age, entered the Moslim world by the permission
of Ijma'. Here we need think only of mysticism and of the cult of saints.

Some passages of the Qoran may perhaps be interpreted in such a way that we
hear the subtler strings of religious emotion vibrating in them. The chief
impression that Mohammed's Allah makes before the Hijrah is that of awful
majesty, at which men tremble from afar; they fear His punishment, dare
hardly be sure of His reward, and hope much from His mercy. This impression
is a lasting one; but, after the Hijrah, Allah is also heard quietly
reasoning with His obedient servants, giving them advice and commands,
which they have to follow in order to frustrate all resistance to His
authority and to deserve His satisfaction. He is always the Lord, the King
of the world, who speaks to His humble servants. But the lamp which Allah
had caused Mohammed to hold up to guide mankind with its light, was raised
higher and higher after the Prophet's death, in order to shed its light
over an ever increasing part of humanity. This was not possible, however,
without its reservoir being replenished with all the different kinds of oil
that had from time immemorial given light to those different nations. The
oil of mysticism came from Christian circles, and its Neo-Platonic origin
was quite unmistakable; Persia and India also contributed to it. There were
those who, by asceticism, by different methods of mortifying the flesh,
liberated the spirit that it might rise and become united with the origin
of all being; to such an extent, that with some the profession of faith
was reduced to the blasphemous exclamation: "I am Allah." Others tried to
become free from the sphere of the material and the temporal by certain
methods of thought, combined or not combined with asceticism. Here the
necessity of guidance was felt, and congregations came into existence,
whose purpose it was to permit large groups of people under the leadership
of their sheikhs, to participate simultaneously in the mystic union. The
influence which spread most widely was that of leaders like Ghazali, the
Father of the later Mohammedan Church, who recommended moral purification
of the soul as the only way by which men should come 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. Some wanted to pass over t