's Koran, chap. I. 13 Missions and Politics whom the courses of men and of nations are shaped, as in the East the water brooks are turned by the husbandman whithersoever he will. And I wish to trace briefly the play of the forces that are now working out in Asia the de- signs of God. For great history is making in the East, no longer unchangeable. Its life is astir with new movement. The old forms are not gone. They linger still with strong tenacity, vitalized often by the touch of the new influences; but the tides that swept out of Asia thirty centuries ago, purified, filled with new energy, "turn again home." And as they wake the old peoples to a new youth, a fresh chapter of human history begins. We call it only politics, as these forces lock in Asia. But ''politics," as Mr. Freeman said 'Ms present history, and history is past politics." No history has ever been greater than that which is making now. Our times are prosaic only to men of prosaic minds. The romance which hangs over Cyrus and Darius and Arta- xerxes, over Jenghiz Khan and his sons, and that great city where " Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea," 14 Persia over Saracen, Mogul and Sikh; Khaled, Akbar and Runjit Singh, is as the play of children be- side the stern struggle of our own day in Asia. Systems of thought and morals and social cus- tom which were old before we were peoples, and which have set themselves never to be moved, have been challenged and shaken. Com- merce, diplomacy, civilization have violated their repose. Righteousness has demanded a reckon- ing of them. And Christianity, of which these are the children, is calmly confronting them from foundations which cannot be removed, while new foundations are laid for her on their enlarging ruins. It is a privilege to live with open eyes in the age of such a conflict, to watch the move- ments of the struggle, to hear the tumult of the chariots and the horsemen, and to discern in all, the master hand of the Lord, "the Lord of all creatures, the King of the day of judgment . . . who determineth His creatures to vari- ous ends and directeth them to attain the same." It is better than "a crush of worlds." For out of this struggle a new earth is coming. What we are watching are not so much death gasps as birth throes, — the pangs of a mighty labor on the old mother Asia. And I believe that what she has borne is naught in comparison with 15 Missions and Politics what she is yet to bear. That it is a construc- tive, a creative time some may fail to see who are "blind, unable to discern that which is afar off" (2 Peter i. 9). But if our eyes are opened, we shall see " The new age that stands as yet, Half built against the sky, Open to every threat Of storms that clamor by : While scaffolding veils the walls. And dim dust floats and falls, As moving to and fro, their tasks the masons ply." With this idea dominating our thought, I pro- pose to speak to-day of Persia and Islam, judging that the view of which I have spoken will ex- clude nothing that is of human interest. Of what Persia was before she fell under Islam it is not necessary to speak. The days of her glory and world-dominion are far, far off from the poor political ruin of to-day, and the powers that made her greatness were spent long before the Chosroes succeeded to the power of the Achemenians, the Seleucidae, the Arsacidae and the Sassanians and the long struggle with Her- aclius had drained the land of its energy and re- sources. The Persia with which we deal to-day is the product of the Mohammedan conquest and we need not go beyond that for an understand- ing of it. 16 Persia It was in the seventh century that the Arabian armies poured up from the Southwest into the Mesopotamian plains to finish the work that the Roman Emperor Heraclius had begun, and to open the last chapter of the great degeneracy. I commend to you the romance of that great tragedy as it is set forth in Muir's Annals of the Early Caliphate. Just one year ago we rode over the hills and valleys and plains where this strug- gle between the last of the Chosroes and the gen- erals of Mohammed and Omar surged to and fro, yet pressed ever Eastward. It was a wonderful battleground. Every farsakh of the weary way was eloquent with appeal from the great past to the armies of Yezdegird. Over this road Cyrus and Darius had led their hosts. On the craggy cliffs of Beseitun past which the Saracens drove the Persians, were the inscriptions of Darius, telling of his world-wide victories, and showing to the desperate troops as they passed, the giant figure with his foot on the neck of a captive, and his subjugated foes chained throat to throat be- fore him. Yet cut on the rocks below, were the name of Alexander and royal figures plain enough then to remind the fugitives that ten cen- turies before another conquerer had possessed their land. The mounds and the temples of their 17 Missions and Politics fire-worship rose here and there in the plains. They looked back as they fled upon the glorious white stone palace at Kasr-i-shirin, and saw the rough Arabs plunder its beauties. One evening, just one year ago, as the sun was setting behind hills all purple and saffron, save as they were white-crested with snow, we stood in the ruins of this noble palace, and saw again the old days when it had stood as " A dwelling of kings, ere the world was waxen old. Dukes were the doorwards there, and the roof was thatched with gold." And I thought how the gleam of it must have been as the farewell of the past to Yezdegird. Up through the passes and over the Zagros ranges they fled, until on the plains of Nehavend, under the pure, white peaks of Elvend, and across the hills from Ecbatana, in 641, the decisive issue was joined and Omar's captain Nowan sent word back to his master that Persia was the Prophet's. The first fruit of the Arab conquest was the destruction of Zoroastrianism. There were some admirable things in Zoroastrianism. ''It as- cribed no immoral attributes to the object of worship. ... It sanctioned no immoral acts as a part of worship. None of the pre- scribed forms of worship is marked by cruelty. In the great contest between light and dark- 18 Persia ness, the Avesta exhorts the true worshipper not to remain passive, but to contend with all his might against the productions of the Evil Principle. There is an absence of image wor- ship, and the Avesta never despairs of the future of humanity ; it affirms the final victory of good over evil."^ But all this and vastly more could be said of Mohammedanism, and that vigorous and uncompromising system swept up against the old Persian religion like a storm and well-nigh obliterated it. There are eight times as many Parsis now in the Bombay Presidency as there are in the land of their origin. In Persia there are less than 10,000 of them; a few in Teheran, where the Tower of Silence near ancient Rhei is still the place of exposure of their dead, but most of them in Kirman and at Yezd, where there are said to be four altars which keep alive the sacred flame, as Moore recalls in his line, "Yezd's eternal mansion of the fire." There are elements of fire-worship in the rites of the Ali Illahees, an heretical and eclectic Moslem sect that has enrolled Henry Martyn and David Livingstone among its avatars, and whose sacra- ment is a communion of fire eating. And there are traces of the old worship of the sun in private • Mitchell's Zend Avesta and the Religion of the Parsis, p. 49. 19 Missions and Politics and common life. It is customary in many places when a light is brought into a room, to salute it as we would a person, while in the cities where members of the royal Kajar family reside, the old Kajar music sounding like a callithumpian sere- nade bursts forth from some royal palace at the rising or the setting of the sun. The few Zo- roastrians who remain are under as grievous disa- bilities as the Christians, however. The stern, relentless faith of the Prophet made clean work and did not play with compromise. The second fruit of the Arab conquest was the destruction of independence. For nine centuries, Saracen, Tartar and Turkish dynasties, all alien, ruled over the land. It was not a barren pe- riod. The hearts of the subject people were cheered by Firdousi, Hafiz and Omar Khayam; and Avicenna, whose tomb is still in good re- pair at Hamadan, gave Persia a name for medi- cal science. When in these centuries, however, hope ever kindled, it kindled but to be swept away by some new dynasty, or by the unique triumphs of Jenghis Khan and his sons, or Tam- erlane, until in the fifteenth century, a political movement grew out of the Sunnee-Shiah con- troversy, which ended in the independence of Persia. 20 Persia An understanding of this controversy is essen- tial to any insight into Persian history since the Arab invasions, and also to an appreciation of the present and future developments of both re- ligion and politics in Turkey, Persia and India. The Shiah schism arose in the early days of Islam. The name Shiah means sectaries.^ Mo- hammedanism has never been really one. It seems strange, as Sale suggests, that Spinoza, even if ignorant of the general fact of its multi- tudinous heresies, should have been ignorant of this notorious division, and should "have as- signed as the reason for preferring the order of the Mohammedan Church to that of the Roman, that there have arisen no schisms in the former since its birth." The same error is frequently made, however, in our own day. The unity of Islam is often held up as a rebuke to divided Christendom. But Mohammedans would not be grateful for this conspicuousness. They say *'The Magians are divided into seventy sects, the Jews into seventy-one, the Christians into seventy-two, and the Moslems into seventy- three, as Mohammed had foretold." Even in schism Islam claims precedence. Moreover its devotees have passed beyond Christendom in » Benjamin's Pers/a and the Persians, Boston Ed., 1887, chaps, xii., xiii. 21 Missions and Politics this, that only one sect is entitled to salvation i»n their view, each sect holding the others damna- ble. Historically almost innumerable sects have been developed, of which the Sunnees and Shiahs with their subdivisions, and the Mataz- alites, the Safatians and Kharejites were the prin- cipal. The origin of their sect explains something of the deep and patriotic devotion of the Shiahs to their heroes. The breech with the orthodox body arose out of a civil war. Ali, the cousin of Mohammed, married his daughter Fatima, and was the fourth caliph of Islam, Othman, Omar and Abu Bekr intervening between him and the Prophet. Sell quotes the description which pic- tures him as "the last and worthiest of the primitive Mussulmans who imbibed his reli- gious enthusiasm from companionship with the Prophet himself, and who followed to the last the simplicity of his character ; " and adds, *' He was a man calculated by his earnest devotion to the Prophet and his own natural graces to win, as he has done, the admiration of succeeding generations." Factional contentions came to an issue in his caliphate, however, and he was as- sassinated in a mosque at Kufa. One of his two sons, Hasan, relinquished his claim to the succes- 22 Persia sion to Muavia, who had been his father's rival. To get Hasan out of the way, however, he was poisoned by his own wife. Muavia's son suc- ceeded him, and saw the house of Ali destroyed in his second son, Hussein, who was slain near Kerbela, where the enemy killed off his small band of companions until he and his little son alone were left. The little boy was slain by an arrow which pierced his ear. "We came from God and we return to Him," said the grandson of the Prophet, and kneeling down to drink of the Euphrates, was struck with an arrow in the mouth, and fell forward wounded with many wounds. And thus was the great schism born.^ From that day to this, Sunnee and Shiah have had only hate for one another. "Who is that?" we asked our Persian servant, as a large Turk passed through our courtyard at Khanikin, on the Turkish side of the frontier. "One dog," was the laconic reply. "Englishman good," said the same man later, "Persian fair, Osmanli foul." "Whoso goes over the border," say the Persians of Ardalan, "goes under the ground." Each year the fast of Moharrem keeps alive in Shiah breasts the memories of the wrongs of the * Sell's Faith of Islam, Ed., 1880, pp. 73, 74. 23 Missions and Politics house of Ali. Readers relate the story of the tragedies. Flagellants, dripping with blood and lacerated with scorpions, cry aloud with grief, and the multitudes looking on bewail the foul treacheries, and heat to fresh passion the long fostered hate of the Sunnee/ Each year thou- sands and tens of thousands flock to Kerbela, not far from Babylon and Bagdad, to worship at the shrine of the martyred Hussein, and to bury the bones of their dead in the sacred soil. The chief points of difference between the Sunnees and Shiahs cannot be better summar- ized than in the statement of Sale,'^ *' i. That the Shiahs reject Abu Bekr, Omar and Othman, the first three caliphs, as usurpers and intruders; whereas the Sunnees acknowledge and respect them as rightful Imams. 2. The Shiahs prefer Ali to Mohammed, or at least esteem the two equal; but the Sunnees admit neither Ali nor any of the prophets to be equal to Mohammed. 3. The Sunnees charge the Shiahs with corrupting the Koran and neglecting its precepts, and the Shiahs retort the same charge on the Sunnees. 4. The Sunnees receive the Sunna (whence their name) or book of traditions of their Prophet, as * Benjamin's Persia and the Persians^ Boston Ed., chap. xiii. ^ Sale's Koran, Prelim. Discourse, sec. viii. 24 Persia of canonical authority; whereas the Shiahs re- ject it as apocryphal and unworthy of credit." Dropping out of comparison for an instant, the Sunnee belief, a precise statement of the funda- mental tenets of Shiahism would include: belief in the unity of God; belief in the divine mission of all the prophets, and, that Mohammed is the chief of all; the admissions that God is just, and that Ali is next in order after Mohammed, that Ali's descendants from Hasan to Mahdi, the twelfth Imam, are his true successors, and that all of them in character, position and dignity are raised far above all other Moslems. The Persians early became adherents of the Shiah sect.^ For centuries they were ruled over by Sunnee kings. The religious breach con- stantly widened. Their old Arab conquerors were also members of the Sunnee body. At the very close of the fifteenth century, the Sunnee yoke was broken, and Ismail established the Sefavean dynasty, which was both Shiah and Persian. Under his fourth successor. Shah Abbas, the Great, who ascended the throne in 1586, Persia rose into golden days again. The vitality of the people which had never been wholly crushed, rallied, and bridges, caravan- • Haines's Islam as a Missionary Religion, p. 66. 25 Missions and Politics saries and countless ruins are now traced back by the people to Shah Abbas. Mohammed, an Afghan, overthrew the Sefavean dynasty in 1722, but fell in 1727 before Nadir, a Persian soldier, who proclaimed himself king, defeated the Turks, conquered Afghanistan, captured Delhi, married his son to the daughter of the Mogul Emperor in India, and came back with the fa- mous peacock throne to Teheran. The present dynasty of Kajars, Shiahs but not Persians, Turks rather from the Northeast, and not of Osmanli stock, was set up by Agha Mohammed Khan in 1794. The Kajars have probably done as much for Persia as any dynasty could that might have been native to the soil, but they have been, and this is a vital point, in nowise related to the line of Ali. Let us note the bearing of these two facts: — first, that the Persians are Shiahs, and second, that their ruling dynasty is non-Imamic, i. e., not of the line of Ali, upon the political and religious conditions of Asia, and indeed upon the whole Eastern Question. The chief point to be noted is, that the Shiahs believe Ali to have been lawful caliph and Imam, and hold that the supreme authority in all things spiritual and temporal, State no less than Church, 26 Persia of right belongs to his descendants. Their de- votion to Ali exceeds all bounds. In one of the sanctuaries of the great mosque at Kum, which is the Westminster Abbey of Persia, is this in- scription to him, "Oh, inexpressible man! By thee in truth is nature enriched and adorned! Had not thy perfect self been in the Creator's thought. Eve had remained forever a virgin and Adam a bachelor." Now All's descendants en- joy no such rights in Persia as the tenets of Shiahism claim for them. The civil power is in the hands of the Kajar dynasty, and the Kajars are in nowise connected with Ali. According to the strict faith of the Shiahs, they are usurpers of authority belonging to All's descendants, in whose hands is the ecclesiastical power. There is, accordingly, a real separation between Church and State in Persia, more real in some senses than exists in France or England or Germany or Russia. In Islam, using the word in its popular sense, such a condition as this is a logical con- tradiction. Mohammed's Islam, the Islam of the caliphs was the State. It grew by appealing to those motives which only civil power could satisfy, and by making such promises as only as a political and military organization Islam could fulfill. Deprived of the power of j^opeal- 27 Missions and Politics ing to such motives and of making such prom- ises, and reduced to a religion merely, Islam ceases to be Islam. To this condition Persian Mohammedanism is practically reduced. It is only a religion. It is the established religion. The State does for it some things which Chris- tian States with established religions do not do for them ; but it does not subsidize it financially as some Christian States do. But Mohammedan- ism cannot endure, robbed of its political char- acter. It may become a modified, modernized Islam, a surrender to the fate of God; but it will not be the old fiery, irresistible tempest that burst out of Arabia and shook the nations. It will have to take its place among the world's religions, not as a political institution, but as a system of morals and faith. This is practically what it has had to do in Persia. It controls the passage of property, and still possesses many political advantages including a good share of the judiciary functions of government, but it has been in conflict rather than in partnership with the Kajar dynasty.^ The civil power has by no means triumphed over it. There are even indications that the present Shah may surrender something of what his father had gained in his • Benjamin's Persia and the Persians, Boston Ed., 1887, chap. xv. Persia long conflict with the Mollahs. But Islam has been obliged radically to change its character, and Shiah Mohammedanism must become less and less like the Mohammedanism of Abu Bekr and the world conquering caliphs, and more and more a religion simply, with no appeal save to the conscience and intellect of man, perhaps rather to his fanaticism and bigotry. It will be seen, therefore, that even if the Shiah ecclesiastics should wish to enter into compact with the Turks or with the Mohammedans of In- dia to establish a united Islam, with which to confront the encroachments of the Christian Na- tions upon the last strongholds of the Faith, they would be unable to deliver the Persian civil power to such a league. There is but little likelihood of their desire, however, to enter into union or com- pact with the Sunnees. Their differences are too great. They blame the present Sunnees for the slaughter of Ali and his sons. They charge the present Sunnees with usurpation. And they are the more alienated by the device by which the Turk has saved Sunnee Mohammedanism from the mortal separation of the civil and ecclesias- tical power which has befallen the Mohammed- anism of the Shiahs, and of the way this device collides with the most vital and precious principle 29 Missions and Politics of the Shiahs, namely their doctrine of their Imam or Spiritual and Absolute Head. In Turkey, the head of Church and State is one. The Sultan is also the caliph. It is clearly laid down in Mohammedan law that the caliph must be of the tribe of the Koreish, to which the Prophet belonged. And Abdul Hamid is neither Koreish nor Arab at all, but he claims the caliphate. It came about in this way. After the dismal end of the Abbassid dynasty of caliphs in Bagdad in 1258, a mock caliphate was set up and maintained in Egypt. When Selim I., Sultan of the Osmanli Turks conquered Egypt in 1 5 1 6, the mock caliphate came to an end, and Muttawakkil Billal, the last of the puppet caliphs of Egypt, and a descendant from the thirty-fifth caliph of Bagdad, surrendered his supposed rights to Suleiman, the successor of Selim. So to this day the Osmanli sultans, of whom Abdul Hamid is the thirty-fourth, have claimed to be the spiritual as well as the political successors of Mohammed. The claim is a poor dream. The Arabs and Moors scorn it.^ The Hindus mock at it, and the Persians detest it. Those apologists for England's inactivity during the Armenian massacres, and her breach of faith with the simple people for whom she had sol- * Muir's Caliphate^ London Ed., 1892, pp. 589-594. 30 Persia emnly bound herself by the treaty of Berlin, whose terms she had dictated, to secure reforms, on the ground that her hostility toward the Sul- tan would lead to an uprising in India, were de- ceived. The India Mohammedans are not parti- sans of the Sultan, nor do they recognize the va- lidity of the fiction by which he claims to be not only civil head of the Osmanli State, but also spiritual head of the Mohammedan Church. But most of all do the Persian Shiahs reject the idea, because it collides with their loyalty to Ali, and their favorite doctrine of the Imam. The word Imam comes from an Arabic word meaning to aim at, to follow after, and signifies accord- ingly, leader or exemplar. Mohammed of course was the first great leader. Then came Ali, and the Shiahs hold that the leadership, the Imamat, must continue in and be confined to his line, and that the whole essence of religion is devotion to the rightful Imam. A Persian hymn shows the depth of this sentiment toward Ali and the Imams: " Mysterious being ! none can tell The attributes in thee that dwell ; None can thine essence comprehend ; To thee should every mortal bend — For 'tis by thee that man is given To know the high behests of heaven." 31 Missions and Politics The Shiahs hold that "the hnam is the successor of the Prophet, adorned with all the qualities which he possessed, wiser than the most learned men of the age, holier than the most pious; free from all sin original and active. His authority is the authority of God." His body is so pure and delicate as to cast no shadow. He is the su- preme pontiff, the vicar of God on earth. ''The Koran, the infallible book, is plussed by the Imam, the infallible man."^ On this doctrine of the Imam the Shiahs are divided into two parties. I speak of them be- cause they also serve to explain modern history and the movement of Christianity in Asia and Africa. The Imamites reckoning Ali as the first, believe in twelve Imams, the last of whom Abul Kasim, is still alive, though concealed, and bears the name of Al Mahdi, "the guided." The Ismailians believe that since the sixth Imam, the Imams have been concealed. The Imam is in ex- istence now, but concealed. There are always those who say, "Next year the Mahdi will ap- pear." There is fine soil in this belief for a crop of disturbances and small fanaticisms of which we have not seen the last. It explains many things about Moslem lands, and makes move- » Sell's Faith of Islam, Edition, 1880, pp. 76, 78. 32 Persia ments like modern Babism intelligible. The founder of this sect, Mirza Ali Mohammed, the Bab, was the son of a Shiraz grocer, born in 1819 or 1820. His manifestation as a prophet was in 1844 at Bushire. His name of Bab, or gate, sig- nified his claim to be the one through whom alone knowledge of the twelfth Imam Mahdi could be attained. His pretensions grew apace and he soon advanced himself as the Mahdi, then as a re-incarnation of the Prophet, then as a Revelation or Incarnation of God Himself. The Bab was shot at Tabriz in 1850, and the Babis, his followers, removed to Bagdad. Thence the Turkish government removed them to Constan- tinople and then to Adrianople in 1866. One of them Mirza Hussein Ali, or Beha, announced himself as the Mahdi, whom the Bab had fore- told. This led to a dissension and bloody schism, ending in the permanent division of the Babis, with two prophets, Beha at Acre, and his younger brother at Cyprus, where the British government pensioned him. There are now supposed to be between half a million and a million Babis in Persia, nineteen-twentieths of them Behais, or of the Beha party. In spite of martyrdom and the fiercest persecution the sect has grown, until now its leader having given it a Missions and Politics dispensation to conceal, oppression is about at an end, though the Behais are secretive and obscur- ist still. The sect represents a revolt against the tyranny and fanaticism of the Koran and the lax- ity of Moslem practice, though allowing wine drinking and other leniencies. The Bab advo- cated also the removal of the veil by women, the disestablishment of the harem, and war against mendicancy. Doctrinely the Beha move- ment displaces Mohammed and the Koran, and regards God as a spiritual essence and not a per- son, while it yet compromises and conceals and now no longer wars against Shiahism. As illustrated by this Babi movement, from the orthodox beliefs of the Shiahs there have been reactions, three of which among others have an influence in the present missionary situation in Persia; the mystical reaction of Sufiism which ran into pantheism and this modern Babism; the sceptical reaction, represented, for example, by Omar Khayam; and the stern revolt against the deification of Imams and holy men, which led to the mechanical views of the divine unity preached by the Wahabis. The dervishes grew profusely out of the Sufi movement, of whom Jelal-ud-din, the founder of the Maulavi Dervishes is the best spokesman : 34 Persia " I was ere a name had been named upon earth, Ere one trace yet existed of aught that had birth ; When the loci