But the reverence which a Mussulman entertains for his mosque and that which a Roman Catholic feels for his church are entirely different in character. There is, in the eyes of a Catholic, a sanctity attaching to a church that does not and cannot attach to a mosque. This is shown by the names given to the two places of worship. A common name for mosque is _Jami_, which means a meeting house, while the word church, derived from the Greek, signifies the house of God--Τὸ κνριακὸν. In a Moslem’s view God is present in the _jami_ or mosque, but only as he is present everywhere else--in the field, on the mountain. But in the church, according to Catholic teaching, God is really and truly present under the veil of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence all the pomp and ceremony of the Catholic ritual, all the gorgeousness of decoration which so distinguishes the Catholic house of God from the Mussulman meeting house. Because of the Sacramental Presence every Catholic church is called the house of God. But among Mohammedans there is only one specifically recognized _Beith Allah_--house of God. This is the Kaaba at Mecca, which contains the Black Stone which was for ages an object of idolatrous worship and which is even to-day the chiefest object of Mohammedan veneration, if not also of downright superstition. It is because of the presence of this old pagan fetish in the Kaaba,[249] as well as on account of the fantastic legends which are associated with the Kaaba itself, that the Moslem, when praying, always turns toward Mecca. It is this Kebla--the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca--that is carefully indicated by the niche or mihrab in the interior wall of every mosque. For a time the Kebla was changed from Mecca to the rock in Jerusalem, on which Solomon’s temple was erected, but, whether from policy or atavism, Mohammed changed it back again to its original location. By so doing he virtually reduced Islam to a national religion--the religion of Arabia--instead of making it, as he had dreamed, the religion of the world. Again, the mosque, unlike the church, is never the center of that kind of religious organization which we know as a parish. There is no congregation comprising those who worship in a particular mosque. Nor have the imams and khatibs any jurisdiction, like that of a Catholic pastor, over those who assemble in the mosque for prayer. Worship in the mosque may be called congregational only in so far as certain individuals, who happen to gather there, unite in prayer to Allah under the direction of the imam, but it is nevertheless individual, as no Moslem has closer affiliations with one mosque than with another. Wherever he happens to be when the muezzin calls for prayer, there is his mosque and there he joins with his fellows in worship.