people of the book" hundreds and thousands of years before, or that Muhammad should concoct a religious system from the writings of Christians and Jews, and other sources, and present it to his ignorant and heathen countrymen as a new religion directly revealed from heaven?' Nor does it seem possible that a sincere and thinking Muslim could long weigh such questions in his mind, without forming the resolution: 'I shall no longer remain in uncertainty on this most momentous subject: being constrained by irrefragable proof and evidence to allow that Islam is not a higher religion than Christianity, I shall try whether my mind will not find more light, and my heart more peace, by deciding for Christianity as a higher and purer religion than Islam.' There are a number of Muslims even now, in various countries, who thank God for having been led to take this step. They testify that the faith they have embraced approves itself as nobler and better than the one they have renounced. They wish and pray that all their Muslim brethren may find the same light of mind and peace of heart which they themselves enjoy, and which they have found nowhere than where alone they are to be had, in the religion of Jesus Christ. The writer of these lines, who is not a Christian merely because his parents were so, but because he is convinced that he has found in Christianity the highest revelation of the saving truth and love of God, prays, with thousands and tens of thousands of

his fellow-believers, that God in His infinite mercy may hasten the time when the Muslim nations shall walk with us in the same light of truth, and rejoice with us in the same experience of the saving love of God. We have no selfish motive, and no worldly interest in all this. If thousands of Muhammadans in Turkey, in Egypt, in Syria, in India, and other countries, become true Christians, this will bring us no earthly gain; it will only make themselves better and happier in life, hopeful in death, and blessed in eternity; and this is our only wish and aim — their salvation as well as our own. We remember that we are standing on the brink of eternity, and that before many years are passed, both the writer and the readers of these lines will be summoned before the judgement-seat of God, where all the secrets of the heart are made manifest: how, then, could we dare to invite any one to follow Christ and His religion, without being perfectly assured, from our own inmost experience, that this leads to that peace of mind, and to that blessed communion with God our Maker, which every human being consciously or unconsciously seeks? We know that the Lord Jesus Christ still verifies that blessed word which He addressed to weary souls in the days of His life on earth, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' (Matt xi. 28). We know that His testimony is faithful and true, as if sealed with the seal of God — that