such events as being the outcome of the divine decision or judgement, or decree.

The use of these words in the Qur'an leads us rather to the conclusion we came to formerly when speaking of the relation between the creative and the providential acts of God; namely, that God's will is represented as continuing to act through the course of the ages, and that He takes into consideration, in His various decisions and determinations, all the circumstances of His creatures, and so decides day by day and moment by moment. All is in His power and under the omnipotent rule of His divine Will, but the working out of His purposes is far from being the result of a distantly past and almost impersonal decree. It is rather the effectual working of a Will which enters into the closest contact, and the most sympathetic relation with the world which He has created.

5. Several other passages which are usually quoted as teaching the doctrine of Predestination, we have already considered; but it may be well to look at some of them again. 'No mischance chanceth either on the earth or in your persons, but ere We created them, it was in the Book.' ¹ Here we should probably translate, 'before We created it,' and in any case, the Book referred to is what we have elsewhere described as the Day-Book of the divine acts. 'No one can die except by God's permission according to the Book that fixeth the term of life.' ² This is commonly explained as meaning that from all eternity God has predetermined the very day

and hour on which each individual shall die; but we have already seen that the writing by which the term of the individual's life is fixed, takes place after the creation of the individual, and the reference here cannot therefore be to the book of God's decrees. ¹

And every man's fate (lit. bird) have We fastened about his neck: and on the day of resurrection will We bring forth to him a book which shall be preferred to him wide open.' ² The meaning of the verse is not quite certain, but the translation fate is almost certainly not correct. The sense of the passage appears rather to be that the consequences or outcome of a man's actions are so closely bound to and associated with the doer that he cannot escape from them.³

'All things have We created after a fixed decree; Our command was but one word, swift as the twinkling of an eye. Of old too, have We destroyed the like of you yet is any one warned? And everything that they do is in the Books; Each action both small and great, is written down.' ⁴ In this passage the object of the words is not to shew that everything which occurs in this world has been absolutely predestined, but to explain how God created. He created not by a laborious work, but by a simple decree, a mere command swift as the twinkling of an eye. Verse forty-nine might be freely rendered: 'All that We created was by decrees,'