as taught by the Christian Church, and to accept the former while rejecting the latter. But to state this is not the same as to say that we can see the grounds—the historical grounds—on which he made this distinction, and came to this decision. And again we have to repeat that in doing this Muhammad acted arbitrarily, and yet all the while appealed to the scriptures of the Christians as authentic. And so the question as far as the honest investigator is concerned, is not one which has been settled, but is one which each individual has to consider and decide for himself.

Muhammadanism claims to be built on the foundation of previous revelations, and it is the duty of any one who wishes to investigate its claims to dig down to that foundation, and see whether it is really built thereon, or is simply reared in close proximity thereto. Muhammadanism presents itself to the individual for his personal acceptance, and claims that the relation of man to God must be a personal relation. The matter then is a personal one for each individual, and we cannot insist too strongly on the responsibility of the individual to decide the question for himself. The tendency of mankind is no doubt the other way. He seeks to avoid the responsibility of making a personal decision on a matter of such grave importance, such vital interest to his soul, as his relation to the Maker of heaven and earth. He inclines to distrust his

own judgement on such a solemn matter and prefers rather to accept, even without the slightest personal investigation, that form of religious belief which he has received from his fathers, seeking thus to throw the responsibility on the shoulders of others. But we must stoutly insist on the fact that as the belief of one's forefathers that Christianity is the truth, while it may incline one towards Christianity, can yet be no real proof to the individual that Christianity is true; so the acceptance by one's ancestors of Muhammadanism, though it may dispose one to look favourably on the claims of that religion, and be a strong moral incentive to its acceptance, can yet never be a real proof to the individual conscience that this religion is indeed of God.

Seeing then that the fact that Muhammad came after Christ does not of itself do away with the necessity for personal investigation, we turn to the second ground on which the Muhammadan takes his stand in considering that Muhammadanism is superior to Christianity.

The second main ground on which the Muhammadan regards Muhammadanism as superior to Christianity is that the record of the revelation on which it rests is in his opinion superior to that on which Christianity relies. He asserts this by claiming that the Qur'an is the eternal word of God, spoken from all eternity. The