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THE MOHAMMEDAN CONTROVERSY

asylums and converts generally, and to the effect which appeals thus sounding from among themselves, and addressing their feelings and reason with native home-drawn arguments, will have throughout the country.

But of all human means we trust most to those exhibitions of earnestness and anxiety, which Christian love is now prompting its professors to put into active motion. Yes ; it is a matter of congratulation that the attitude which Europe and America are now assuming, is just that which is likely to, strike conviction into the impassive heart of the Mohammedan. When he sees Christians so vitally alive to the infinite blessings their religion is calculated to impart, so tenderly concerned for the perishing condition of their brethren, and so filled with zeal to make them sharers of their own blessings, as cheerfully to undergo loss and suffer privation; —this is a practical argument, the most likely of any to convince him of the reality and Divine nature of the Gospel. God be praised that Christianity is beginning gradually to assume her rightful position; and no sooner shall she have fully done so, than a light must break forth establishing before the world her truth and the unspeakable difference between it and every false religion.

In conclusion, we would earnestly press the necessity which lies upon all of removing, as far as their ability extends, the ignorance of the Mohammedans; and the responsibility those are under who possess the requisite qualifications, of affording them access to the numerous spheres of learning, a knowledge of which is presupposed in most of our religious discussions. Let us attend to Dr. Lee:—

"In ancient History and Scripture, the Persians are necessarily very ignorant,1 the best means they have of obtaining either being the fragments

1 As an instance of their ignorance of History, there is a passage in the Saulat uz Zaigham, where the author adduces the fall of Babylon as the accomplishment of ancient prophecies in favour of Mohammed. He says that Isaiah and Jeremiah successively predicted the destruction of this city, but had it fallen in their times that its overthrow would not again have been foretold, by St. John in the Revelations. At last, he tells us, the priest Sátíh predicted it to Noushirvan, as about to follow the establishment of Mohammed's creed. It will be difficult to disabuse them of the idea that we are deceiving them in representing John's as a spiritual Babylon, without a considerable knowledge of History on their part.