for the conclusion to which they come, and that reason must not be the simple statement 'Muhammad said so'.

And similarly with the second main ground on which the average Muhammadan claims that Muhammadanism is superior to Christianity. The fact that Muhammadan theologians claim that the Qur'an is the eternal word of God, cannot be validly used as an argument in favour of Muhammadanism in the settlement of the historical issue which we have seen arises between it and Christianity. Independently of any belief as to the nature of the Qur'an the question must be settled. To say so is not to say at the outset that the Qur'an is not of God. That may be the conclusion to which we are led finally; but we are not begging the question by taking this for granted at the outset. We simply demand that this special claim on behalf of the Qur'an is one which cannot be allowed to influence the course of the investigation which concerns a simple matter of history, and which must be settled on historical and critical grounds.

Without doubt, it is no light thing to ask a man to reconsider his religious position, and see where in the light of historical fact and human reason he stands; and it is just this demand that we make on our Muhammadan brethren. We do not come to them to try to prove that their theological dogmas are wrong, and that ours are

better; that their religious practices are tainted with the formalism against which Jesus threatened his most grievous woes. We come not to destroy, but simply to ask the educated Muhammadan to tell us what ground he has for passing by a religious faith which Muhammad himself declared to be the truth. For we maintain that what we hold, and try in spite of all the failings inherent in poor human nature to practise, is simply Christianity as Jesus taught it—in fact the true Islam, which Muhammad and the Qur'an both witnessed to as being the Religion of God.

In making this demand, we desire to emphasize even to weariness the fact that we are bringing forward no new teaching, that we are not asking the Muhammadan to give up his belief in God, that we are not attempting to persuade him to act contrary to the revealed will of God. We are simply asking him to reconsider whether what he has received, perhaps unquestioningly, as the revelation of God, can truthfully claim to be from Him, in the light which criticism and historical research have shed on the reliability of the Gospel record. We claim to be presenting to him for his consideration that body of teaching which Muhammad himself acknowledged as the truth of God. We point out to him that Muhammad had no special means of knowing what the teaching of Jesus was, though from what he knew of it he had no hesitation in acknowledging that