“Mounting from these regions of unmitigated darkness we come to (_b_), those veiled by light and darkness mixed. Ghazali’s idea of the dark veils in general may be gathered from a comparison of this and the previous section. In this section the dark veils are shown to be the false conceptions of deity, which the human mind is deluded into making by the gross and limited elements in its own constitution, namely (in ascending order) by the Senses, the Phantasy or Imagination and the Discursive Reason. The dark veils of the previous section were the unmitigated egotism and materialism which employed these faculties for self and the world alone, without a thought of deity. The light veils, accordingly, are the true but partial intuitions whereby man rises to the idea of deity, or to a something at least higher than himself. These intuitions are no more than partial, because they fix upon some one aspect or attribute of deity,—majesty, beauty, and so forth,—and believing it to be all in all proceed to deify all majestic, beautiful, etc., things. Thus they half reveal, half conceal, Allah, and so are literally veils of light.”[78] Does not this remind us of St. Paul’s words: “Now we see through (in) a glass darkly but then face to face, etc.”? Did Al-Ghazali borrow from the Gospel here also? It has been pointed out by Margoliouth and others that Mohammedan Sufism is largely based on Christian teaching. This is especially true in the case of Abu Talib, Al-Ghazali’s favourite writer on this subject. “Sometimes the matter is taken over bodily; thus the Parable of the Sower is told by the earliest Sufi writer. Abu Talib takes over the dialogue in the Gospel eschatology between the Saviour and those who are taunted with having seen Him hungry and refused Him food; only for the questioner he substitutes Allah, and for ‘the least of these’ his Moslem brother. Not a few of the Beatitudes are taken over sometimes with the name of their author. Commonplaces which are found in Christian homiletic works reappear with little or no alteration in the Sufi sermons. In the Acts of Thomas, the Apostle, when employed by a king to build a palace, spends the money in charity to the poor. Presently the king’s brother dies, and finds that a wonderful palace has been built for the king in Paradise with the Alms which Thomas bestowed in his name. This story reappears in the doctrine of Abu Talib that when a poor man takes charity from the wealthy, he is thereby building him a house in Paradise.”[79] Not only in Qut-ul-Qulub, the famous book of Abu Talib, but in all Al-Ghazali’s works we have numerous quotations and references to the Gospels apocryphal or genuine, as we shall see later.