Then, again, the Moslem conception of God and the hereafter stiffens the backbone of pan-Islam in adversity. They are taught to believe that He is _really_ omnipotent and that His actions are beyond criticism--welfare and affliction being alike acceptable as His will. We, on the other hand, seem to be developing the theory of a finite God warring against, and occasionally overcome by, evil, which includes (in this new thesis) human suffering and sorrow as well as sin. There is a growing idea, pioneered partly by Mr. H. G. Wells and apparently supported by many of the clergy, that the acts of God must square with human ideals of mercy or justice, and as many occurrences do not, the inference is that evil gets the best of it sometimes. Now the Moslem slogan is "Allah Akbar" (God is Greatest), and that seems to me a better battle-cry than, for example, "Gott mit uns," as God will still be great and invincible to Moslems in their victory or defeat; but the finite idea presumes, in disaster, that you and your God have been defeated together. It is not my business to criticise either conception from a religious point of view, but in mundane affairs it is the former that will make for fighting force, especially as we still insist that our God is a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers, etc.: surely this is not a human ideal of justice; the obvious deduction is that our modern Deity is stronger to punish than protect--hardly an encouraging attribute. Whether a religion is the better for an organised priesthood or not is irrelevant to our subject, but the absence of it in Islam certainly strengthens the pan-Islamic movement, as each Moslem may consider himself a standard-bearer of his faith, while we are apt to leave too much to our priests, thus engendering slackness on our part and meticulous dogma on theirs; both undermine Christian brotherhood. The fact that priestly stipends seem to the ordinary layman as in inverse ratio to the duties performed also widens the breach between clergy and laity, besides sapping clerical _moral_. This is not the particular feature of any one sect--the reader can supply cases within his own experience, but here is one that is probably outside it and showing how widespread the system is. The rank and file of the Greek Orthodox clergy are notoriously ill-paid. Yet their monastery at Jerusalem costs £E.15,000 per annum to maintain and pays £E.40,000 annually in clerical salaries to archbishops and clergy who control the spiritual affairs of less than fifteen thousand people. It derives £E.30,000 from its property in Russia, £E.25,000 from the property of the Holy Sepulchre, and as much again from visitors and other sources; and this in a region where the Founder of our faith was content to wander with less certainty of shelter than the wild creatures of the countryside.