to on the subject agree that the solution would be an acceptable one to every school of Ulema except the distinctly Turkish schools. Indeed "Mecca, the seat of the Caliphate " is, as far as I have had an opportunity of judging, the cry of the day with Mussulmans; nor is it one likely to lose strength in the future. Like the cry of " Roma capitale," it seems to exercise a strong influence on the imagination of all to whom it is suggested, and when to that is added "a Caliphate from the Koreysh," the idea is to Arabs at least irresistible. How indeed should it be otherwise when we look back on history?

For my own part, though I do not pretend to determine the course events will take, I consider this notion of a return to Mecca decidedly the most probable of all the contingencies we have reviewed, and the one which gives the best promise of renewed spiritual life for Islam. Politically the Caliph at Mecca would of course be less important than now on the Bosphorus; but religiously he would have a far more assured footing. Every year the pilgrimage from every part of the world would visit him, and instead of representing a mere provincial school of thought, he would then be a true metropolitan for all schools and all nations.

K

I

The Arabian element in Islam would certainly support such a nomination, and it must be remembered that Arabia extends from Marocco to Bushire; and so would the Indian and the Malay —indeed every element but the Turkish, which is day by day becoming of less importance. have even heard it affirmed that a Caliphate of the Koreysh at Mecca would go far towards reconciling the Schismatics, Abadhites, and Shiahs with orthodoxy; and I have reason to believe that it would so affect the liberal three-quarters of Wahhabism. To the Shiahs, especially, a descendant of Ali could not but be acceptable; and to the Arabs of Oman and Yemen a Caliph of the Koreysh would be at least less repugnant than a Caliph of the Beni Othman. There certainly have of late years been symptoms of less bitterness between these schismatics and their old enemies, the Sunites; and such a change in the conditions of the Caliphate might conceivably bring about a full reconciliation of all parties. Mussulmans can no longer afford to fight each other as of old; and I know that a reunion of the sects is already an idea with advanced thinkers. Lastly, the Caliphate would in Arabia be freed from the incubus of Turkish scholasticism and the stigma of Turkish

immorality, and would have freer scope for what Islam most of all requires, a moral reformation.

It is surely not beyond the flight of sane imagination to suppose, in the last overwhelming catastrophe of Constantinople, a council of Ulema assembling at Mecca, and according to the legal precedent of ancient days electing a Caliph. The assembly would, without doubt, witness intrigues of princes and quarrels among schoolmen and appeals to fanaticism and accusations of infidelity. Money, too, would certainly play its part there as elsewhere, and perhaps blood might be shed. But any one who remembers the history of the Christian Church in the fifteenth century, and the synods which preceded the Council of Basle, must admit that such accompaniments of intrigue and corruption are no bar to a legal solution of religious difficulties. It was above all else the rivalries of Popes and Anti-popes that precipitated the Catholic Reformation.

CHAPTER IV.

A MOHAMMEDAN REFORMATION.

IT is with considerable doubt of my ability to do justice to so very difficult a subject that I now approach the most important point of all in this inquiry, namely, the question on which in reality every other depends: "Is there a possibility of anything like general reform for Islam in her political and moral life?"

It is obvious that, unless we can answer this in the affirmative, none of the changes I have been prefiguring will very much affect her ultimate fortunes-neither the solution of her legal deadlock with the Ottoman Caliphate, nor the transfer of her metropolis to a new centre, nor even the triumph of her arms, if such were possible, in Africa or India. These by themselves could, at best, only delay her decline. They might even precipitate her ruin. Islam, if she relies only on the sword, must in the end perish by it, for her

forces, vast as they are, are without physical cohesion, being scattered widely over the surface of three continents and divided by insuperable accidents of seas and deserts; and the enemy she would have to face is intelligent as well as strong, and would not let her rest. Already what is called. the "Progress of the World" envelopes her with its ships and its commerce, and, above all, with its printed thought, which she is beginning to read. Nor is it likely in the future to affect her less. Every year as it goes by carries her farther from the possibility of isolation, and forces on her new acquaintances, not only her old foes, the Frank and Muscovite, but the German, the Chinaman, and the American, with all of whom she may have in turn to count. If she would not be strangled by these influences she must use other arms than those of the flesh, and meet the intellectual invasion of her frontiers with a corresponding intelligence. Otherwise she has nothing to look forward to but a gradual decay, spiritual as well as political. Her law must become little by little a dead letter, her Caliphate an obsolete survival, and her creed a mere opinion. Islam as a living and controlling moral force in the world would then gradually

cease.