The Imam, grand chaplain of the Sultan.

“Saturday (July 6) — says the Presse — the imam or grand chaplain of the sultan, Hairoulah-Effendi, paid a visit to Monsignor Chigi, apostolic nuncio, and to Monsignor the archbishop of Paris.”

The journey of the sultan to Paris is more than a political event, it is a sign of the times, the prelude to the disappearance of the religious prejudices that for so long raised a barrier between peoples and bloodied the world. The successor of Mohammed coming, of his own free will, to visit a Christian country, fraternizing with a Christian sovereign, would have been, on his part and not long ago, an audacious act. Today the fact appears very natural. What is even more significant is the visit of the Imam, his grand chaplain, to the heads of the Church. The initiative he took in this circumstance, since ceremonial did not oblige him to it, is a proof of the progress of ideas. Religious hatreds are anomalies in the century in which we live, and it is of good augury for the future to see one of the princes of the Muslim religion give the example of tolerance and abjure secular prejudices. One of the consequences of moral progress will certainly one day be the unification of beliefs; it will occur when the different cults recognize that there is but one God for all men, and that it is absurd and unworthy of Him to hurl anathemas at one another for not adoring Him in the same manner.