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/273



AL-GHAZALI AS A MYSTIC 251

been revealed to him. But if you see the dead with a smile on his lips, a serene countenance, his eyes half -closed, know that he has just received the good news of the happiness which awaits him in the other world. . ..

"On the day of Judgment, when all men are gath ered before the throne of God, their accounts are all cast up, and their good and evil deeds weighed. During all this time each man believes he is the only one with whom God is dealing. Though peradventure at the same moment God is taking account of countless multitudes whose number is known to Him only. Men do not see each other or hear each other speak."

In summing up the character of the Mystic Claud Field says: "As St. Augustine found de liverance from doubt and error in his inward ex perience of God, and Descartes in self-conscious ness, so Ghazali, unsatisfied with speculation and troubled by scepticism, surrenders himself to the will of God. Leaving others to demonstrate the existence of God from the external world, he finds God revealed in the depths of his own conscious ness and the mystery of his own free will. . . . He is a unique and lonely figure in Islam, and has to this day been only partially understood. In the Middle Ages his fame was eclipsed by that of Averroes, whose commentary on Aristotle is al luded to by Dante, and was studied by Thomas Aquinas and the schoolman. Averroes system