being
the most fanatical of all its residents. The true Arabs are in revolt
against his authority.

Again, it is improbable that any enunciation of Puritan reform would
find support among the northern races of Asia, which are uniformly sunk
in gross sensuality and superstition; while Constantinople may be
trusted to oppose all reform whatever. Wahhabism, when it overspread
Southern Asia, never gained a foothold further north than Syria, and
broke itself to pieces at last against the corrupt orthodoxy of
Constantinople. And so too it would happen now. Abd el Hamid, in spite
of his zeal for Islam, would see in the preaching of a moral reform only
a new heresy; and, as we have seen, the Mohdy's mission is against all
evil rule, the Sultan's and Caliph's not excepted. So that, unless Abd
el Hamid places himself openly at the head of the warlike movement in
Africa and so forestalls a rival, he is not likely long to give it his
loyal support. Already there are symptoms of his regarding events in
Tunis with suspicion, and on the first announcement of an inspired
reformer he would, I believe, not hesitate to pronounce against him. I
understand the Turkish military reinforcements at Tripoli quite as much
in the light of a precaution against Arab reform as against infidel
France.

Puritanism, then, on a militant basis, even if preached by the Mohdy
himself, could hardly be either general or lasting, and its best result
would probably be, that after a transient burst of energy, which would
rouse the thought of Islam and renew her spiritual life, a humaner
spirit, as in Arabia would take its place, and lead to a more lasting,
because a more rational, reform.

But it was not to such a Puritan reformation that I was pointing when I
expressed my conviction that Islam would in the end work out her
salvation, nor do I hold it necessary that she should find any such
_deus ex machina_ as an inspired guide to point her out her road. Her
reformation is indeed already begun, and may be gradually carried to its
full results, by no violent means, and in a progressive, not a
reactionary spirit. This only can be the true one, for it is a law of
nations and of faiths, no less than of individuals, that they cannot
really return upon their years, and that all beneficial changes for them
must be to new conditions of life, not to old ones--to greater
knowledge, not to less--to freedom of thought, not to its enslavement.
Nor is there anything in