God, who created all things in heaven and in earth, who preserveth all things, and decreeth all things, who is without beginning, and without end, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, is _one_. His unity is thus declared in a short chapter of the Kur-án[96]: “Say, He is God; one [God]. God is the Eternal. He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; and there is none equal unto Him.” He hath no partner, nor any offspring, in the creed of the Muslim. Though Jesus Christ (whose name should not be mentioned without adding, “on whom be peace”) is believed to have been born of a pure virgin, by the miraculous operation of God,[97] without any natural father, to be the Messiah, and “the Word of God, which He transmitted unto Mary, and a Spirit [proceeding] from Him,”[98] yet he is not called the Son of God; and no higher titles are given to him than those of a Prophet and Apostle; he is even considered as of inferior dignity to Mohammad, inasmuch as the Gospel is held to be superseded by the Kurán. The Muslim believes that Seyyidna ’Eesa[99] (or “our Lord Jesus”), after He had fulfilled the object of His mission, was taken up unto God from the Jews, who sought to slay Him; and that another person, on whom God had stamped the likeness of Christ, was crucified in His stead.[100] He also believes that Christ is to come again upon the earth, to establish the Muslim religion, and perfect peace and security, after having killed Antichrist, and to be a sign of the approach of the last day. The other grand article of the faith, which cannot be believed without the former, is this— “_Mohammad is God’s Apostle._” Mohammad is believed by his followers to have been the last and greatest of Prophets and Apostles.[101] Six of these—namely, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad—are believed each to have received a revealed law, or system of religion and morality. That, however, which was revealed to Adam was abrogated by the next; and each succeeding law, or code of laws, abrogated the preceding, though all are believed to have been the same in every essential point; therefore, those who professed the Jewish religion from the time of Moses to that of Jesus were true believers, and those who professed the Christian religion (uncorrupted, as the Muslims say, by the tenet that Christ was the _son_ of God) until the time of Mohammad are held, in like manner, to have been true believers. But the copies of the Pentateuch, the Psalms of David (which the Muslims also hold to be of divine origin), and the Gospels now existing, are believed to have been so much altered as to contain very little of the true word of God. The Kur-án is believed to have suffered no alteration whatever.