Page 31 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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NEGLECTED ARABIA 15

monthly stipend, traveling expenses if he wishes to travel or a position if
he wishes to stay. Obviously the prescription for him is to endeavor to
ihow him in this interview (which will probably be the first and the last)
that Christianity isn t loaves and fishes but a spiritual way of life in
which Way we invite him to follow with us.
In the cases I have described there has been a measure of promise or
i measure of futility. It is all part of the day's work. But the last case I
wish to relate is of a dififerent nature. And this is the kind of problem
that wrings the soul of the worker and leaves him wondering. The
visitor is Y . He has just completed four months in the local jail.
Five years ago, after two or three years of association with the mission-
irics and much reading of Christian literature, he was baptized. The
following two years he gave an excellent account of himself. Faithful
uid earnest, he let his light shine. More than that, he went out into the
untouched towns with Christian literature, even into one of the fanatical
[ ihrine cities of Iraq from which he was glad to escape with his life. He
minified a rani growth in gnu'c mid oiiu of the happiest experience* of
[ „iy mlBuluimry endeavor win studying with him the Epistle to the
Hebrews.
Then there occurred the phenomenon which has not been unobserved
before on the mission field. He went to utter ruin morally. This is
1
Mncthing missionaries have puzzled over not a little. Men come out
from Islam, they break completely with that phase of their past and show
no inclination to return to' it. They are earnest in the Christian pro­
fession and show a marked growth in their spiritual lives. Then some­
thing happens and they give way to immorality at which they would have
juddered in their Islamic days. So it was with Y . As a partial
I explanation I think I can put my finger on pride as being his besetting
1 mii. One way and another that has carried him into all manner of evil.
I Until four months ago he had done nothing to contravene the civil law,
1 but at that time he manipulated a note in a way to amount to virtual
forgery and he has paid the penalty. He now comes out of prison
; penniless, without work and wearing a woolen suit in a temperature of
: BO. Five rupees and a suit no longer new supply two of his needs, and
m endeavor will be made to find him work of some kind.
But the deeper need in his case is to bring him to a realization of his
^ritual poverty and moral bankruptcy and to help him get his feet back
on the right path if possible. The difficulty of the situation is not easily
Jocribed. He is looked down upon by the Moslems for his former con­
ations with the Christians and, as he asserts, for his present Christian
■ itucss. As a Christian one cannot call him much of a success however
much he desires his reclamation. All communities louked down on him
lor his failure in decent living. There is no impression of penitence and
i docs not seem he will get very far on the right road withoiut that.
And here, it seems to me, is the real crux of the missionary problem; i
* problem, not of organization and budgets and conferences, but the
j<oblem of bringing the power of Christ to bear on individual lives. And
unless somehow we can bring that power to salvage the life of Y------and
ihc>c others whom we meet in our clinics from day to day, then all else
a vain.