the truth of His claims to be the Saviour of the world and the Word of God.

9. The truth of the Gospel is also shown by the spread of Christianity in early days, and its having been able to resist all the attacks made upon it by Satan and wicked men (Matt. xvi. 18) even until our own day. Although the doctrines of the Gospel appear contrary to the reason of men unenlightened by God's Holy Spirit, and are unacceptable to those whose hearts are full of sensual desires, although the first preachers of the Gospel were for the most part poor and not highly educated, and although those who became Christians were most cruelly persecuted and in many cases martyred for their faith, yet, in spite of all this, large numbers of people embraced Christianity. Thus within a few hundred years after Christ's Resurrection the Christian faith had almost entirely overthrown the heathen religions of Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and some other lands. This victory was not obtained by the sword or by compulsion, but by faith, courage, kindness, faithfulness even unto a martyr's death, and the simple preaching of the Gospel of Christ. Herein was manifest the power of God's Holy Spirit in strengthening the true Christians and enabling them to bear true witness to their Master, so that others also were attracted to Christ and became His faithful soldiers and servants. Other religions besides the Christian have also spread very widely, but never by such means as these. In some cases their propagation has been largely due to two things—the trenchant argument of the sword, and permission to men to follow and indulge in their fleshly lusts in this world, with the hope of doing so to all eternity in still fuller measure after the Resurrection. But the spread of a religion by such means as these is surely no proof that it has come from the Holy and Most Merciful God, who loathes cruelty, oppression, hypocrisy, and impurity. Not thus did Christianity spread in the Roman Empire of old, not thus are its victories in every land won today.

Whoever will now compare what we have pointed out regarding the Holy Scriptures with the criteria of the True Revelation which were mentioned in the Introduction to this volume will have no difficulty in perceiving that the Bible does assuredly contain that Revelation, especially because it throughout bears witness to the Lord Jesus Christ, the one and only Kalimatu'llah, the perfect Manifestation (مَظْهَرٌ) of God Most High.