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/232

 alf, or that

which orders that a widow must wait four months after the death of her husband before becoming espoused to another man. The natures which can be thrown into religious ecstasy by the recital of such verses are peculiarly sensitive and very rare. * They certainly are!

The inconsistencies and contradictions in Al Ghazali’s theory of conduct surprise us when we peruse his works. Sometimes he leads us to high mountain ranges whose summits are gilded with the light of heaven, the great truths of Theism, the ideals of eternity; and again he plunges us into the sloughs of sensuous and worldly discussion themes unworthy of his pen.

Let us get back to the mountain tops where the air is healthier. Al-Ghazali, whatever may have been his failure in other respects, had high ideals for the attainment of morals from the Moslem standpoint. In his " The Alchemy of Happiness " he says, " When in the crucible of abstinence the soul is purged from carnal passions it attains to the highest, and in place of being a slave to lust and anger becomes endued with angelic qualities. At taining that state, man finds his heaven in the con templation of Eternal Beauty, and no longer in fleshly delights. The spiritual alchemy which operates this change in him, like that which trans mutes base metals into gold, is not easily dis covered, nor to be found in the house of every old