92 OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE PRESENT

time. The verse we have just quoted (Surah II., Al Baqarah, 130) alone suffices to prove this. This is another matter in which modern Islam has entirely departed from the teaching of the Qur'an.

71. M. Each successive apostle1 (رسول) was sent by God to teach the right way to the people of his own time. As Moses was succeeded by David and David by Solomon, so Solomon was succeeded by John the Baptist (يحيىا ابن زكريا), and the latter by Jesus, and He in turn by Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets. Each successive prophet was commissioned to give God's commands to his own people. Hence of course the later abrogated the earlier. Just in the same way the laws of the present king of Persia or of England abrogate those of the preceding sovereign.

C. Even granting this, remember that you confess that Christ is still alive. Until He dies (as He never will, Rev. i. 18), there can be no question of a successor2. But the laws of the new king do not abrogate those of the preceding unless it is precisely stated in the new laws that they do so, wholly or partially. Christ distinctly declared that He had not come "to destroy the Law, or the Prophets" (Matt. v. 17) "but to fulfil" them. This is easily understood from the use of progressive

1 Rasul must be distinguished from Hawari (حواري), the latter denoting an Apostle of Christ. Hawari is an Æthiopic word, and is the word used for "Apostle" in the Æthiopic N.T.
2 Mr. Harding.
AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE 93

textbooks in a school. The Second Reading Book does not annul the first, but assumes the facts taught in it, while giving more advanced teaching 1. The Qur'an does not state that it came to annul the Torah and the Injil, but to confirm and protect them.

72. M. Why then do you Christians not observe the ceremonial parts of the Law of Moses, with regard to washings, festivals, and circumcision?

C. For two reasons. (1) Because these commands were given to the Jews only and not to all nations. (2) Because they were not abrogated but fulfilled in Christ. Circumcision was intended to keep the children of Abraham apart until Christ came; the purifications and sacrifices received their fulfilment in Christ. The ordinances, given not to all nations and for all time (like the Moral Law generally), but only temporally and to the Jews alone (for example those regarding sacrifices, circumcision, going up three times a year to the Temple, abstinence from certain kinds of food, &c.), were therefore abrogated by Christ as far as the letter is concerned, but they were not abrogated but filled up and made eternally binding on all men so far as their spiritual meaning is concerned 2. For example, in Exod. xii. the Israelites were commanded to observe the Passover; and in 1 Cor. v. 7, the spiritual meaning and necessity of the

1 Bishop of Lahore.
2 Vide Rev. Dr. Rouse's Is the Gospel Abrogated?