should like to post this first. I take comfort from remembering that even St. Paul went among the Corinthians at one time with 'fear and much trembling,' or else I should despond of myself as a would-be missionary!

The bishop was so much interested in his work at Kairowan that he stayed there till Sunday, December 14, when he had to leave in haste by densely crowded tram to catch the French mail steamer. On leaving he wrote

to Mrs. French :—

'I trust I may fairly hope to be in Alexandria by Christmas. I do believe I have been guided thus far. Kairowan has introduced me into plain, direct missionary work such as I have scarcely had for many years back, except by fits and starts as at Quettah, Peshawur, Shiraz, and Ispahan, and a few spots in Syria and Palestine; but none quite so direct as this.'

In an article written from Muscat for the Indian Church Quarterly Review, on the 'Moslem in Arabia and North Africa,' which reached India two days after his death, and was published posthumously July, 1891, the bishop gave some further account of the influence of Abd-ul-Kadir and of the Moslem brotherhoods. Of these latter he wrote:

They are said to number a hundred at least, but from the careful researches of some French writers, who have studied the subject mostly in its political bearings, it would appear that only five or six of these have assumed such weight and dimensions as to be seriously taken into account, and expected to play an important part in any future struggle between Moslem and Christian powers.

'The greatest of all these is called Senoussiya, or Snoussiya, from the name of its founder, Sheikh Si-Snoussi, whose son, Mohammed Ahmed, is the rival Mahdi to the Mahdis who have encountered us in the Soudan. Djar-Boub (so the French authors call it), in the very heart of Africa, is the head centre and residence of the chief of this sect, and claimant of the disputed title; a magnificent city, it appears, crowded with hosts of suppliant pilgrims, and enriched with amplest spoils and stores of barbaric wealth, contributed by the Arab merchants and sheikhs of the largest territorial possessions. It would be enough to startle and appal the stoutest if one could implicitly believe all that these French writers maintain as to the supreme soul-enslaving ascendency by which both father and son, successively heads of the Senoussiya, hold in chains of iron, cruel and remorseless, the tribes spread over a large portion of Northern Africa. The city is known by the name of the "lesser Mecca"; and very many of those bound on a pilgrimage to Mecca in these regions consecrate their

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vows by a preliminary visit to this place to receive the sheikh's blessing, whose superior sanctity, however, is said to render him rarely accessible, the honours and duties of his office being fulfilled by his younger brother, Mohammed Sharif, the elder brother being occupied in holding the reins of this vast, despotic, spiritual sway, receiving despatches and issuing instructions, borne hither and thither in fabulously rapid marches by a system of camel-riders— the finest camel-service in the world, it is said. Hundreds of zaviyas (which word blends in one hospitals, schools, monastic cells, and places of worship) are spread throughout North Africa, each under the conduct of a mukaddam, or religious superior, appointed by the Sheikh Si-Snoussi.

Thus the Snoussiya stands first and foremost among the confréries which have almost metamorphosed, and for good or evil hold under so potent and inspiring a spell, the myriads of North Africa. It has concentrated most vigorously and pertinaciously under one head the great end ever present to the Moslem, "the Universal Imamat, the Panislamic Theocracy." The Wahhabees, the sister sect or order, was a desperate effort put forth in the same direction; but it was not, it would seem, so perfectly systematized; it met with fiercer opposition, and achieved less decisive success than the Snoussiyas in Africa.

'Personally, the more interesting to me is the brotherhood of the Kaderiyas or Qadiriyas, the closest and most persistent followers of the Sheikh Abd-ul-Kadir already referred to. I was accidentally led to a study of some of his works in Arabic many years ago, and was struck especially with the deeper spiritual fervour, and mystic devotion, and intenser thirst of the soul for nearness to God and fellowship with Him than one finds in average Moslem works. Most of his life was spent, if his works are genuine and bespeak his true character, in exercises of prayer, piety, and charity; solution of doubts and difficulties; preaching of repentance; exhortation to bear trial, humiliation, and suffering patiently; and to submit implicitly to the will of God. In some of his works, tolerably accessible in India, I came across some passages singularly expressive of homage to, or at least confidential respect for, our Saviour. Further acquaintance with his works has made me feel that these terms of respect, sprinkled here and there at long intervals, are frivolous and superficial enough, set by the side of the grossly blasphemous and idolatrous eulogiums he lavishes on the false prophet;... but it is impossible to doubt that Abd-ul-Kadir was a truly great and remarkable personality, and that what is recorded of him in its infinite. diversity of incident and variety of expression betokens an unbroken unity and singular uniqueness of character, which goes far to account for the excessive homage rendered him over the western portion of the Mohammedan world. Pilgrims flock to his tomb year by year at Bagdad, the fact that I was refused admission to

it, though allowed to have a glance at it from a distant doorway, proving that the weight his name carries in Bagdad is decisively anti-Christian, and he is in no way regarded as a witness for Christ. Addressing a small gathering of Moslems at his tomb in that great city, I could not help invoking him as a witness. I quoted some words of his to them, and said, "Your sheikh prayed much; and he tells us on one occasion, nay, repeatedly he says the same, 'In my prayers to God I have been used to put up this petition: O Lord, there are two boons I ask Thee to grant me; if Thou grant me but these two, I will never ask of Thee any petition more. First, I ask Thee to give me the death in which there is no life; and second, to give me the life in which there is no death."

'On which I naturally remarked, "Your sheikh had probably very little idea of all that these words imply, if rightly understood; at any rate, you have no conception of the sense. Hear St. Paul's words in Romans vi, 'Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' If God's good Spirit lay this teaching on your hearts, then and then only will you have the true and saving interpretation." And many a time since I have found this word seem at least to win its way for a gospel message to a Jewish and Moslem heart. ... The Tejaniya, or Tijaniya, is another of these communities whose ranks are swollen by large accessions of recruits. This confrérie, however, has one or two noticeable peculiarities. One is that the practice of mutual affiliation, and the tendency to approxi mate to each other's doctrine and ritual, which prevails among the other communities, finds no place among them, haughty seclusion and rigid separation being their rule. Another is that they have cultivated the favourable regard and good offices of the French invaders by tolerating, and even secretly favouring, the annexation, and have invariably kept aloof from any conspiracies fostered by their neighbours to arrest the course of foreign occupation. The French Government, on their part, have not beenslow to appreciate and reward this reasonable, however warily concealed, disaffection and desertion of the common cause.

'The Shadiliya, or Madaniya, is another brotherhood of some importance, and Fournel represents it as one of the most bitterly hostile to the Christian faith and the entrance of the foreigner. On the contrary, the American missionaries, whose schools I catechized and visited at Sidon about two years since, spoke of the readiness of some of the Shadiliya chiefs on some of the lower heights of Mount Hermon to send their sons to the mission boarding-schools at Sidon, whose education is on a very high. scale, and the hold on the people considerable.

'It would be far too venturous to attempt to predict at present what these restless changes indicate as regards the future of the Moslem and the Christian in North Africa. They supply matter

at least for anxious thought, and for what is not, I trust, presumptuous hope. It was impossible not to feel that in some of the leading communities by which the Arab mind is most forcibly swayed, both by their mystic and spiritual teachings, and the extraordinary reverence entertained for what seems to them the superhuman sanctity of the founders, Mohammed's once unquestioned and unrivalled supremacy over the Arab heart is losing ground.

'In Kairowan, the common rendezvous of these confréries, you could not mention the name of Abd-ul-Kadir without observing the raising of the hearer's hand to his forehead with some word expressive of marked honour. Mohammed's name called forth no such action symbolic of devout esteem. The very fact that a place has been found in this century in so conservative a race for disquieting movements and widespread searchings of heart is of itself ominous and significant of further probable change. . . .

'The sheikhs bore with me sometimes when I reminded them that, with all their wealthy, wide-spread and far-famed brotherhoods, there was yet one brotherhood, and a far higher and holier one, which they had deep need to add to those they had laboured to create, and which would be fraught with richer blessings, the brotherhood of the divine WORD-the "Word that was in the beginning with God, and was God." Is it too daring a hope, one which will flit across one's brain, and shed a glint and gleam of hope on the heart in happy moments, that, like as the gradual laying to rest of the Arian controversies brought over from the ranks of heresy some who were to be of the stoutest and most practised and inflexible champions of the Christian faith, so from the receding tide of Islam may be gathered back to us, and be associated with us, some of the most strenuous and courageous confederates in the Christian warfare? What might the results be, under God, of the raising up of a Christian Abd-ul-Kadir?'

At Goletta, en route for Malta, the bishop first received the full text of the Lincoln judgement, and wrote enthusiastically in its praise :

TO MRS. FRENCH.

Steamer Thebes, Dec. 17, 1890. The archbishop's judgement will be quite a historical epoch in Church of England annals: through its complete, comprehensive, and most wisely digested and statesmanlike summary of the questions before the court: which will I hope (or at least ought to) have the effect of making extreme partisans of both sides thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and ready to acknowledge the sound and wise counsels to which the fathers of our Church have been led, under the guidance, I cannot doubt, of the Spirit of truth. . . . I cannot but heartily praise

God for the moral and high spiritual basis on which the whole judgement was founded, in which direction much more was suggested, and to be read under the lines, than was actually expressed and outspoken: and especially for the father-like, yet also judicial and judicious, reproofs administered with the archbishop's left and right hand to both parties (the violent among them and the irreconcilables) in their turn: and the impartiality with which his two edged sword was wielded! The passage on the openness of Church of England ritual and procedures generally, and its frank, considerate, respectful bearing towards the laity, is a valuable inheritance bequeathed to our Church in its battle with Rome, and all that is extreme and unscriptural in sacerdotalism. If any people ask you what I thought of the judgement (which probably nobody, at least in Chislehurst will), you could tell them something of what I have said for my heart is full of the subject. It was worthy of the archbishop's dignity and singular strength of character and self-reliance not without heaven-reliance, I am persuaded), not to be goaded by impatient and indignant writers in public journals to precipitate things, and deliver a premature and half-digested judgement, from which further reflection and study might compel an unfortunate retreat, disastrous in its results and destructive of confidence for the future. Even my own study of the questions had led me very much to the same results only I had not had it in my power to make any historical survey of them so wide, and covering practically the whole ground, and weighing so precisely the proportionate value of the varied evidence produced.

The bishop reached Egypt upon December 20, and spent about three weeks in the country, dividing his time in almost equal parts between Alexandria and Cairo. As usual he made himself familiar with the mission work of all kinds in progress at both places, and pursued his studies. He did but little sight-seeing, except in visiting the great museum at Gizeh and the famed Moslem university at El Azhar. On Christmas Day he preached and celebrated the Holy Communion for the first time in the new church at Ramleh, erected through the liberality and energy of Mr. Alderson, whose guest he was. Rumours of the increasing differences (at that time) between the C. M. S. and Bishop Blyth, due to the recent publication of a primary charge1,

1 These differences led to an episcopal inquiry by the Archbishop of Canterbury and four assessors, and in their 'Letter of Advice' the action of the C. M. S. was, in the main points, justified.