or as appertaining to any of right, but finally leaving the way open for its re-introduction by adding, to the statement that no intercession on man's behalf will be available on the judgement day, the proviso, "except that of those to whom God will give permission to intercede". Now, according to tradition—and the story is hardly likely to have been invented—Muhammad at one stage suggested that the heathen deities, al-Lat, al-'Uzza, and al-Manat might be recognised as entities whose intercession with Allah was to be hoped for; and it is said that the Meccans were content with the compromise. Whether this latter part of the tradition is true or not may be regarded as doubtful. But the Qur'an itself seems to me to bear out the fact that the suggestion was made and afterwards withdrawn. We are not therefore quite sure whether this idea of intercession was in the minds of the heathen or whether in Muhammad's own mind some echo of the Christian idea of the intercession of the saints was working, and that the suggestion came to him—from Satan, as he afterwards said—that this might apply also to the heathen gods. But it is inherently probable that the heathen themselves had some such idea of the relation of their special gods to a supreme deity. Indeed other passages of the Qur'an make it clear that they had.

That they really had the idea of a supreme deity the Qur'an also testifies. It is taken for granted there that they will admit that Allah is the creator of the world. What they deny is not that but, what the prophet insists is implicit in that, namely, that the world has been created

for moral ends and that a judgement must follow upon human life. More than once the unbelievers are taunted in the Qur'an that when in distress they pray to God, but when they are relieved they turn to idolatry again. "When harm befalleth a man he calleth upon his Lord and turneth unto him; but afterwards when God hath bestowed on him favour from himself, he forgetteth that being which he invoked before and setteth up equals unto God" (Sur. xxxix. v. 11; cf. v. 50). In another passage they are taunted that when they are at sea they pray to Allah, but when they reach land in safety they turn again to their idols. It seems clear that the Arabs had the idea of a supreme God, in a sense superior to their local deities, but only turned to in their times of stress.

In this state of matters—the break-up of the traditional religion and the creeping in of a dim unmoralised idea of a superior deity—we may assume that where the pressure of life was in a measure relieved, and thought had opportunity to awaken, indications would arise of a search for a more satisfying faith. Some memory of the existence of such a movement in Arabia, and particularly in the neighbourhood of Mecca at and before Muhammad's time, is probably preserved in the Moslem traditions as to the Hanifs who were more or less associated with the Prophet. The term Hanif is applied by tradition to some half-dozen persons, amongst whom are—

Waraqa b. Naufal, who is said to have been a cousin of Khadija the Prophet's wife, and to have been a Christian;