"The Book,"—the inspired "Books" or Scriptures (Jelalooddeen)
were placed by God among the descendants of Noah and of Abraham;—that is, they
were deposited with the Israelites, the posterity of Abraham, and handed down
amongst them from generation to generation.
In this passage the professors of the Christian religion of the time of
Mahomet are praised for their tenderness and humanity. God had put into their
hearts compassion and mercy
رأفة ورحمة
.In the concluding sentence, those of the
Christians, and perhaps of the Jews also, who were "believers," are
exhorted to fear God, and believe in his Apostle; in which case they are
promised a double portion of mercy and other spiritual blessings. This
promise the believer in the Corân must hold to have been made good in respect to
all those Jews and Christians who embraced Islam. It is matter of history that
there were many such even in the time of Mahomet. These, then, inherited a
double blessing and walked in the clear "light" promised specially for
their guidance. And so the same argument is applicable as in Art., LXII. Such
converts would surely preserve carefully those Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments, to which Mahomet appealed as his witness, and on the belief and
observance of which he laid such stress as the ground of the peculiar privileges
here promised. They would hand them down to their posterity as the invaluable
evidence upon which
