and he shall speak unto men in the cradle,m and when he is grown up;n and he shall be one of the righteous: she answered, LORD, how shall I have a son, since a man hath not touched me? the angel said, So GOD createth that which he pleaseth: when he decreeth a thing, he only saith unto it, Be, and it is: GOD shall teach him the scripture, and wisdom, and the law, and the gospel; and shall appoint him his apostle to the children of Israel; and he shall say, Verily I come unto you with a sign from your LORD; for I will make before you, of clay, as it were the figure of a bird;o then I will breathe thereon, and it shall become a bird, by the permission of GOD;p and I will heal him that hath been blind from his birth; and the leper: and I will raise the deadq by the permission of GOD: and I will prophesy unto you what ye eat, and what ye lay up for store in your houses. Verily herein will be a sign unto you, if ye believe. And I come to confirm the law which was revealed before me and to allow unto you as lawful part of that which hath been forbidden you:r and I come unto you with a sign from your LORD; therefore fear GOD, and obey me. Verily GOD is my LORD, and your LORD; therefore serve him. This is the right way. m Besides an instance of this given in the Korân itself,1 which I shall not here anticipate, a Mohammedan writer, (of no very great credit, indeed) tells two stories, one of Jesus's speaking while in his mother's womb, to reprove her cousin Joseph for his unjust suspicions of her;2 and another of his giving an answer to the same person soon after he was born. For Joseph being sent by Zacharias to seek Mary (who had gone out of the city by night to conceal her delivery) and having found her began to expostulate with her, but she made no reply; whereupon the child spoke these words: Rejoice, O Joseph, and be of good cheer; for God hath brought me forth from the darkness of the womb, to the light of the world; and I shall go to the children of Israel, and invite them to the obedience of God.3 These seem all to have been taken from some fabulous traditions of the eastern Christians, one of which is preserved to us in the spurious gospel of the Infancy of Christ; where we read that Jesus spoke while yet in the cradle, and said to his mother, Verily I am Jesus the Son of God, the word which thou hast brought forth, as the angel Gabriel did declare unto thee; and my father hath sent me to save the world.4 n The Arabic word properly signifies a man in full age, that is, between thirty or thirty-four, and fifty-one; and the passage may relate to Christ's preaching here on earth. But as he had scarce attained this age when he was taken up into heaven, the commentators choose to understand it of his second coming.5 o Some say it was a bat,6 though others suppose Jesus made several birds of different sorts. This circumstance is also taken from the following fabulous tradition,