The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 214
214. Essence of Islām II. Three Conditions for Acceptance of Prayer. So far as God Almighty has bestowed upon me the knowledge of prayer I conceive that there are three conditions for the acceptance of prayer. . First, a supplicant should be perfectly righteous, for only that one is acceptable to God Almighty who makes righteousness his habit and adheres firmly to all the paths of righteousness and who is trustworthy and pious and true in his promises and is filled with the personal love of. God. . Secondly, his resolve and attention should be so firm and strong that he should be ready to lay down his own life for the revival of another and should be ready to enter himself into the grave to pull another out of it. His accepted servants are dearer to God Almighty than an only child, who is also handsome, is dear to its mother. . When God, the Merciful and Benevolent, sees that one who is accepted of Him and is true to Him has, for the sake of saving the life of another, subjected himself to spiritual labours and disciplines to a degree that his own life is in danger, He finds it disagreeable that He should let him perish in that condition. Then for his sake He forgives the sin in respect of which the other person had been seized. If he is afflicted with a fatal disease or is in the grip of some other calamity, then by His power He creates means for his deliverance. Very often it happens that He is determined to ruin or destroy a person, but through the latter's good luck someone who has a good standing before God intervenes with his earnest supplications so that the record that had been prepared and completed for his chastisement has to be destroyed, for