Nor was this all. Flaming up again in the eleventh century, Islam enveloped Asia Minor and the Balkans, and most of the Great Soudan, and as though driven by some western hurricane, swept eastward over Asia across the Turkestans to China, and from Persia down the passes of the Hindu Koosh to Kashmir, Afghanistan, and India. Nor was its fire spent then. The eighteenth century and the nineteenth saw its hungry flame burst forth afresh, spreading further westward across the Great Soudan and southwards into Central Africa. The twentieth century sees Islam spreading {100} with incredible speed, though deprived of its sword, down to Sierra Leone and Lagos in the west, up the Nile Valley and down to South Africa, threatening to engulf the native Christian churches in Uganda, Livingstonia, Nyassaland, and even in British South Africa, offering an example in missionary enthusiasm which the Church of Christ may well covet. [Sidenote: Present Position.] We have taken a big leap over 1200 years. We left Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, at the head of his Arab host, marching out upon the world. We find the Moslem still to-day seeking new worlds to conquer, still the same stalwart, virile enthusiast for the Faith. How is it? Whence comes this spirit? What is this spirit that is in him? Can it ever be explained? Can it ever be accounted for? We shall have the best hope of understanding it if we go back in thought again to the battle of Badr, or join the fierce, eager armies of Abu Bakr or Omar (the second Caliph) as they go forth to war--to fight some of those battles which must ever stand among the greatest of the world's history. [Sidenote: Causes of Success. (a) Belief in One God.] (1) As we move amongst these fierce {101} soldiers we realize that beneath their glaring Arab faults, their hot passions, their love of fighting, their love of booty, one strong conviction holds them. They have come to believe in God: a dim consciousness of Him they had had before, now many at least of the 'believers' believe passionately, and with all their hearts, that the one Almighty God had revealed Himself through His Prophet. To believe that, knowing nothing of His mercy, His justice, and His love, is enough to make men fanatics. Every Moslem warrior felt himself to be the 'Sword of God.' Therefore, these men of the desert carried everything before them, because they had a conviction and believed in it with a faith that bore down the superstition of the pagans, the subtleties of the philosophers, and the empty controversies which, alas! had taken the place of a living faith within the Christian Church. The thunder of their cavalry was not more terrible to the enemy than the clamour of their short, sharp battle-cry and creed, 'There is no God but God: Mohammed is the Apostle of God.' [Sidenote: (b) Plunder and Paradise.]