Lures men to wrong. Let poison but be mixed
With sugar, they will cram it into their mouths.
Oh, cry not that all creeds are vain! Some scent
Of truth they have, else they would not beguile.”
There is a real sense in which Al-Ghazali may be used as a schoolmaster to lead Moslems to Christ. His books are full of references to the teaching of Christ. He was a true seeker after God.
Islam is the prodigal son, the Ishmael, among the non-Christian religions; this is a fact we may not forget. Now we read in Christ’s matchless parable of the prodigal how “When he was yet a great way off his father saw him and ran out to meet him and fell on his neck and kissed him.” Have missionaries always had this spirit? No one can read the story of Al-Ghazali’s life, so near and yet so far from the Kingdom of God, so eager to enter and yet always groping for the doorway, without fervently wishing that Al-Ghazali could have met a true ambassador of Christ. Then surely this great champion of the Moslem faith would have become an apostle of Christianity in his own day and generation. By striving to understand Al-Ghazali we may at least better fit ourselves to help those who, like him, are earnest seekers after God amid the twilight shadows of Islam. His life also has a lesson for us all in its devout Theism and in its call to the practice of the Presence of God.
S. M. Z.
Cairo, Egypt.