42 GhazzaWs Alchemy of Happiness. 



author writing so long since in the centre of Asia, had oc- 

 casion to approve or condemn so many truths, speculations 

 or fancies which are now current among us with the re- 

 putation of novelty. Many of the same paradoxes and 

 problems that startle or fascinate in the nineteenth century 

 are here discussed. He came in contact, among his contem- 

 poraries, with persons who made the same general objections 

 to natural and revealed religion, as understood by Moham- 

 medans, as are in our days made to Christianity, or who 

 perverted and abused the religion which they professed for 

 their own ends, in the same manner as Christianity is 

 abused among us. And he engaged with earnestness now 

 truthfully, and now erroneously, in refuting these men. 

 His usual stand-point in discussion is equally removed 

 from the most extravagant mysticism, and literal and for- 

 mal orthodoxy. He attempts a dignified blending of rea- 

 son and faith, requiring of his fellow men unfeigned piety 

 in the temper and tone of an evangelical Christian. He 

 reminds his readers, in these discourses, that they are not 

 Mussulmans if they are satisfied with merely a nominal 

 faith, and treats with scorn thos*e who are spiritualists only 

 in language and dress. 



It is too narrow a view to* adopt, in regard to a man of 

 the sublime character of Ghazzali, that he obtained his 

 ideas from any one school of thinkers, or that being 

 in fellowship with the Soofies, that he was merely a 

 Soofi. He was living in the centre of Aryan peoples and 

 religions. He may have had his doctrine of the future life 

 shaped by Zoroaster, and have been influenced by the mis- 

 sionaries of the Buddhists. 



The practical religion taught in these homilies will give 

 a favorable opinion of the state of mind of the more intelli- 

 gent Mussulmans. They contain not the Mohammedanism 

 of the creed or the catechism, but of the closet and the 

 pulpit. The tenor of the book establishes the truth of 



