might be known whom GOD had appointed to have charge of her as she grew up to womanhood.

Again we are told how when on one occasion she was hungry, a date-palm ¹ of itself offered its fruit for her acceptance. All these and many similar apocryphal legends are to be found in the "Protevangelium of James," the "Pseudo-Matthew," the "Gospel of the Nativity of Mary" and similar works, some of which are of very early ² date, all of

Christ.

those we have mentioned having been composed long before Muhammad's time. So also with reference to Christ Himself, the accounts which Muhammad gives of His birth and miracles are based upon those contained in the "Gospel of the Pseudo-Thomas," a very early³ work, and also upon certain particulars now found recorded in the "Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,"

though ¹ in its present form the latter book is apparently more recent than the Qur'an. In these apocryphal works as in the Qur'an we are told that Jesus spoke when an infant in the cradle, ² and that one of his miracles wrought when a child consisted in giving life to a bird³ made of clay. The other miracles ascribed in the Qur'an to our Lord, viz. the healing of blindness and leprosy and raising the dead to life,⁴ may be those mentioned in these apocryphal books quite as easily as the authentic works of mercy recorded in the Gospels. But Muhammad found in the Christian fables which were related to him many things which seemed contrary to what he believed to be the truth. Almost idolatrous reverence is shown to Mary⁵ in