Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/83

 76 existence, whose purpose it was to permit large groups of people under the leadership of their sheikhs, to participate simultaneously in the mystic union. The influence which spread most widely was that of leaders like Ghazâlî, the Father of the later Mohammedan Church, who recommended moral purification of the soul as the only way by which men should come nearer to God. His mysticism wished to avoid the danger of pantheism, to which so many others were led by their contemplations, and which so often engendered disregard of the revealed law, or even of morality. Some wanted to pass over the gap between the Creator and the created along a bridge of contemplation; and so, driven by the fire of sublime passion, precipitate themselves towards the object of their love, in a kind of rapture, which poets compare with intoxication. The evil world said that the impossibility to accomplish this heavenly union often induced those people to imitate it for the time being with the earthly means of wine and the indulgence in sensual love.

Characteristic of all these sorts of mysticism is their esoteric pride. All these emotions are meant only for a small number of chosen ones. Even Ghazâlî's ethical mysticism is not for the multitude. The development of Islâm as a whole, from the Hijrah on, has always been greater in breadth than in depth; and, consequently, its pedagogics have remained defective. Even some