Al-Ghazali would doubtless have accepted the statement in the Gospel, “No man hath seen God at any time,” but he omits “the only Begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” In speaking of the vision of God he says, “All Moslems profess to believe that the Vision of God is the summit of human felicity because it is so stated in the Law; but with many this is a mere lip-profession which arouses no emotion in their hearts. This is quite natural, for how can a man long for a thing of which he has no knowledge? We will endeavour to show briefly why the vision of God is the greatest happiness to which a man can attain. “In the first place, every one of man’s faculties has its appropriate function which it delights to fulfill. This holds good of them all, from the lowest bodily appetite to the highest form of intellectual apprehension. But even a comparatively low form of mental exertion affords greater pleasure than the satisfaction of bodily appetites. Thus if a man happens to be absorbed in a game of chess, he will not come to his meal though repeatedly summoned. And the greater the subject-matter of our knowledge, the greater is our delight in it; for instance, we would take more pleasure in knowing the secrets of a king than the secrets of a vizier. Seeing then that God is the highest possible object of knowledge, the knowledge of Him must afford more delight than any other. He who knows God, even in this world, dwells, as it were, in a paradise, ‘the breadth of which is as the breadth of the heavens and the earth,’ a paradise the fruits of which no envy can prevent him plucking, and the extent of which is not narrowed by the multitude of those who occupy it.” (See 1 John 4: 7-21.) “But the delight of knowledge still falls short of the delight of vision, just as our pleasure in thinking of those we love is much less than the pleasure afforded by the actual sight of them. Our imprisonment in bodies of clay and water and entanglement in the things of sense constitute a veil which hides the vision of God from us, although it does not prevent our attaining to some knowledge of Him. For this reason God said to Moses on Mount Sinai, ‘Thou shalt not see Me.’”