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35

THE MOHAMMEDAN CONTROVERSY

number of passages both from the Old and New Testaments are adduced; but the whole is guided by a determined, wrong-headedness, which adopts the most fallacious and inconclusive reasoning merely because it ends favourably, and refuses to see its errors, however plainly pointed out. This controversy must have proved a severe trial to Pfander's temper; and if flippant contradictions, false insinuations, and bitter scoffs, may have occasionally led him to severe remarks, —it is not to be wondered at; on the contrary, we are surprised at the calm and candid manner which he preserved throughout. We should like to see the whole printed with appropriate remarks; but Pfander is, perhaps, wise in keeping, back any further publication until he shall have seen his adversaries' replies; then, we understand, he intends to come forward with a general and complete refutation.

Another discussion, contained in a series of twenty-two letters which passed between Pfander and Maulavi Syud Ali Hassan1 of Agra, has gained greater celebrity, from its having been printed in the Khair Khah Hind.2 As a translation of this controversy (though abounding with mistakes) has appeared in the romanised version of that paper, our notice of its contents shall be very limited. After an amusing parley, in which the Maulavi bargains for the titles of respect by which his Prophet and Coran are to be mentioned, he introduces his argument in the ninth letter, by defining two species of improbability, —logical and experimental; and then he puts this curious question, "If by rejecting an experimental, you are forced to believe a logical impossibility, —what course does reason


1 Syud Ali Hassan is a man of very superior abilities, and holds a high place in Mohammedan society for attainments and learning. He is an officer of some standing in the Sudder Dewany Adalut, N.-W. P.
2 This is a useful little monthly paper, published in Urdoo by the mission at Mirzapore: as it often languishes for want of matter, why do not the missionaries of other stations contribute an occasional article? It is hard for the editor to be reduced to the necessity of copying the Government Gazette into its columns: much like printing the Acts of Parliament in a missionary periodical or monthly journal.

           

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