We are on the borders of Europe now, but not at the limit of Islam. Among the scattered peoples of the 'Steppes' and beyond in Europe to the very boundary of {159} Siberia, 'where the winter day is so short that the Moslem can hardly find time to pray all his stated prayers,' still the Prophet of Arabia is acclaimed by eighteen million Moslems scattered among a nominally Christian people. The voices of those who in this vast tract worship JESUS rise but faintly to our ears. Westward again: and we stand in the vast land of Persia, among the ruins of world-empire, once the home of the worshippers of the sun, and of the hosts of heaven. Persia now turns its back to the rising sun and its face towards Mecca. The Shah, the officers of state, the law, the people, are Moslem, and have been for twelve centuries; in Persia, as in Arabia, the great closed land, Islam has reigned alone. [Sidenote: Turkish Empire.] Across the Euphrates Valley, past the cities of Babylon and Nineveh, whose names are the only relics of their former greatness, and we stand among the Moslem countries bordering the Mediterranean on the north-east, ruled with iron hand according to Korânic Law by the Sultan of Turkey, from Constantinople, the queenly city of the Golden Horn, political {160} centre of the Moslem world. Here, in Asia Minor and Syria, in the historic cities where the Apostle of the Gentiles loved, prayed, laboured, and suffered, and in which he planted Christian Churches, the muezzin's voice is heard to-day. Great Moslem populations proclaiming their simple, confident creed almost drown the feeble praise of the few dispirited Christians, remnant of Churches that have been. Palestine, now swept within the Turkish Empire, re-echoes the hard rasp of the Moslem creed and shrinks beneath the pressure of the Moslem heel. Strange that within the Empire of the Turk, the Empire which in the past has stood for oppression and persecution, should lie the land that once cradled the Saviour of the world. Stranger still and far more tragic, that on the hills which JESUS trod, around the lake He loved, and in the villages which heard His words of Life and Light and Truth, His Name is almost forgotten, dishonoured by the name that denies His claim. [Illustration: A CHALLENGE FROM WEST AFRICA. '_Where Moslem mosque and pagan temple are side by side._'] The Bedouin Arab with his camel or his herd of goats camps unthinking upon the sacred sites. Bethlehem, Nazareth, {161} Cana, Capernaum, Calvary, Olivet mean nothing to him. He spreads his prayer-mat towards Mecca and invokes Mohammed. We have traversed Asia from the farthest East, and the voice of the muezzin has haunted our ears. But we have not finished yet. [Sidenote: Africa.] Africa lies before us, the land of trackless deserts, overpowering forests, pestiferous marshes, vast inland seas.