ural hardihood due to a bracing climate, otherwise the Mediterranean
might still be harried by corsairs. Steam transport by land and sea was
the direct offspring of these two minerals. Even then Western supremacy
was gradual and only recently completed by the exploitation of
petroleum, rubber and high explosives. Brown Bess, as a shooting weapon,
was far inferior to the long-barrelled flint-lock of Morocco, and the
Arabian match-lock could out-range any firearm in existence till sharp
cutting tools made the rifle possible. What does modern surgery, or any
other science of accurate manipulation, not owe to modern steel? When we
turn from metallurgy to medicine, let us not forget that Avicenna was
writing his pharmacopoeia when Christian apothecaries were selling
potions and philtres under the sign of a stuffed crocodile.

Some exponents of Christianity would go further and arrogate to her the
inception of all arts and handicrafts. Damascus blades, Cordovan
leather, Moorish architecture, Persian carpets, Indian filagree, Chinese
carvings and Japanese paintings all give the lie to such claims.

If we are to measure Christianity by the material progress of her
adherents, what conclusions are we to draw from the history of the Roman
Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Copts? Fourteen hundred years after
the birth of Christianity in Palestine the fall of Constantinople
shattered her last vestige of sovereignty in the East after she had gone
through centuries of decadence, debauch and intrigue such as anyone can
find recorded by Gibbon or even in historical novels like "Hypatia."

Islam, to-day, is about the same age as Christianity was then, and has
gone through similar stages, except that it has been spared the
intrigues of an organised priesthood and its comparative frugality has
protected it from oriental enervation to a certain extent.

Compared with Western Christianity its present epoch coincides with the
era preceding the Reformation, when religious teaching had become
stereotyped and lacked vitality, as is now the case with Moslem teaching
as a rule. There is no reason why Islam should not recover as
Christianity did, and if it does not it will not be due to any intrinsic
defect, but to its oriental environment, which has already debased and
wrecked Eastern Christendom.

The respective ages of the two religions induces another comparison. We
are now in the fourteenth century of the Hejira; glance at European
Chri