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receive pardon and forgiveness through Jesus, and experience in his own heart
the sense of forgiveness, and in his life the new-born power of a renewed
will. We do not intend to assert that this is not also the best method of
approaching the educated Muhammadan; but in the case of the latter we cannot
expect that there will be a passive hearing without a questioning of the
message or at least an inquiry on many points concerning it. He will wish to
know the grounds on which the teaching rests and the grounds on which
Muhammadanism is rejected by Christians; and being capable of following an
argument he has the right to expect an answer to any questions he may put. In
the case of the uneducated man, however, no profit can be expected to come of
any discussion, and it should be avoided, and the message of Christianity
should be given not apologetically, but with the same dogmatic assurance with
which he believes that Muhammadanism is the truth of God. And yet it must be
presented in such a way that it does not come before him as something thrust
upon him, but simply as the expression of the absolute and unalterable
conviction of the speaker, and of the actual experience of his own spiritual
life.
But opportunities for such a presentation of Christianity to Muhammadans
are not too frequent, and in some lands are not to be found; and in |
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most cases the appeal to the Muhammadan must be more or less an argument dealing
with the respective claims of the two religions. This presupposes that the
person or persons addressed have a certain amount of education, and can
understand the force of an argument. In making our appeal, then, we turn to
the educated Muhammadan, and we ask him to notice that Muhammad nowhere rejects
the teachings of Jesus; he nowhere suggests that these teachings require any
further development. He recognized Him as a prophet; he professed to accept what
He taught; he claimed that what he himself taught was in full accordance with
the teaching of Jesus. These are facts which are so well known that there is no
need to quote chapter and verse from the Qur'an in support of them. It would be
disingenuous, then, on the part of the Muhammadan investigator to argue that
what Muhammad taught was a development of what Jesus had taught before him. We
are speaking here, let it be noted, of the teaching of Muhammad on its religious
or spiritual side, and are not concerning ourselves with the various civil and
ceremonial laws which Muhammad promulgated during the course of his life. With
regard to the spiritual side of the teaching of Muhammad, the most that the
Muhammadan investigator can claim is that what the Christian Church teaches is
not in agreement with the |
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