C URRENT LITERATURE.
CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS PROBLEMS.
Constantinople and its Problems. By Henry Otis Dwight, LL.D. Illustrated. (Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier. 6s.)— Missionaries' books about people they want to convert are seldom marked by breadth of view or insight into character. Dr. Dwight supplies a pleasing exception. He is broad-minded, and if not absolutely sympathetic, he is at least benevolently disposed towards the Mohammedans among whom be works. We 'cannot honestly say that there is anything particularly new in his account of Constantinople and its people ; indeed, after all the books that have been written, it would be difficult for the most ingenious writer to discover a novel fact or a fresh impression. All that can be done is to present the old facts in a new form, with such adventitious charm as genius or study may lend to one's pen. Dr. Dwight, however, does not even attempt this : his style is restrained, clear, and unornate, and he parades no historical associations. He simply deals with modern Stamboul as he finds it, and apart from a little natural glow about scenery which has glowed and been glowed over for many centuries, he tries few flights of rhetoric. Still, his book has its value. It is a temperate statement of the facts of Con- stantinopolitan society as they appear to a calm and thoughtful observer. We thoroughly admire Dr. Dwight's frame of mind. Lie is neither bigoted, nor contemptuous, nor cynical. He can see the virtues of Islam and of Turkish Muslims as clearly, and recognise them as frankly, as if he were no missionary at all. Take this impression of prayer in St. Sophia :—" While the sentences of the Muslim litany are uttered, all the people together reverently bow, then kneel, and then bring their fore- heads to the ground in utter prostration before God. The solemn fitness of the words of adoration, the silence of the mass of people hollowing the words of the white-haired leader, the absolut•t union of the long lines of men shoulder to shoulder in their bowinga, kneelings, and prostrations, fairly compels admission that that stately building is now quite as much the house of God as when it echoed with the chant of the Greek liturgy." Or again :—
Tile great truth which burned in the heart of Mohammed until it made him a prophet was the truth that God is one God, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. Islam got its sword where Israel got its mighty weapon for hewing a place among the nations. Islam got its sword through championship of the truth
of God's being when the world had well-nigh forgotten Him." Dr. Dwight sees clearly enough that it is neither the doctrine nor the ritual of Islam that offends, but the strange compatibility of outward devotion with flagrantly bad conduct. Of course, though he does not say so, we might come much nearer home to find religious teachers who place faith before works, and lay far too little stress upon private ethics ; but this breach between theology and morality is certainly the blot upon the Muslim system. It is good to find a missionary recognising the fact that his main duty is not so much to preach as to influence by example. "There is where the effect of keeping a strong mis- sionary force in this city will ultimately tell, although its efforts be directed to persuading Christians in name to be such in fact and in life The whole secret of gaining the respect and approval of Mohammedans for Christianity is con- tained in the one phrase,—Show them Character." Unfortu- nately the character too often shown by Christians in the East is scarcely edifying. " Civilization," says Dr. Dwight, "repre- sented by Western commercial enterprise has been in contact with the people of Constantinople for many years. Since the Crimean War it has had untrammelled sway. Some of the externals of environment have benefited from this contact. Individuals may sometimes have been lifted out of the quag- mires of the mass of the population by glimpses of what manhood really is. But there is no question as to the general result. The result has been the moral deterioration of the city, and the strengthening of the repulsion felt by Turks towards the West." He gives an example :—" The syndicate of Ehropean officials who constitute the Administrators of the Turkish Public Debt have multiplied several fold the places in Constantinople where liquor is sold." " It is worthy of note," he adds, "that during two hundred years of commercial intercourse between the Turkish people and civilised Europe, the mercantile colonists living in Constantinople in all the splendour of superior culture, enterprise, and business success, have not once tried to do anything for the improvement of the minds or the morals of the native population, whether Mohammedan or Christian. It was the missionary spirit in Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches- which first gave the city schools that could teach and school books which children could understand." It is a stern indict- ment, but we fear it is true. The Europeans of the Levant have been a byword for generations, and have caused the simple virtues of the ignorant Turk to shine by contrast, and almost make one forget his stupidity and occasional ferocity. Dr. Dwight's book is one long appeal for a higher life in the East. He talks little about conversion or dogma, does not enlarge upon massacres, and is fully alive to the good qualities of that hewer of wood and drawer of water of the East, the unprogressive Turkish peasant. What he does insist upon is the supreme value of• Christian influence as a means of raising the people of all creeds to a better and more spiritual life, and if all missionaries held his tolerant and enlightened views there would be some hope for a peculiarly deplorable slum of humanity. His book will do good in showing those who deprecate missionary zeal how noble the work of the missionary, properly understood,.may become; whilst to those who are in sympathy with such effort the account of the many ways in which the missionary may bring a calm judgment and a high character to bear upon the complicated problems of the mixed and contending elements of Turkish life will be deeply interesting.
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