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It is too often supposed that the religious tendency of the East is
entirely towards other-worldness, to a treatment of this life as an
evil entanglement and of death as a release and a blessing. It is
too easily assumed that Eastern teaching is wholly concerned with
renunciation, not merely of self but of being, with the escape from
all effort of any sort into an exalted vacuity. This is indeed
neither the spirit of China nor of Islam nor of the every-day life
of any people in the world. It is not the spirit of the Sikh nor of
these newer developments of Hindu thought. It has never been the
spirit of Japan. To-day less than ever does Asia seem disposed to
give up life and the effort of life. Just as readily as Europeans,
do the Asiatics reach out their arms to that fuller life we can
live, that greater intensity of existence, to which we can attain by
escaping from ourselves. All mankind is seeking God. There is not
a nation nor a city in the globe where men are not being urged at
this moment by the spirit of God in them towards the discovery of
God. This is not an age of despair but an age of hope in Asia as in
all the world besides.
Islam is undergoing a process of revision closely parallel to that
which ransacks Christianity. Tradition and mediaeval doctrines are
being thrust aside in a similar way. There is much probing into the
spirit and intention of the Founder. The time is almost ripe for a
heart-searching Dialogue of the Dead, "How we settled our religions
for ever and ever," between, let us say, Eusebius of Caesarea and
one of Nizam-al-Mulk's tame theologians. They would be drawn
together by the same tribulations; they would be in the closest
sympathy against the temerity of the moderns; they would have a
common courtliness. The Quran is but little read by Europeans; it
is ignorantly supposed to contain many things that it does not
contain; there is much confusion in people's minds between its text
and the ancient Semitic traditions and usages retained by its
followers; in places it may seem formless and barbaric; but what it
has chiefly to tell of is the leadership of one individualised
militant God who claims the rule of the whole world, who favours
neither rank nor race, who would lead men to righteousness. It is
much more free from sacramentalism, from vestiges of the ancient
blood sacrifice, and its associated sacerdotalism, than
Christianity. The religion that will presently sway mankind can be
reached more easily from that starting-point than from the confused
mysteries of Trinitarian theology. Islam was never saddled with a
creed. With the very name "Islam" (submission to God) there is no
quarrel for those who hold the new faith. . . .
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