them, but it is a sin not so much against God, as against themselves — a foolishness whereby they have spoiled their own chance of happiness. Their regret for what they have lost is uppermost in their minds, not any thought of how they have angered and wronged a holy God.

It is true they are represented as being in need of instruction as to how they are properly and fittingly to ask for His forgiveness, and therefore Adam is taught words of prayer; but there is nothing whatever to suggest that in and through the Fall human nature has lost anything which it once possessed. Their 'repentance' is of themselves and the need of instruction is not that they may be led to see the heinousness of their sin, but that they may know the proper form in which they must seek forgiveness.

Beyond this instruction in the proper form of prayer, they further require 'a direction' from God. By this appears to be meant a second instruction as to the means whereby they may regain the happiness which they have forfeited. This 'direction' includes instruction as regards both faith and works. They must know what to believe concerning God, and what to do to be pleasing to Him. And in connexion with these, the Qur'an appears to teach that man needs grace that his faith may be not merely intellectual acceptance of certain doctrines but personal experience, and that his performance of the duties demanded may be not mere outward act but the inward desire of the soul.

Yet this double need is not anywhere in the Qur'an represented as the consequence of the Fall, which has in some way vitiated or corrupted human nature, but as being inherent in human nature as created.

Muhammad, in fact, does not seem to have recognized that the first transgression was pregnant with consequences for human nature. There has been no ruin of human nature, and simple repentance was all that was required of Adam that he might again enjoy God's favour. For Adam's descendants the results of the Fall are no more disastrous than they were for him.

The conception of the creation of human souls which we have already seen to be set forth in the Qur'an, appears altogether to preclude any true realization of the tremendous consequences to human nature of the sin of the first parents of the race. They sinned and forfeited for themselves and their descendants the blessedness of Eden and the favour of God; but the Qur'an says nothing of human nature being ruined in consequence of their sin.

Each individual soul, coming direct from its Maker at the birth of the individual human being, comes uncontaminated. It is placed in a body which has inherited evil tendencies and appetites; for the natural life, as distinct from the soul — the life which man has, so to speak, in common with the lower animals — feels the effect of this sin of Adam; and the soul — that which is inbreathed into the human animal of His Spirit — is placed at a disadvantage at the very commencement of its life on earth, and continues all through life to wage a more or less successful warfare with its passions and lower desires. But there is no guilt which is common to the human race.

There is nothing in the Qur'an to correspond to the words of the Psalmist, 'Behold I was shapen in iniquity' (Ps. li. 5). The soul has a hard struggle from