till a considerable time after Jesus had ascended into heaven." Now it is not difficult to answer this argument. If there is any force in the latter part of it, it would affect the Qur'an as well as the Injil; for the Qur'an was not "collected" and put together until after Muhammad's death, as we learn from the Mishkatu'l Masabih¹ and from other Muslim authorities. But it should be explained that in reality there exists only one Gospel, for the word Injil, though it is now used as the name of a book, and its meaning is not often remembered by Muslims, really means "the Good News". "Injil" is only the Arabic form of the Greek ευαγγελιον, which denotes this (الِبشارة). This Good News, this Divine Message of God's love and the way of salvation through Christ, is one, though told in different ways, so that it may appeal to a larger number of people, and may be supported by the testimony not of one man only, but of four. Again we say there is only one Gospel. In the original Greek the title of the books shows this, for they are called "The Gospel according to St. Matthew", "the Gospel according to St. Mark", &c. Only for brevity is the shorter title "St. Matthew's Gospel", &c., employed. Each of the four Evangelists told the Good News in his own way, under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit; but the message was one and the same. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows that this Gospel was preached by the Christians immediately after the Ascension in land after land. But it was first of all preached by Christ Himself (Mark I. 15; xiii. 10; Luke xx. I), and therefore must have already "been sent down unto Jesus", for He Himself claimed that His message was from God, saying, "The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak" (John xii. 50; compare John viii. 28; xii. 49).

With regard to the books which together form the

New Testament, it is well known to all scholars that they were not received into the Canon except gradually and after the most careful inquiry, lest by chance some book which was of no authority and devoid of inspiration should be incorporated into this collection. This examination occupied some considerable time, because some of the Epistles were private letters to individuals (I and 2 Tim., Titus, Philemon, 2 and 3 John), and the rest of them were in the first place addressed to individual Churches. But, from the writings of early Christians which have been preserved, we know that the four Gospels were known and recognized as authoritative between 70 and 130 A. D. A fragment of a work dating from about 170 A.D. contains part of a list of the New Testament books. It is called the Muratorian Canon, and, though torn, it mentions or implies the existence of every New Testament book, except the Epistle of James, the second Epistle of Peter, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. But the list when complete almost certainly included these also, for elsewhere they were all received in the second century, with the doubtful exception of 2 Peter, which is not often mentioned in early lists. Considering that books were then very costly, that most of the Christians were poor (I Cor. i. 26, 27), that the whole of the New Testament books, if written in the large Greek letters then in use, and on rolls of parchment, would form not a volume, but a small library, we are surprised to find them all, or almost all, so early known in different lands. In the Laodicean Council of 363 A.D., in which (as we have seen above) the twenty-two Books of the Hebrew Old Testament are mentioned, the Canon of the New Testament includes all our present New Testament, except the Revelation of St. John. Hence we see that at that time there was still some doubt about the latter; some Churches received it, and some had not yet decided to do so, though they afterwards admitted it. The Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. gives a list of all our present New Testament books, adding the