succeed in conquering Animism. This weakness in face of the supreme enemy of all religious and moral progress bears a bitter penalty. Among the animistic peoples Islam is more and more entangled in the meshes of Animism. The conqueror is, in reality, the conquered. Islam sees the most precious article of its creed, the belief in God, and the most important of its religious acts, the profession of belief, dragged in the mire of animistic thought; only in animistic guise do they gain currency among the common people. Instead of Islam raising the people, it is itself degraded. Islam, far from delivering heathendom from the toils of Animism, is itself deeply involved in them. Animism emerges from its struggle for the soul of a people, modernized it is true, but more powerful than ever, elegantly tricked out and buttressed by theology. Often it is scarcely recognizable in its refined Arabian dress, but it continues as before to sway the people; it has received divine sanction."

Other writers express a still stronger opinion. "Moslem ritual, instead of bringing a man to God," writes Dr. Adriani, "serves as a drag net for Animism," and evidence confirms this from Celebes where the Mohammedan is more superstitious even than the heathen. "Islam has exercised quite a different influence upon the heathen from what we should expect. It has not left him as he was, nor has it tempered his Animism. Rather it has relaid the old animistic foundations of the heathen's religion and run up a light, artistic superstructure upon it of Moslem customs."7

While Moslems profess to believe in one God and repeat His glorious incommunicable attributes in their daily worship, they everywhere permit this glorious doctrine to be buried under a mass of pagan superstitions borrowed either originally from the demon-worship of the Arabs, the Hindu

7" The Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra," Gottfried Simon, pp. 157-9.

gods, or the animistic practices of Malaysia and Central Africa. Regarding the thirty million Moslems of the Dutch East Indies Wilkinson well says: "The average Malay may be said to look upon God as upon a great king or governor, mighty, of course, and just, but too remote a power to trouble himself about a villager's petty affairs; whereas the spirits of the district are comparable to the local police, who may be corrupt and prone to error, but who take a most absorbing personal interest in their radius of influence, and whose ill-will has to be avoided at all costs."

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At first consideration one would imagine that the stern monotheism of Islam - the very intolerance of Semitic belief in Allah would prevent compromise with polytheism. The facts are, however, to the contrary. "Belief in spirits of all sorts is neither peculiar to Acheh nor in conflict with the teaching of Islam," says Dr. Snouck Hurgronje. Actual worship of these beings in the form of prayer might seriously imperil monotheism, but such worship is a rare exception in Acheh. The spirits most believed in are hostile to mankind and are combated by exorcism; the manner in which this is done in Acheh, as in Arabia and other Mohammedan countries is at variance in many respects with the orthodox teaching. Where, however, the Achenese calls in the help of these spirits or of other methods of enchantment in order to cause ill-fortune to his fellow-man, he does so with the full knowledge that he is committing a sin." The missionary, Gottfried Simon, goes even further when he says: "The pioneer preaching of the Mohammedan idea of God finds a hearing all the more easily because it does not essentially rise above the level of Animistic ideas; for the Mohammedan does not bring the heathen something absolutely new with his doctrine of God; his idea of God correlates itself to existing conceptions. Animism is really the cult of spirits and the souls of the departed. Yet spirit worship has not

been able to entirely obliterate the idea of God." He goes on to show that among all the tribes of Sumatra, the images which are incorrectly called idols are either pictures to scare away evil spirits by their ugliness, or soul-carriers, that is to say, pictures into which soul-stuff has been introduced by some kind of manipulation; they therefore either introduce soul-stuff into the house (soul-stuff life power, life-fluid, hence a material conception) and with it a blessing, or by an increase of soul-stuff they ensure protection against diseases and spirits. The first group might perhaps best be called amulets, or when they are worshiped and given food, fetishes; and the second group talismans.

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In Skeat's "Malay Magic" it is shown that just as in the language of the Malays one can pick out Arabic words from the main body of native vocabulary, so in their popular religious customs Mohammedan ideas overlie a mass of original pagan notions. The Malays of the Peninsula are Sunni Muhammadans of the school of Shafi'i, and nothing, theoretically speaking, could be more correct and orthodox (from the point of view of Islam) than the belief which they profess. "But the beliefs which they actually hold are another matter altogether, and it must be admitted that the Mohammedan veneer which covers their ancient superstitions is very often of the thinnest description. The inconsistency in which this involves them is not, however, as a rule realized by themselves. Beginning their invocations with the orthodox preface: 'In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate,' and ending them with an appeal to the Creed: 'There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God,' they are conscious of no impropriety in addressing the intervening matter to a string of Hindu Divinities, Demons,

8" The Progress and Arrest of Islam in Sumatra," Gottfried Simon, London, pp. 48–51.

9 Skeat's "Malay Magic," p. xiii.

Ghosts and Nature Spirits, with a few Angels and Prophets thrown in, as the occasion may seem to require."

The very wide extent of Animism is often not realized. This belief is the living, working creed of over half the human race. All South, Central and West African tribes are Animists, except where Animism has been dispossessed by Christianity. The Mohammedanism of Africa is largely mingled with it. It is the faith of Madagascar. North and South American Indians knew no other creed when Columbus landed, and the uncivilized remnant still profess it. The islanders of the Pacific and the aborigines of Australia are Animists. In Borneo and the Malay Archipelago it is strong, although a good deal affected by Hinduism. Even in China and Japan its adherents are numbered by millions. In Burma it has been stated that the nominal Buddhism of the country is in reality only a thin veneer over the real religion, which is Animism. In India, while the Census Reports record only eight and a half million as Animists, yet there are probably more than ten times that number whose Hinduism displays little else, and even the Mohammedans in many places are affected by it.

There is no agreement among scholars regarding the origin of Animism. According to a writer in the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Animism may have arisen out of or simultaneously with animatism as a primitive explanation of many different phenomena; if animatism was originally applied to non-human or inanimate objects, animism may from the outset have been in vogue as a theory of the nature of men. Lists of phenomena from the contemplation of which the savage was led to believe in Animism have been given by Dr. Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Mr. Andrew Lang and others; an animated controversy arose between these writers as to the priority of their respective lists. Among these phenomena are: trance and unconsciousness, sickness, death, clairvoyance,

dreams, apparitions of the dead, wraiths, hallucinations, echoes, shadows and reflections." According to this theory evolution accounts for the growth of religious ideas. But all are not in accord with this theory; it is opposed to the Scriptures. "A dispassionate study of heathen religions," says Warneck, "confirms the view of Paul that heathenism is à fall from a better knowledge of God. In earlier days humanity had a greater treasure of spiritual goods. But the knowledge of God's eternal power and divinity was neglected. The Almighty was no longer feared or worshiped; dependence upon Him was renounced; and this downward course was continued till nothing but a dim presentiment of Him was left. The creature stepped into the place of the Creator, and the vital power, the soul-stuff and the spirits of the dead came to be worshiped." 10 This view is not exploded by science, for the Encyclopædia Britannica concludes its discussion on the subject by saying: "Even, therefore, if we can say that at the present day the gods are entirely spiritual, it is clearly possible to maintain that they have been spiritualized pari passu with the increasing importance of the animistic view of nature and of the greater prominence of eschatological beliefs. The animistic origin of religion is therefore not proven.

Aside from the question of origin we return to its content. It is in its teaching regarding man's soul and the supreme importance of the immaterial that Animism affords a point of contact with such words of Christ as "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul." It is the loss of the soul, the spirit, the invisible lifeprinciple that the Animist fears: but this fear brings him into a life-long bondage to superstitions.

Among the Basutos in Africa it is held that a man walk

10" The Living Christ and Dying Heathenism," p. 103. Compare also Ellinwood's "Oriental Religions and Christianity," p. 225.