Page 82 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

**TT

NEGLECTED ARABIA

Missionary News and Letters
Published Quarterly
FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION AMONG THE FRIENDS OF
THE ARABIAN MISSION

The Arabian Mission and the Tercentenary

r ■ editor rarely intrudes himself upon these pages, as the peculiar
1 charm of this quarterly to its wide circle of readers has been its
I exclusive presentation of .news from Arabia itself. Missionaries
of lifelong experience have here set down their mature opinions of
Moslem customs and manners; the raw recruit has been free to give those
Irvsli uutl interesting observations upon Arabia which crowd upon him
ti it unfolds before him in all its pieturcsqucncss and romance. The
wlumcs of this little booklet which have been appearing uninterruptedly
i
tor thirty-five years contain, therefore, more varied and interesting data
(tacerning Arabia, the land, and its customs, the contacts of Christianity
*,ih Islam, than could be found anywhere else in literature, in the
tumble opinion of one who has never visited that country, has had com-
laratively little to do with this publication, but has conned its pages for
nuuiy years and dipped into old issues where the hopes and visions of
*u»iunaries were recorded which today are being fulfilled.
By invitation of the editor on the field, the Reverend Henry A. Bilkcrt,
£it brief foreword is introduced to explain the theme of this special
The missionaries have been following with deep interest the ob-
*nalioii of the Tercentenary at home. Such occasions have a unique
i^jpcal to the exile in a foreign land and they fill him with deep longing
a renewal and strengthening of the ties which bind him to the insti-
- ; ttfion at home in which his religious life was developed, which first gave
bn inspiration to service in foreign lands, and which stands behind him
■oh its prayers and gifts, nerving him to a hard task. It is not strange
as he casts his eyes back over the history of the Church in America
b should at the same time look forward to the future, surrounded as he
* by antiquities beside which our 300 years are but a span, but at the
ttfnc time working for the founding of a Christian Church which has no
taoory in Arabia but consists still of the hopes and prayers and dreams
J the missionary.
As the missionary sets before us some of these dreams and aspirations,
iifcly olir hearts will go out to him and our prayers will rise with deej >er
imency that the future may be made bright by realization of his visions
by the emerging of a church in Arabia which shall go down through
I* years, making fur itself a glorious history 'till His Kingdom come.
—Ed.