This is the 11th in a series on the life of William Borden, the millionaire missionary who died en route to China's Gansu Province, adapted from his biography (BordenofYale.com), which I helped edit for republication (Aneko Press, Jan 1, 2024).
Chief among his interests at this time was the distribution of the “khutbas”, booklets or tracts in Koranic style. The idea had come to Borden early during his time in Cairo. Writing about it to friends in New York, Dr. Zwemer said:
How glad I am to hear of your good prayer meetings at the home of Mrs. Borden. Her son is a benediction to the work here, not only at the YMCA but also in both the missions. He is a spiritual power and up-to-date in his methods. At his suggestion we are starting the distribution of khutbas all over Cairo, the students of the theological seminary working with us.
It was a movement with prayer power behind it, and before long it was taken up by others in the missionary community, so that within six months of its beginning, Mr. Upson, of the Nile Mission Press, could say:
“There never has been a time in the history of mission-work at this center when there were so many inquirers.”
The khutba distribution led to many talks and much personal work. And who shall say how much fruit came of it, remembering that Cairo was the intellectual center of the Muslim world?
The khutbas were brief, pointed discourses, written by Mr. Upson and a converted El Azhar (University) man, beginning with some passage from the Koran and leading up to clear teaching from the Bible. Borden appreciated their value [and thought] that there should be a shop-to-shop and, if possible, house-to-house distribution of these tracts. In his direct way he went to the seminary students and put it before them.
“I will pay for the khutbas, if you fellows will help me carry them.”
And help they did, seeking to reach out with the gospel all through that great city of Cairo. To his mother Borden wrote on February 5, 1913:
Yesterday, we had a report of our khutba distribution and found that all had gone off without excitement, save in the case of Dr. Zwemer and the students who had accompanied him to a fanatical part of the city.
With them, too, all went well for a time, till they met an old man who wanted to know by whom the tracts had been written, and who got quite excited when he learned that it was a former El Azhar student who had become a Christian. Dr. Zwemer, seeing that there was going to be trouble, tried to get the students away and to disperse the crowd by going into a shop. But the crowd waited outside, and there was no way of escape. Finally, the old man continuing his attack, they were all marched off to the police station.
The officer looked at the khutbas and listened to the charge. “Why,” he said, “this is nothing but Christianity! You can read about this any day.” And he let them go.
The result was that the wind was quite taken out of the old man’s sails, and they were able to distribute a lot of khutbas right in the police headquarters, which would have been inaccessible to them otherwise. They invited the people to come to the Monday night meeting for Muslims, and the man who made the trouble was there all right last Monday night.
Sorry I missed the excitement! But I have another section of the city which is less liable to afford interest of this kind.