them knew that Mani had made a claim to be the Paraclete, basing his pretensions upon this verse. Yet, when he had been detected as an impostor, and when his religion had perished off the earth, Christians still preserved this verse in the Gospel.

The Jews found in the Old Testament many Messianic Prophecies. The Christians claimed that these had in large measure already been fulfilled in the Lord Jesus, and asserted that this was a proof that He was the Messiah. These Messianic passages were and are a terrible condemnation of the Jews. Yet the Jews have never attempted to omit them from the Old Testament. Had they wished to destroy the prophecies relating to Christ, they would have tried to erase from their Holy Scriptures the following passages, besides very many others: Gen. xlix. 10; Deut. xviii. 15, 18; Ps. xxii. 14-18; Isa. vii. 14; Isa. ix. 6, 7; Isa. xi. 1-10; Isa. lii. 13-fin. and liii; Dan. vii. 13, 14; Dan. ix. 24-27; Mic. v. 2; Zech. xii. 10. For all these passages clearly speak of Him (compare Luke xxiv. 25-27). Another series of passages which the Jews would have struck out of the Bible, if they had dared to endeavour to corrupt it, are those which recite and condemn their past sins. But even these are found to-day in the Hebrew Old Testament as well as in all the Versions. God had commanded them to observe the Law of the Torah (Joshua i. 7) and not to add thereto or detract therefrom (Deut. iv. 2; xii. 32). Hence they have until now so carefully preserved the whole of the Old Testament that, lest a word or a letter should be lost, they have counted every letter and word in each book, and recorded the numbers. The copies of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew in use among Christians are the same as those that are used by Jews: in fact, they are printed at the same presses.

Lest there should still remain in any reader's mind the supposition that perhaps the Jews may have corrupted their Old Testament before Christ's time, though they evidently could not have done so afterwards,

it should be observed that, as the Qur'an truly¹ says, Christ confirmed the Sacred Scriptures which they then had, and which are the very same that they now have. Neither Christ nor any one of His Apostles have in any part of the New Testament accused the Jews of corrupting their Scriptures, though their real sins are denounced. On the contrary, everywhere the New Testament asserts the genuineness of the Old Testament, and urges men to study it. This will be clear from such passages as: Matt. v. 17, 18; xxii. 31, 32; Mark vii. 6-10; Luke xi. 29-32; xxiv. 25-27; John v. 39, 45-47; 2 Tim. iii. 16. Hence it is plain that in the time of Christ and His Apostles the Old Testament was admitted to consist of inspired, true and uncorrupted books. Surely, if the Jews had falsified them, Christ would have openly rebuked them for such great wickedness. He would also doubtless have pointed out the corrupted passages, and He would have corrected these, for the instruction of His disciples.

This argument serves also to show that the Scriptures had not been destroyed or corrupted at the fall of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar or during the Babylonian captivity. Otherwise Christ would have told us this.

Some Muslim writers venture to assert that they can prove that the Torah has been purposely corrupted in certain places. One of these is said to be Deut. xxvii. 4. Here the Samaritan Pentateuch has "on Mount Gerizim", while the Hebrew has "on Mount Ebal". But as not only the Hebrew but all the ancient versions (Septuagint, Latin Vulgate, Syriac Peshitta, Armenian, Ethiopic) have "Ebal", and not "Gerizim", this is almost certainly correct. It was not the Jews but the Samaritans who tried to corrupt the text, but they evidently failed to do so. Or their reading may possibly be due to the honest attempt of some scribe to correct what he fancied to be another copyist's blunder, since in ver. 12 the blessings are to