following passage it is probably this sense that the words really bear. 'And whom God shall please (yurid) to guide, that man's breast will He open to Islam; but whom He shall please (yurid) to mislead, strait and narrow will He make his breast, as though he mounted up into the very Heavens! Thus doth God inflict dire punishment on those who believe not.' ¹

With the verse just quoted we may compare the following from the Old Testament. 'Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay (literally, desired or willed to slay) them.' ²

In many of the passages which teach that all things occur in accordance with the divine will, Muhammad does not assert that all things happen in accordance with a series of cut and dry decrees from all eternity. He simply affirms that nothing can happen in contradiction to the divine will, though he does not enter into the question of how this is possible and how it works out in the divine economy of the world. 'Yet if God had pleased, they would not have thus wrangled: but God doth what He will.' ³ The idea in this and similar passages seems to be that God could have prevented certain things from happening had He desired to over-ride the human will, and not that God by a positive decree ordained that they should act in a certain manner.

Muhammad is careful in other passages to assert that evil actions are not from God. 'And if they answer

thee not, then know that verily they are following their own caprices: and who goeth more widely astray than he who followeth his own caprice without guidance from God? for God guideth not the wicked.' ¹ 'But the wicked, devoid of knowledge, follow their own desires and those whom God shall mislead, who shall guide, and who shall be their protector? ' ²

Moral. evil God has not created. It is the outcome of the perverted will misled by Satan and those who act for him. 'Recite to them the history of him to whom We vouchsafed our signs, and who departed from them, so that Satan followed him and he became one of the seduced. Had We pleased, We had certainly thereby exalted him but he crouched to the earth and followed his own lust.' ³ 'And if stirrings to evil from Satan stir thee, fly thou for refuge to God: He verily heareth, knoweth.' ⁴

It is difficult to believe that Muhammad could have delivered such a verse. if he had imagined that these very 'stirrings to evil from Satan', from which one is to turn for refuge to God, were the result of God's own decree.

12. Finally, in any estimate of Muhammad's teaching concerning the operation of the divine will we must ever bear in mind what he teaches of the divine justice; and we must insist most strongly on the fact, which we have already noted, that by God's justice Muhammad means moral justice, and not what the theologians call His justice. The teaching of the Qur'an is that God is