ment, and then if suddenly he should become offended with her and sell her to another person, and should afterwards become conscious of his concealed love, bis heart would hourly assail him and sting him like a serpent. The fire of regret and rage would burn within him, so that he might be not only sick from its effects, but might even die. Now if it is possible that such results should follow from the loss of a female slave, consider what must be the degree of grief and affliction of a man who is suddenly called upon to part with all his beloved objects in a moment. Just as it might happen that the master of the female slave should throw himself into the water to drown himself, or cast himself into the fire to burn himself, all on account of his separation from her, so those spirits of men who are in theirgraves utter many wishes, exclaiming, "Ah! would that these scorpions and serpents, like those in the material world, would only sting us and destroy us, that at least we might be delivered from this torment."
Pain in the world is an accident of the body, and passes from the body to the spirit, and thus the spirit participates in the torment. Butin the future world, pain has its home in the spirit itself, and hence it is excruciating.
Every one bears away from this world within himself the essence of his torment, but men are not aware of it. God says in his eternal word, "Ah! if you knew by infallible knowledge, you would see hell, you would see it with the eyes of certainty,"[1] and again He says in another place in the glorious Koran, "Truly hell encompasseth the infidels."[2] He does not say, it shall encompass, but rather that it already surrounds them....
If you say, O student of the mysteries, that "the torments of the grave are occasioned by the relations arising from ttiis present world, from which no one can be exempt,
