In this they stand in close resemblance to the "Reformers" of
Christianity; and some of the circumstances which have given them birth
are so analogous to those which Europe encountered in the fifteenth
century that it is impossible not to draw in one's own mind a parallel,
leading to the conviction that Islam, too, will work out for itself a
Reformation.
The two chief agents of religious reform in Europe were the misery of
the poor and the general spread of knowledge. It is difficult at this
distance of time to conceive how abject was the general state of the
European peasantry in the days of Louis XI. of France and Frederick III.
of Germany. The constant wars and almost as constant famines, the
general insecurity of the conditions of life, the dependence of a vast
majority of the poor on capricious patrons, the hideous growth of
corruption and licentiousness in the ruling classes, and the impotence
of the ruled to obtain justice, above all, the servile acquiescence of
religion, which should have protected them, in the political
illegalities daily witnessed--all these things, stirring the hearts of
men, caused them to cry out against the existing order of Church
discipline, and inclined them to Reform.
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