Such people make up the majority of the professors of Islám; and with them no reform, within Islám, seems possible. Among the upper (I will not call them the higher) classes, they are either fanatics or concealed infidels; and their lives are a proof of the incompatibility of ordinary Mohammadanism, real or nominal, with a high social and national life. Among the poorer classes, the social system has a more restricted field of operation, for the poor are naturally less able to avail themselves of the permissions of their Prophet. In a poor community Islám exerts an eminently salutary influence, as the condition of the Mohammadan converts in Western Africa conclusively proves. An able observer,[22] whose African birth and training qualify him in a high degree for properly understanding the true state of his countrymen, whilst his Christian profession serves as a guarantee against excessive prejudice in favour of Islám, has recorded his experience of the work of Mohammadan missionaries in Liberia and the neighbouring parts of Africa. ‘All careful and candid observers,’ he remarks, ‘agree that the influence of Islám in Central and West Africa has been, upon the whole, of a most salutary character.... As an eliminatory and subversive agency it has displaced or unsettled nothing as good as itself.’ It has inculcated habits of moderation and soberness over the whole of the vast region covered by its emissaries; and so great is the influence of its teaching, that where there are Muslim inhabitants, even in pagan towns, it is a very rare thing to see a person intoxicated. The Mohammadan converts drink nothing but water. ‘From Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is scarcely an important town on the seaboard where there is not at least one mosque and active representatives of Islám, side by side with the Christian teacher. And as soon as a pagan, however obscure or degraded, embraces the Muslim faith, he is at once admitted as an equal to the society.... The pagan village possessing a Muslim teacher is always found to be in advance of its neighbours in all the elements of civilisation.... The introduction of Islám into Central and West Africa has been the most important, if not the sole, preservative against the desolations of the slave trade. Mohammadanism furnished a protection to the tribes who embraced it, by effectually binding them together in one strong religious fraternity, and enabling them by their united efforts to baffle the attempts of powerful slave-hunters. Enjoying this comparative immunity from sudden hostile incursion, industry was stimulated among them; industry diminished their poverty; and as they increased in worldly substance, they also increased in desire for knowledge. Receiving a desire of letters by a study of the Arabic language, they acquired loftier views, wider tastes, and those energetic habits which so pleasingly distinguish them from their pagan