over all things and with God is the Sovereignty of the Heavens and the Earth, and of all that is between them.' ¹ 'But thou art only a warner, and God hath all things in His charge.' ² 'And He gave you their land, and their dwellings, and their wealth, for an heritage — even a land on which ye had never set foot: for the might of God is equal to all things.' ³ 'God is not to be frustrated by aught in the Heavens or in the Earth; for He is the all-knowing, the All-Mighty.' ⁴ 'And other booty, over which ye have not yet had power: but now hath God compassed them for you; for God is over all things Potent.' ⁵

All that has ever been, or is, or shall be, is the expression of the divine will. The manner in which this supreme divine will is related to the course of events in the world of nature on the one hand, and on the other to the consequences and the results of the action of the human will is a question on which the Qur'an has no definite teaching. Nowhere does Muhammad try to explain the method by^, which God governs and overrules all things. And this silence is nothing more than what we should expect from one whose aim it was to teach practical religion, and who cared nothing for theory.

He taught that the divine will is over all, but his conception of this will and of the method of its operations being but confused and imperfect, it is not surpris-

ing that many statements are to be found in the Qur'an which it is hard to reconcile with one another, especially those which refer to the action of the human will and its relation to the divine will.

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 desert or non-desert of man. Thus we find such passages as the following: 'Knowest thou not that the sovereignty of the Heavens and of the Earth is God's? He chastiseth whom He will, and whom He will He forgiveth. And God hath power over all things.' ¹ 'No mischance chanceth either on the earth or in your persons, but ere We created them, it was in the Book; ² for easy is this to God.³ 'And if God had pleased, they who came after them would not have wrangled, after the clear signs had reached them. But into disputes they fell: some of them believed and some of them were infidels; yet if God had pleased, they would not have thus wrangled: but God doth what He will.' ⁴

But in any estimate of Muhammad's teaching concerning the operation of the divine will, we must ever bear in mind what he says concerning the divine justice, which as we shall see, means moral justice, and not what the theologians mean when they speak of the justice of God. Nor must we forget those passages