Shall this citadel of Islam be left unassailed while the Church passes on to easier work? Or is it a challenge for _picked men_, the best our Western learning can produce, to outlearn the learned, to love the hardest hearts and have patience over wooden heads, to believe in spite of all appearances that Truth is great and will prevail? To-day, through the many {175} pillared porticoes into the great University Court where for long centuries no Christian could so much as enter, Christian missionaries, true enough, men enough for this, pass freely, welcome friends and visitors. From this Moslem of Moslem Universities, 'students and ex-students have been converted to Christianity, and not a few have, as they paced or sat apart, studied there not the Korân, but the Injil Yasu'a al Masih (Gospel of Jesus Christ)'! [Sidenote: Asia.] And what of the problem in Asia, the struggle with Islam and its many and various forms there--Islam in undisputed power, Islam plus European influence, Islam under British rule, Islam under Dutch, and French, and Chinese governments, Islam sealing itself against the world, Islam caught in the rush of twentieth-century movements? What is the Church of Christ attempting? What trophies has she won? [Sidenote: Henry Martyn.] Just a hundred years ago Henry Martyn, a young brilliant scholar, Senior Wrangler of Cambridge, went out to India as a Chaplain of the East India Company. He was only in India four years before he {176} moved on to Persia, but he left behind him a translation, of the Bible into Hindustani. His life was 'cut short,' as men said, at thirty-one. The fact of his going out at all was staggering enough for intelligent men of his day. But when it transpired that his purpose in taking the post was that he might work among Hindus and Moslems, they had no words to describe his action but 'madness.' 'Absolutely throwing his life away!' said some. 'Of all the ridiculous ideas!' said others. 'Well, of all the impossible tasks!' said the more thoughtful, to whom, in those days, the conversion of a Moslem to Christianity was unimaginable. Possibly if he had stayed at home he might have lived to grey hairs, a life of learning, wealth, and honour. Instead, he planted a tiny living seed in the field of Islam. Was it worth while? It is reported that he left in India one, and only one, convert, Abdul Masih, the keeper of the jewels at the Court of Oudh. He lived for fifteen years after Martyn's death, labouring among his Moslem compatriots, the first Mohammedan ordained to the Christian ministry. {177} [Sidenote: Imad-ud-Din.] To-day among the native pastors and Christian preachers and teachers in North India, there are at least 200 who were once followers of Islam.[2]