Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/161



LTHOUGH, according to his own testimony in his "Confessions," Al-Ghazali was troubled from his earliest years with doubt and scepticism, he was not willing to yield to it, and his faith rose triumphant above all his doubts. This is one of the outstanding facts in his biography. He could say with the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews that "faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." Not only did he find God in nature and in his own conscience and consciousness, but he was a firm believer in revelation. Naturally the only revelation to which Al-Ghazali turned as the basis, the very bed-rock of religious faith, was the Koran, the eternal, uncreated word of God according to Moslem teaching; and also to the life of the Prophet Mohammed, his practices and his precepts handed down in orthodox Tradition—this also was a revelation from God.

Whether he ever read the Old and New Testament is a question we consider unanswered. He did not draw his creed from this source.

Al-Ghazali gives the distinction very clearly, al-