"His was a religion of peace, but while your Christian Church prays for unity and concord among the nations your Christian States are daily increasing the instruments of destruction. His was a religion of poverty, but while your Christian priests are saying ’Blessed are the meek,’ your Christian communities are struggling for wealth and trampling upon the poor in their efforts to gain it. Ishmael Ameer believes that if your great Master came back now He would not recognise in the civilisation known by His name the true posterity of the little church He founded on the shores of the Lake of Galilee." "All this is true, too true," said Gordon, "yet under all that ... Doesn’t Ishmael Ameer see that under all that——" "Ishmael Ameer sees," said the Chancellor, "that what is known to the world as Christian civilisation is little better than an organised hypocrisy, a lust of empire in nations and a greed of gold in men, destroying liberty, morality, and truth. Therefore he warns his followers against a civilisation which comes to the East with religion in one hand and violence and avarice in the other." "But surely he sees," said Gordon, "what Christian civilisation has done for the world, what science has done for progress; what England, for example, has done for Egypt?" "Ishmael Ameer thinks," replied the Chancellor in the same slow, soft voice, "that the essential qualities of national greatness are moral, not material; that man does not live by bread alone; that it is of little value to Egypt that her barns are full if the hearts of her children are empty; that Egypt can afford to be patient, for she is old and eternal; that many are the events which have passed before the eyes of the crouching Sphinx; that the life of man is threescore and ten years, but when Egypt reviews her past she looks back on threescore and ten centuries." There was silence for a moment, during which the muezzin’s voice was heard again, calling the first hour of night, and then Gordon, visibly agitated, said— "You think Ishmael Ameer a regenerator, a reformer, a redeemer of Islam; and if his preaching prevailed it would send the Grand Cadi back to his Sultan—isn’t that so?" But the Chancellor made no reply. "It would also send England out of Egypt—wouldn’t it?" said Gordon, but still the Chancellor gave no sign. "It would go farther than that perhaps—it would drive Western civilisation out of the East—wouldn’t that be the end of it?" said Gordon, and then the Chancellor replied— "It would drive a corrupt and ungodly civilisation out of the world, my son." "I see!" said Gordon. "You think the mission of Ishmael Ameer transcends Egypt, transcends even Europe, and says to humanity in general, ’What you call civilisation is killing religion, because the nations—Christian and Moslem alike—have sold themselves to the lust of empire and the greed of gold’—isn’t that what you mean?" The Chancellor bowed his grave head, and in a scarcely audible voice said, "Yes."