Mr. Martyn did not discourage the love of disputation manifested by the natives, hoping it might open the way for impressing the truth, and finding that his assistant had already become interested in the gospel history. But in consequence of his removing from the city to the suburbs, that he might enjoy a pleasant garden and a purer air, he was not so much in the way of interruption, and his visiters became less numerous. In that retirement, by the side of a clear stream, and amidst vines and orange trees, he devoted himself constantly to the completion of his important task. The curiosity and interest with which the missionary was regarded, was not confined to a few private individuals of Shiraz. The Professor of Mohammedan law agreed to hold a public dispute with him, and we abridge the account of the meeting as given by Mr. Martyn, that our readers may have an idea of the kind of arguments used in favour of the imposture of Mohammed, and against the truth of the gospel. “He talked for a full hour about the soul: its being distinct from the body, superior to the brutes, &c.; about God, his unity, invisibility, and other obvious and acknowledged truths. After this followed another discourse. At length, after clearing his way for miles around, he said, ‘that philosophers had proved, that a single being could produce but a single being; that the first thing God had created was _Wisdom_,—a being perfectly one with him; after that, the souls of men, and the seventh heaven; and so on, till he produced matter, which is merely passive.’ He illustrated the theory, by comparing all being to a circle: at one extremity of the diameter is God, at the opposite extremity of the diameter is matter, than which, nothing in the world is meaner. Rising from thence, the highest stage of matter is connected with the lowest stage of vegetation; the highest of the vegetable world, with the lowest of the animal, and so on, till we approach the point from which all proceeded. ‘But,’ said he, ‘you will observe, that next to God, something ought to be, which is equal to God; for since it is equally near, it possesses equal dignity. What this is, philosophers are not agreed upon. ‘You,’ said he, ‘say it is Christ: but we, that it is the Spirit of the Prophets. All this is what the philosophers have proved, independently of any particular religion.’ There were a hundred things in the Professor’s harangue, that might have been excepted against, as mere dreams, supported by no evidence; but I had no inclination to call in question dogmas, on the truth or falsehood of which, nothing in religion depended.