Just as Christianity stands for the faith of the great European family of nations, Islam stands for those countries whose political institutions are still based on the Patriarchal system. But Europe--however superior her peoples may think themselves--is not in the position, and certainly cannot afford, to look down upon Islam as an inferior product of an inferior section of the great human family. East may be East, and West, West--the system of one represented by polygamy, of the other by monogamy. But because Christianity is conformable to European ideals and notions, it does not in the least follow that it is compatible with those of the East. Because the civilized net result it has effected has eventually proved greater than that achieved by Islam, is no evidence whatever of Islam’s worthlessness or decadence. It is not the spirit of Islam that has failed, but the people who believe in it. They have fallen away from the high ideal that was set them by their master. In this respect, however, Christianity has also degenerated. It is a creed of profession more than of practice. It has never consistently practised what it has preached. A very wide gulf divides its practices from its ideals. “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.” So Shakespeare. This holds as good now as when he wrote it. Human nature never alters fundamentally. It is the same to-day as it was yesterday, and as it will be unto all eternity. Christendom much more so than Islam, is split up into sects and denominations, and there can be no question about it that the chief obstacle to unity among these various bodies at the present moment is want of sincerity and earnestness!