Moslem Christianity.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 73, 25 October 1884, Page 5

Moslem Christianity.

It is a fact strangely ignored that the Mahommedans are Christians. It is true that Moslem Christianity has suffered a sort of arrest in a primitive phase, outgrown by the development of Christendom ; but the Mahommedan's faith in the present and hope for the future world centres in Christ. They are called Mahommedan, but it is an epithet ; Mahommed is to them little more than what Wesley is to the Wesleyans. I asked Arabi, in the course of a conversation on theology, why he and his friends so constantly spoke of Christ as to appear instead of Mahommed, and why the Prophet was assigned no function in the approaching consummation. " Mahommed cannot appear," he said, "because he is dead." In answer to my further inquiry he said, " Christ is not dead ; it was a mere effigy of him which the Jews crucified. There are two men who never died— Elias and Jesus." He did not say that Elias was to be "he that should come" in form of a Mahdi, being rather reticent on that point, but he was clear in his belief that Christ still lives, and that he will "appear" to judge the world and reign over it. This, indeed, was warranted by what I have read in the Koran and other Mussulman books, but I did not realise before that it been formed into so consistent an eschatology. Afterwards I took some pains to converse on such subjects with other Mahommedans, and found that these ideas of Christ were held by most of them with a fervour of faith rarely known among those generally called Christians. The Mahommedan also believes with uncompromising fidelity that Jesus was miraculously conceived, that He is " the Word which he cast into Mary, and a spirit from Him" (Koran), that He alone of all the human race performed miracles, and when He shall again be heralded and again appear, will convert European Christians from their one error (belief in the Trinity), and gather them with Jews and Moslems into one divine kingdom, of which He will be king. In a letter from Dongola (" Daily News," Ist May), it is related that when certain Austrian priests and nuns were threatened with death unless they would abandon their religion, one of thorn said to the Mahdi, " You say that Christ is to come and join you to aid in making the Mahommedan religion universal. Then lot us live till Christ comes and tells us to follow you." The Mahdi agreed, and gave orders for their release. I was informed by one who has seen Osman Digna that the cross is conspicuous upon his dress in front, and a cross on a blue ground is on the skull cap of the Mahdi's soldiers. The dervish cassock which the Mahdi recently sent to General Gordon, with the request that he would be converted and wear it, and which the general kicked across tlie room, no doubt had the cross upon it. It is possible that if the impulsive general had worn it, and visited the Mahdi, he would have been welcomed as a brother Mahdi, if not a higher personage. General Gordon's views of Christian doctrine and " mission" are called peculiar, but they are such a? would readily be understood by a Druse of Lebanon or by any Moslem of the Soudan.— Moscure D. Conway, M.A.