The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1925, Page 148

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148

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

years can be found who has not been married two
.or three times!

Mecea, the religious center of the whole Moham-
medan world, is found in this territory, sending
abroad, as from a center, the baneful and paralyzing
influences of Islam. Surely the ignorance, the
degradation, the pitiable social life of these
35,000,000 people are a loud challenge to us to
put forth our efforts of Christian sympathy. If
anywhere, it is here, where it has reigned unhin-
dered for thirteen hundred years, that Islam shows
it has no life-giving powers. Its adherents are
steeped in densest ignorance. Socially they present
a pitiable sight, and industrially the whole region

and passion and less an individual than in this
region, in this stronghold of Mohammedanism.
Hundreds of Christian women and girls have been
compelled to enter harems, and hundreds of others
are annually forced into prostitution. In ‘Turkey
alone there are said to be no less than 25,000
prostitutes.
A Great Missionary Opportunity.

In Persia there are more than seven million
people without any missionary influence whatever.
In Syria and Palestine, comprising an area equal
to that of New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey
combined, the real cradle of Christianity and Juda-

A Mission-School in Syria.

exhibits to one’s view a most desolate scene, a veri-
table picture of hopelessness. To one who has read
the Bible narratives and descriptions of Palestine
it is almost impossible to realize that this region
-of unrelieved desert could once have been the Land
-of Promise. Mesopotamia, once a land of plenty,
is a barren desert, and Arabia, at one time the home
-of fabulous riches, is to-day an almost continuous
.scene of poverty and squalor. In short, the physical
‘appearance of this whole territory is a picture of
the intellectual, social, and religious condition of
its inhabitants. Wenereal diseases are so prevalent
that probably as high as 90 per cent. of the people
-are infected. Infant mortality is dreadfully high,

cand tens of thousands of poor mothers are lifelong -

‘sufferers because of the inefficiency of the native
‘midwives. Perhaps nowhere is woman more de-
‘graded and more the plaything of man’s pleasure

ism, the political power of Islam is now’ broken,
but millions of the people are still in the spiritual
bonds of Mohammedanism. Palestine ‘and Syria
suffered terribly from the ravages of the World War,
and whole regions have been almost depopulated by
famine. ;

Arabia is virtually an unknown land beyond its
outer borders. It probably contains the largest un-
explored region in the whole world. Vast reaches
of Arabia are known to be deserts and steppes, in-
habited by roving bands of Bedouins, who live from
their flocks and herds and own allegiance to no man
save their immediate tribes.

Mesopotamia, where stood the cradle of Abra-
ham, once the granary of the world, is to-day a
desert, whose only inhabitants are a few Bedouin
tribes. Though three times as large as New York,
its population is only one-fourth that of that State.