That any very deep conviction of sin was felt by Muhammad does not appear from the pages of the Qur'an. He marvels at the wickedness of men and their foolishness in opposing God, and in setting Him at defiance by word and by deed; yet while he calls to humble repentance and true faith in God, he nowhere explains the need of a broken and a contrite heart. All through the Qur'an, the message is that while repentance must be sincere, it is a very easy matter, while forgiveness is a question scarcely worth troubling about, so simple is its attainment. Muhammad nowhere displays anguish of heart and contrition in the sight of a pure and holy God, and therefore does not demand that others should experience that of which he himself had no knowledge. The nearest approach to a demand for contrition of heart is to be found in such a passage as: . . . 'Your God is one God; wherefore resign yourselves (wholly) unto Him. And bear thou good tidings to those who humble themselves; whose hearts, when mention is made of God, thrill with awe'. ¹ . . .

Many of the early Muslims laboured under an overpowering sense of the terrors of hell, and in the Ihya'u'l-'Ulum (in the section on shaddatu'l-khauf) we see how many of them, at one time or another, expressed the longing that they had been created birds of the air, or beasts of the field, or even inanimate objects, so that they might not be accountable to God. Others, when the reality of the other world and all the sorrows that lay beyond the grave came home to them from time to time, fainted. The sense of the fleetingness and unreality of this world, and of the supreme reality of the

other was ever present with some. As may be seen from the literal translation of the passage given in the Appendix, this was the experience of such believers as Abu Bakr, Abu Darr, 'Uthman, 'Ayisha, and 'Umar, believers noted as leaders in Islam, and looked up to in later years as patterns of what the believers ought to be. Throughout the whole account of Ghazali we look in vain for any mark which denotes that they had a real conviction of sin. What they felt seems rather to show simply that the new religion brought no real comfort to the heart and soul; for there was never any personal sense of assurance that they had been forgiven and would therefore escape the dread punishment of hell. A gloomy despair arising from an ever-present realization of the threatened torments denounced on the damned is not a conviction of sin.

In any case, with regard to the Qur'an and its teaching, all we can say is that we can see nothing in the book to justify us in believing that Muhammad himself had any deep conviction of sin or demanded that believers should experience it. His teaching is rather that sin, though a great offence against God, is not something which puts a man where he needs redemption. God does not redeem man. He simply forgives him when he repents, for God is easy and merciful to men whenever they turn towards Him. Muhammad's message to mankind on this matter was contained in words such as the following: 'Say, O My servants who have transgressed to your own hurt, despair not of God's mercy; for all sins doth God forgive. Gracious and merciful is He'. ¹