Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 285
285 heart is an impure and powerless faith. It cannot serve any purpose neither in this life nor in the next. Almighty God is not pleased until He sees that a man has banished from his heart all ideas except the idea of God and turns solely to Him and sets greater value upon his faith than upon the things of this world. You may deceive men by outward deeds of prayers, fasting and almsgiving when your heart is devoid of the true spirit of these virtuous deeds but you cannot deceive God by your dry and spiritless formalities. That you repeat the formula of faith and are known as believers in the Unity of God has no value in the sight of God, It is the meaning of the formula of faith which you should know and act upon. When a person says tM)$ ] d)$ 'There is no god but God,' he professes with his tongue and believes with his heart that none except God deserves to be worshipped. The word ilali translated "god" really means in Arabic "object of love, worship and desire. " The formula la ilalia illallah, "There is no god but God" which has been taught to the Muslims as a proclamation of the Unity of God is really the essence of the Holy Quran. It means that unless God is made the true object of a man's love, desire and worship, and unless Divine glory and majesty reign supreme in a man's heart so that he is prepared to sacrifice every worldly interest for the sake of God, he cannot attain to the supreme bliss and the eternal happiness known as salvation There is a tradition of the Holy Prophet according to which ''Whoever says that there is no god but God shall enter into paradise". The meaning of these words has been greatly misunderstood, The tradition does not mean as many people think that the utterance of the above-mentioned words with the tongue is sufficient for the attainment of sal- vation. Almighty God sees the hearts and mere words have no