Page 98 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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NEGLECTED ARABIA 9

lhan mere courtesy, I have never seen an audience in Arabia or at home
so keen to ask questions afterward about the meaning and implications of
what they have heard, as the little company of perhaps fifty who listen
each Sunday afternoon to a simple Gospel talk in Matrah. Oman is a
district which forbids the use of tobacco just as Nejd does, but Oman is
a land of tolerance and courtesy, which can hardly be,said of Nejd. The
visiting doctor is not an infidel and the son of a dog simply because he is
a Christian. The religious faculty seems fresher and less hardened here
lhan anywhere else in the whole of Arabia.
Tragedy is everywhere. Oman is a nest of slavery, though to be sure
not in Muscat where the British rule. One day in an inland town a
splendid youngster came to a crowded clinic. “What is your name?"
"Boniface.” It was like a whiff of some childhood fragrance. “And
where are you from?” It appeared he was a product of Catholic schools
in Africa, and kidnapped from there is now a nominal Moslem in Arabia,
lie needed no medicine; wlutl lie wanted wan help in running uwuy. I

PRINCE'S CASTLE AT SOHAR. OMAN

hive never seen him since. It was another of that race who at the end
of a hard day came to ask whether there would be time ^ifter supper to
read some more parables to him. He was an old man and his face had
on it the marks of a long and a hard and a patient life. His simple sin­
cerity made a great impression. The soul locked up in that prison had
»cry few windows to let in the sunshine. A pathetic appreciation of the
limple parables of Jesus may seem a slim basis for any hope of eternal
bfc, hut when 1 remember that humble earnest faithful old man, I like
lo remember that loizarus gained a place in Abraham’s bosom on the
Uiis of his uncomplaining patience through a hard life*..
The work ahead of us is enormous. “Yes,” said a thoughtful dignified
theikh to me as I sat in his mejlis, “I have the Gospel, too. One of your
guuionaries gave me a copy twenty years ago. I frequently get it down
iad try to read it, but its Arabic is so strange that I understand nothing.”
The Arabic of the standard translation is doubtless excellent Arabic for
Syria, but a tragedy of that sort can have, but one reply. Somebody !