Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/503

APPENDIX IV 457 enemies was their reward ; if they died, then heaven and the houris. When this attitude of mind is compared with that which existed among the members of the Orthodox Church, we see at once great divergences between the two forms of faith as national ethical forces. On the one hand, the student of comparative religions must give that Church credit for having aided the growth of the population in the Christian virtues, for having given them an inspiration enabling them to suffer and to hope, for having preserved learning, developed national intelligence, culti- vated exact thought, for having promoted philosophical studies and in various ways guarded the treasures of classic times until the rest of Europe was ready to receive them. On the other hand, such student, while recognising that Mahometanism prevents progress by assigning an inferior position to woman, by inculcating a spirit of fatalism which mischievously affects almost every act of the believer's life and keeps the Turkish race in poverty, and by pre- senting a lower ideal of life, will have to admit that its influence as a religious force, with its ever-present sense of a Supreme Power, omnipotent to save or to destroy, was far greater than that of the Orthodox Church, and that the Church failed to supply the stimulus of a national inspiration comparable with that of the hostile creed, or with that furnished by Christianity to the men of the West.