acceptance with God can be obtained: therefore they cannot satisfy man's needs. They may order men to perform pilgrimages, to keep fasts, to offer sacrifices: but since none of these things purifies the heart or makes God known, they still leave those who practise them wandering far from the Father's home.

4. The change of heart and life which obedience to the Gospel (البشارة) produces in the true Christian is a proof that it has come from God. This change is first inward and then outward, and it is so great that it is fitly described as a new and spiritual birth (John iii. 3, 5), brought about by the agency of God's Holy Spirit.

5. In the Bible it is evident that those Attributes of the Almighty which man needs to know, and is capable of comprehending in some measure, are revealed. God's moral Attributes of Holiness, Love, Mercy, Justice are clearly taught, as well as those which prove Him to be One, Eternal, Almighty, All-Wise, the Creator and Preserver of the Universe. We are taught in the Holy Scriptures that He has revealed Himself in the Lord Jesus Christ, who went about doing good, who never cast out anyone who came to Him for pardon and help, who was without sin, and yet showed kindness and mercy to sinners, who denounced hypocrisy and declared the future punishment of the impenitent, though He laid down His own life to save us from sin and its terrible consequences. The Bible therefore does not only tell us about God, it shows Him to us in such a manner that all may see Him if they will. In so doing, it teaches us how hateful to God's Nature all sin is and ever must be, and that without holiness no man shall enjoy the Beatific Vision (رُوٌيَةُ اللهٍ) of God (Heb. xii. 14).

It is now possible for scholars to become acquainted with the literature of all ancient and modern nations. Therefore we have learnt by study that no one of the learned men and philosophers of ancient times ever succeeded in setting forth God as endued with the

Holy and mighty Attributes which we have mentioned. Nor do the books of other religions, even those which have largely borrowed from the Old Testament and the New. Such books, even when they teach the Unity of God, fail to reveal God to men, but leave between the Transcendent God and His feeble creatures a great gulf fixed, so that He can never become known to them.

6. The Divine Origin of the Gospel (الِبشارة) is clear from its spiritual teaching, which is nobler, purer, and more sublime than that given in any other book. Attempts have been made to deny this, and passages have been quoted from Chinese, Indian, Greek, and other writers, which have been said to teach as high a morality as the Gospel does. But in every instance the attempt to prove this has failed. The Lord Jesus Christ taught, for instance, the Golden Rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them" (Matt. vii. 12). In certain writings of Greek and Indian¹ philosophers we find the negative form of this, bidding us not to do to others what we should not like them to do to ourselves. But between this and the positive beneficence commanded by Christ there is as much distance as between earth and heaven. Confucius,² the celebrated Chinese philosopher, gives the precept also in a negative form more than once, but he never once gives it in the positive form. His grandson, Kung Chih, approaches this more nearly when he says: "'In³ the way of the superior man there are four things, to not one of which have I as yet attained: . . . to set the example in behaving to a friend as I would require him to behave to me; to this I have not attained." Even here there is no positive precept; he speaks of conduct to a friend only,