But he goes on to say that although many went to such extremes and in their pantheistic ideas lost sight of the moral law and the restriction of conduct it was Al-Ghazali who rescued Islam to a large degree from this danger. He recommended moral perfection of the soul by asceticism as the only way through which men could approach 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.” It is therefore from the days of Al-Ghazali that ethical mysticism obtained its birthright in the world of Islam together with law and dogma. These now form the sacred trio of religious sciences, and are taught in every great centre of Moslem learning. For dogma other writers are more authoritative. For Moslem law there is the study of the great writers of the four Schools, but in matters of ethics Al-Ghazali still holds his own. To quote once more from Hurgronje: “The ethical mysticism of Al-Ghazali is generally recognized as orthodox; and the possibility of attaining to a higher spiritual sphere by means of methodic asceticism and contemplation is doubted by few. The following opinion has come to prevail in wide circles: the Law offers the bread of life to all the faithful, the dogmatics are the arsenal from which the weapons must be taken to defend the treasures of religion against unbelief and heresy, but mysticism shows the earthly pilgrim the way to Heaven.”[77] In one particular, however, this ethical teaching is utterly disappointing. Al-Ghazali’s mysticism is not for the multitude. It is esoteric, for a particular class who are filled with religious pride that they, in this respect, are not as other men. Even the noblest minds in Islam restrict true religious life to an aristocratic minority, and, like the Pharisees of old, consider the ignorance of the multitude an evil that cannot be remedied. The teaching of Al-Ghazali was intended not for the masses but for the initiates. It is remarkable that while he founded a cloister for Sufis at Tus and taught and governed there himself during the closing years of his life, he left no established order behind him. Professor Macdonald thinks that in his time the movement towards continuous corporations and brotherhoods had not yet begun. But this is a mistake, for in the _Kashf-al-Mahjub_ (A. H. 456) we already find a list of the various schools of Dervishes and their peculiar methods of devotion. Al-Ghazali’s _teaching_, however, is popular among all the Dervish orders of to-day. A special study has been made of one of Al-Ghazali’s esoteric works on mysticism entitled _Mishkat al-Anwar_, by Canon W. H. T. Gairdner, in which he answers the critics of this work, and shows conclusively that whatever may have been Al-Ghazali’s method he was sincere. We borrow from this interesting and scholarly paper two paragraphs to illustrate the method of Al-Ghazali: