“I gaze aloof at the tissued roof Where time and space are the warp and woof, Which the King of Kings, like a curtain flings, O’er the dreadfulness of eternal things. But if I could see, as in truth they be, The glories that encircle me, I should lightly hold this tissued fold With its marvellous curtain of blue and gold; For soon the whole, like a parched scroll, Shall before my amazèd eyes unroll, And without a screen at one burst be seen The Presence in which I have always been.” But Al-Ghazali did not know God’s nearness through the Incarnation of Christ. The hoped-for Vision of God was always full of fear and dread of judgment. The _fear_ of God was the beginning and end of wisdom. What he understood by the fear of God is clear from the following passage taken from the “Revival of Religious Sciences”: “By the fear of God I do not mean a fear like that of women when their eyes swim and their hearts beat at hearing some eloquent religious discourse, which they quickly forget and turn again to frivolity. That is no real fear at all. He who fears a thing flees from it, and he who hopes for a thing strives for it, and the only fear that will save thee is that fear that forbids sinning against God and instils obedience to Him. Beware of the shallow fear of women and fools, who, when they hear of the terrors of the Lord, say lightly, ‘We take refuge in God,’ and at the same time continue in the very sins which will destroy them. Satan laughs at such pious ejaculations. They are like a man who should meet a lion in a desert, while there is a fortress at no great distance away, and when he sees the ravenous beast, should stand exclaiming, ‘I take refuge in God.’ God will not protect thee from the terrors of His judgment unless thou really take refuge in Him.” Included with his fear of God there was always a fear of death which can best be described as mediæval or early Moslem. Towards the close of his life he composed a short work on eschatology called “The Precious Pearl.” It is no less lurid in its terrible pictures of death and the judgment than some of his older works. In it he says: “When you watch a dead man and see that the saliva has run from his mouth, that his lips are contracted, his face black, the whites of his eyes showing, know that he is damned, and that the fact of his damnation in the other world has just 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....