all this, relying upon it, is of the People of the Truth and the Company of the Sunna, and hath separated himself from the band of error and the sect of innovation (_bidʾa_). So we ask from God perfection of certainty and firm standing in the Faith (_din_) for us and for all Moslems through His compassion.—Lo! He is the Most Compassionate!—and may the blessing of God be upon our Lord Mohammed and upon every chosen creature.” The above is Doctor Macdonald’s careful translation of what Al-Ghazali taught was involved when Moslems say: _There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is Allah’s Apostle._ Surely he gave this shortest of all creeds its full significance and value. It is necessary, however, not only to see in it the faith of Al-Ghazali but his credulity as well, if we desire to understand the man and his times. Once his early scepticism was overcome, he was always and everywhere an orthodox Moslem, and therefore swallowed the Traditions and the Koran apparently without any philosophic doubt. He believed that Mohammed was the greatest of all the prophets, and that, so he says, “God has established Mohammed’s prophetic character by miracles, such as the splitting of the moon, and the praising of him by stones, the gushing out of water from between his fingers. One of the greatest miracles, proving his divine mission, is the Koran, for none of the Arabs were able to produce anything like it. Another sign of his prophetic character is his being able to foretell things which are to come to pass, such as his victorious entry into Mecca, the defeat of the Greeks and their subsequent victories.” (See the special chapter in the _Ihya_ on this subject.) He was a predestinarian in the fullest sense. In one place he writes: “When God Almighty let His hands pass over the back of Adam and gathered men into His two hands, He placed some of them in His right hand and the others in His left; then He opened both His hands before Adam, and Adam looked at them and saw them like imperceptible atoms. Then God said: ‘These are destined for Paradise and these are destined for hell-fire.’ He then asked them: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ And they replied: ‘Certainly, we testify that Thou art our Lord.’ God then asked Adam and the angels to be witnesses to the act; after this God replaced them into the loins of Adam. They were at that time purely spiritual beings without bodies. He then caused them to die, but gathered them and kept them in a receptacle near His throne. When the germ of a new being is placed in the womb of the mother, it remains there till its body is sufficiently developed; the soul in the same is then dead yet. When God Almighty breathes into the spirit, He restores to it its most precious part of which it had been deprived while preserved in the receptacle near the throne. This is the first death and the second life. Then God places man in this world till he has reached the term fixed for him.”