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/271



AL-GHAZATI AS A MYSTIC 249

set aside a certain time by night and by day for communion with your Creator that you may de light yourself in Him and that He may deliver you from evil." * At times, especially when he speaks of the veils that hide reality and God, we are re minded of the lines of Whitehead on " the Second Day of Creation ":

" I gaze aloof at the tissued roof

Where time and space are the warp and woof, Which the King of Kings, like a curtain flings, O er the dreadfulness of eternal things.

But if I could see, as in truth they be,

The glories that encircle me,

I should lightly hold this tissued fold

With its marvellous curtain of blue and gold;

For soon the whole, like a parched scroll,

Shall before my amazed eyes unroll, And without a screen at one burst be seen The Presence in which I have always been."

But Al-Ghazali did not know God’s nearness through the Incarnation of Christ. The hoped-for Vision of God was always full of fear and dread of judgment. The fear of God was the beginning and end of wisdom. What he understood by the fear of God is clear from the following passage taken from the " Revival of Religious Sciences ": " By the fear of God I do not mean a fear like that of women when their eyes swim and their J "Al-Badajet," Cairo Edition, p. 41.