pour down the rain whereby God vivifies the dead land. In other passages, the springing up of the vegetation and the sprouting of the seeds are described as the acts of God. 'It was We who rained down the copious rains; then cleft the earth with clefts, and caused the upgrowth of the grain, and grapes and healing herbs, and the olive and the palm, and enclosed gardens thick with trees, and fruits and herbage for the service of yourselves and your cattle.' ¹

10. These means and the laws whereby they work out His will, having Him as their fount and origin, remain within His control, and He may sometimes dispense with one or other of the secondary causes whereby, as a rule, He works. Such dispensations manifest themselves in those events which mankind calls miraculous. Thus, for instance, the birth of Jesus was miraculous, for in it God dispensed with secondary causes. 'She (Mary) said, "How, O my Lord! shall I have a son, when man hath not touched me?" He said, "Thus: God will create what He will; when He decreeth a thing, He only saith, Be, and it is." ' ²

The very fact that the birth of Jesus is noted in the Qur'an as an exception, is sufficient proof that Muhammad recognized that this is not the manner in which God usually works. God's acts are not, as a rule, immediate, but mediate by and through those laws by which He has settled the course of nature; and those vital powers of life with which He has endowed animals and plants, and,

we may also say, that principle of choice which He has bestowed on man and often His purpose is shown to work out through these laws and through the exercise of the powers and capacities without being, because of this mediateness, any the less the fulfilment of the divine purpose and the expression of His will.

11. We shall now consider what the Qur'an has to say about the will of God, of which His actions or acts are but the outward expression. We must repeat here what has already been said in section 5 of 'The Character and Attributes of God'. According to the teaching of Muhammad God's will is over all. All that has ever been or is or ever shall be, is in some way or other the expression of the divine purpose and will; but how this supreme divine will is, as a matter of actual experience, related to the world of nature and to the working of the human will is a question concerning which the Qur'an has no explanation to give, and many of its statements are made from such opposing standpoints that it is hard if not impossible to reconcile them with one another. Yet when we find such opposing statements we must not put down their presence to the fact that Muhammad was simply an opportunist. We must rather say that Muhammad saw that there were two sides to the question and sometimes emphasized the one side and sometimes the other. Do not all preachers do the same? Muhammad was not a theologian but a preacher.

In certain passages, the operation of the divine will appears, at least at first sight, to be described as absolute, and as depending solely on the divine pleasure, irrespective of any moral considerations or of the deser-