Page 226 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

n

12 NEGLECTED ARABIA
!
i
shape our reaction in this matter, for a sandy shore fringing an horizonless ;
sea, and a hinterland of a rocky range or an illimitable desert are inclined I
to accentuate one’s sense of helplessness rather than to enhearten. Inter­
esting and beautiful as a coastal trip or an excursion to Moharrak or Rif a .
i
is, the pleasure is not unalloyed when one reflects what little provision of •
a Christian nature has been made for the physical, intellectual or spiritual {
l ; needs of the people. Understaffed as such lands, as India and China mighty '
be, Arabia in comparison with them and in proportion to its population
is in worse plight. In each of the former there is a Protestant worker’ !
to every 50,000 or 60,000 of their teeming millions, but Arabia, whose
size (two-thirds the area of the United States, or equal to twenty-seven
Pfimsylvanitth) is rarely appreciated by the West, has hut one worker to i
i appruximalcly 200,000. In the light uf this, surely this great ami ancient
peninsula-continent is "neglected."
. A second impression has to do with the difficulties attending the work.
i They are two-fold,—natural and human. Where the people are scattered
and the land large, facility of travel is a primary consideration if one would i
accomplish much. But where railways and roads are not, the limit of ' \
one’s abilities is soon reached. For example, Muttreh is three miles by
foot over a steep and rocky defile and a rough cliff road,—a pleasurable
and rewarding experience if the sun be not up, but time-consuming and :
exhausting. Sohar is but 130 miles up coast from Muscat, a matter of i
four or five hours as we cover distances in the West, but given fair wind,
two nights’ and a day’s tossing on the deep, unless one is willing to invest
the better part of a week travelling over-land by camel-back. And if the I
doctor at Manameh (Bahrein Is.) receive an urgent summons to Mu- j
harrak across the shallow strait, his coming and his going alike are gov­
erned by the whim of the tide.
5 And to the obstacles raised by Nature, must be added the less tangible
but sometimes more serious barriers which reside in the minds of men,—•
political enmity and religious hatred. For this reason it frequently happens
that those places where the need is direst, the ambassador of Christ is
least welcome and finds access the hardest. The Trucial coast and the
Wahabi empire of the Nedj are cases in point. A great Christian of warm
sympathies for every human need once characterized the Anglo-Saxon as
the “ethnic Pharisee of the world" who thanks God that racially he is not
as other men. In all kindness may not one ask, if the Moslem, with his
mind geared along predestinarian lines and obsessed with the conviction
of his own election, is not the spiritual counterpart among the nations?
The seed of the Word has little chance to strike root in the parched soil
j
of a great religious pride. And when u purl-ChrUliun principle, like faith .
;
in the fundamental fact of the sovereignty of God, is wedded to part-pagan
practices his position is still less approachable. Herein is the source of •
many secret heart-aches of the teacher, the evangelist, the colporteur. For
this reason, though the greatest need of the people might be moral or
spiritual, it would seem that for some time to come the best approach will
be through the avenue of their physical necessities. The combination of «
that with ethical education was the approach of Jesus. Our present hope «
then for Arabia is not in the establishment of the institution of the Church V
I or Sunday School or their rites as we know and observe them, but in the
school-house, the printing-room, the patients’ ward. There is
a measure . :■