Let it not escape the notice of the wise and thoughtful that in the realm of creation the great and glorious Creator has elsewhere given us to perceive something analogous to this way of salvation through the sufferings of Christ on our behalf. The father of a family often has to toil and suffer and risk his life in order to procure the food and clothing on which his children's health and life depend. The physician has often to incur great danger, and sometimes to die by disease, in order that he may try to save the sick. Even the birds of the air toil to build nests and to hatch and feed their young; and the mother bird will risk her life in battling with a hawk in order to preserve her chicks from his talons. God has put love for their young into the hearts of birds and beasts as well as of men. Pure and unselfish love often calls for self-sacrifice. Hence it is not incredible to thoughtful men that God has Himself manifested love in giving His only Son, one with Himself, to suffer and to die and to rise again from the dead for the salvation of His creatures.

Since faith and reliance upon Christ, who loved and gave Himself for us, is the medicine which the Almighty and All-Wise God has appointed as the remedy for the leprosy of sin, therefore he who, trusting to God's boundless wisdom, uses this remedy thereby gains spiritual health and attains true blessedness. And as the restoration of the sick man to health through use of the medicine prescribed by the physician is a proof of the efficacy of that remedy, so the believer in Christ, having been healed from love of sin through faith in the Saviour who laid down for him His precious life, knows assuredly the efficacy of the spiritual cure revealed in the Gospel. Hence with grateful heart he thanks and serves the true Physician.

Thus the attainment of salvation from sin through faith in Christ is a clear proof of the truth of His teaching, and shows that the Bible which bears witness to Him is the Word (كلام) of God.

CHAPTER V

THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE AND UNDIVIDED TRINITY IN THE UNITY OF GOD MOST HIGH

WHAT has been said in the fourth chapter concerning the way of salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ cannot be properly understood by the seeker for the truth until he has studied the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity. Our use of the word Trinity is often a stumbling-block to our Muslim brothers, because they do not know what the Christian doctrine on this subject really is. Hence they fancy that it is directly contrary to belief in the One True God. But this is by no means the case. God forbid! On the contrary, the doctrine of the Divine Unity is the very foundation of our belief in the Trinity. All Christians believe in One God, not in three Gods.

Any one who studies the commentary of Jalalu'ddin on Surah v. 77, and his note, as well as those of Baizawi and Yahya' on Surah iv. 156, will see that these commentators fancied that the Christians believed that the Most Holy Trinity consisted of Father, Mother and Son, imagining that the Virgin Mary was a goddess, and was one of three separate Deities. Now there can be no doubt that in Muhammad's time the common people among the Christians were very ignorant and had fallen into gross errors, offering worship to the Virgin Mary and to the saints, just as ignorant Muslims to-day perform pilgrimages (زيارات) to the graves of dead Walis (أولياء). But as no man of learning can say that such conduct is in accordance with the teaching of the Qur'an. so no scholar now fancies that the errors of ignorant Christians in Muhammad's time should be supposed to represent the