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/269



AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC 247

attributes and His works." All this is a failure of attainment and has its reasons; but if a man should forsake the causes of this forgetfulness and employ himself with the opposite virtues it would be a re turn to the right way; and the significance of re pentance is the return. You cannot imagine that any one of us is free from this defect, for we only differ in degrees, but the root undoubtedly exists in us. Of course he ignores original sin, being a Moslem, but he makes a great deal of the effect that unrepented sin causes; but it enters deeper and deeper into the heart until the image of God on the mirror of the human soul is effaced.

Another illustration he uses is that of the heart as a goodly garment which has been dragged through filth and needs to be washed again with soap and water. " Using the heart in the exercise of our passions makes it filthy. We must there fore wash it in the water of tears and by the rubbing of repentance. It is for you to rub it clean and then God will accept it." How near and yet how far from the teaching of David and Isaiah and St. Paul! Did Al-Ghazali ever hear some pious Jew quote Isaiah’s statement that "all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags "?

True repentance has a twofold result according to this Moslem theologian. Although he does not touch the deeper problem of how God can be just and justify the sinner, he teaches that the result of the forgiveness of our sins is that "we stand