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14

THE MOHAMMEDAN CONTROVERSY

treatise on the Divinity of Christ, very properly adduces the passage in the Coran alluded to above, not to prove Christ's divinity, but merely to show what illustrious attributes the Mohammedans should ascribe to Jesus from the concessions their Prophet had made to him. Kazim Ali denies the conclusion, and shows that Mohammed has applied the very same expression to Adam: on which Pfander replies that if the Coran makes Adam to share in the Divine nature, his opponent may believe the doctrine if he pleases. Kazim Ali, of course, rebuts the imputation, and holds, with a show of reason, that the application of the expression to Adam proves that it was not meant to imply divinity.1 So much for the caution and wariness required in this great controversy.

Again, Martyn's references to alchemy (p. 82) and to magic (p. 85) placed his argument upon a false position, which his adversary did not fail to turn to advantage (pp. 203-5). His reply, too (p. 93), is faulty where he says, that to suppose the evidence of miracles to diminish with the lapse of time, would be to imply that a person at sixty has lost part of the conviction as to any fact which he possessed at twenty: the Mirza replies that the cases are not parallel,—one involving personal identity, the other a succession of individuals. He also takes up a weak position (p. 104), when he refutes the miracles of Mohammed by the circumstance that some of them are said to have been performed while he was yet an unbeliever, which at most would prove but little. Mirza Ruza resents the imputation, and devotes fifteen pages (p. 253) to show that the passages produced by his opponent do not refer to belief;— "'Then writ in error, and I have directed thee,' that is to say, the religion of Jesus was with


1 The author of the Saulat uz Zaigham, or " Lion's onset," has a strange disquisition into the meaning of this phrase "Spirit of God"; in which he endeavours to prove that the possessive case does not imply connection (no more than to say "my meat is cooking" implies that it is yours and not the goat's flesh), —and that from this to argue Christ divine, would be to allow other prophets divine upon whom God's Spirit descended; that Gabriel and other angels are styled "spirits of God," and that Christ was called a spirit par excellence, because his laws were pre-eminently spiritual, and he lived like the angels without marriage.

           

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