note: No sacrifice for sin or redemptive grace.]
Although with the view of placing the argument on independent ground I
have refrained from touching the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and
the inestimable benefits which flow to mankind therefrom, I may be
excused, before I conclude, if I add a word regarding them. The
followers of Mohammed have no knowledge of God as a _Father_; still less
have they knowledge of him as "_Our_ Father"--the God and Father of the
Lord Jesus Christ. They acknowledge, indeed, that Jesus was a true
prophet sent of God; but they deny his crucifixion and death, and they
know nothing of the power of his resurrection. To those who have found
redemption and peace in these the grand and distinctive truths of the
Christian faith, it may be allowed to mourn over the lands in which the
light of the Gospel has been quenched, and these blessings blotted out,
by the material forces of Islam; where, together with civilization and
liberty, Christianity has given place to gross darkness, and it is as if
now "there were no more sacrifice for sins." We may, and we do, look
forward with earnest expectation to the day when knowledge of salvation
shall be given to these nations "by the remission of their sins, through
the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dayspring from on high hath
visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow
of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."[p]

[Sidenote: Contrast between divine and human work.]
But even apart from these, the special blessings of Christianity, I ask,
which now of the two faiths bears, in its birth and growth, the mark of
a divine hand and which the human stamp? Which looks likest the
handiwork of the God of nature, who "hath laid the measures of the
earth," and "hath stretched the line upon it,"[q] but not the less with an
ever-varying adaptation to time and place? and which the artificial
imitation?

[Sidenote: Islam.]
"As a reformer, Mohammed did indeed advance his people to a certain
point, but as a prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point
for all time to come. As there can be no return, so neither can
there be any progress. The tree is of artificial planting. Instead
of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to
the various requirements of time, and clime, and circumstance,
expanding with the genial sunshine and the rain from heaven, it
remains