at any time to have embraced the gospel instead of the Qur'an, it must be right now to give up the Qur'an and embrace the gospel. The principles acted on in daily life again bear out this statement. When the Sublime Porte learned that the other nations of Europe no longer used matchlocks, but a much more efficient weapon, it did not say, 'Because we have now been using matchlocks for several centuries, we cannot change them, for they are much better than the bows and arrows which we used before.' But what did the Sublime Porte do? Every one knows, that after having convinced itself of the superiority of the weapons now used in Christian countries, it was wise enough to make the most strenuous exertions to get rid of the old matchlocks, and supply their place with the superior weapon of friendly Christian neighbours. Every rational Osmanli must approve this course taken by his government; therefore, if consistent with himself, he must also acknowledge, that if now, after a careful and thoughtful examination, the Muslims find the religion of the gospel superior to that of the Qur'an, they ought to give up the latter and embrace the former, although many bygone generations had not light and experience enough to recognize this duty. There can be no doubt, that for the present generation of Muhammadans also it is of the utmost importance to know clearly whether the Qur'an really is what they believe and the Christians deny,

namely, a higher development of divine truths than the gospel. But this is not possible, so long as they only read the Qur'an or Muhammadan writings; and it must be clear as daylight that every Muslim who wishes to arrive at the truth on this momentous question will have carefully to examine the gospel, and, if he can, other Christian writings. The comparison we are now going to institute between the doctrines of the Qur'an and the gospel, as already made between the gospel and the law (see p. 13), will, we trust, help the Muslim reader to obtain a correct view of the relative position of Muhammadanism and Christianity, and to ascertain which of the two represents the higher stage of revealed truth.

1. The Doctrine of God.

We have found above, where we considered the relation between the law and the gospel (see p. 13), that the belief in which both Muslims and Christians agree is well founded, namely, that the gospel contains a higher relation of God's truth than the law. This belief was fully borne out and justified by a comparison of the respective teaching of the two books on a number of important subjects. The first of these was the doctrine of God; and on this head we noticed particularly two heads on which the superiority of the one over the other was manifest, namely, first, that whilst the law regarded God chiefly as the almighty and omniscient Creator of the world, or the righteous and merciful Lord of