188 AGAINST THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST'S ATONEMENT

finally impenitent, therefore it was not fitting that He should "undergo that part of the penalty" which faith in Him and the change of heart which He thereby produces in His people prevents them from incurring. It is by saving them from the power and guilt of sin that He delivers them from final separation from God and being cast out into the outer darkness. The force of your objection rests upon the wrong idea that Christ was punished instead of us, and it has weight only against a form of the doctrine of Atonement which arises from a loose use of words and from a misunderstanding of the Bible1.

1The questions in §§ 194 and 195 are suggested by the Rev. A. E. Johnston from his own experience as a missionary.
189

CHAPTER VII.

OBJECTIONS AGAINST CHRISTIANITY ON THE GROUND OF MUHAMMAD’S DIVINE MISSION AS THE LAST OF THE PROPHETS.

196. M. Christ was a great Prophet, but His time is past. Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets and the Messenger of God, has succeeded Him, and is now the Prophet and the last1 of them. So when one king dies, another succeeds him and is obeyed. Hence the Book which Muhammad was commissioned to give us is enough for us, and we need nothing else.

C. Let us for the moment adopt your illustration. You all, in accordance with the Qur'an (and the Gospel), acknowledge that Jesus is alive and that Muhammad is dead and buried. If you are a Haji, you have doubtless seen Muhammad's grave at Medina and noticed that the grave prepared beside it for Jesus is empty. Hence the

1 Muhammad cannot be "the last of the Prophets and their seal," because, unlike Christ, he did not fulfil and carry on previous revelations. He really went back to a level below Judaism. The difference is not one of non-essentials only but of essentials. The Bible deals with the facts of Sin, Redemption, &c.: the Qur'an almost ignores them. (Rev. T. F. Wolters.)