The Philosophy of the Teachings of Islam — Page 218
212 physician, it sometimes administers a sweet draught to us and at other times it prescribes a bitter medicine for us. Divine mercy deals with us as each of us deals mercifully with his body. There can be no doubt that each of us loves his whole body and if anyone wishes to pull out a single hair of ours we are much annoyed with him. Yet despite the fact that the love that we bear towards our body is distributed over the whole of it, and all our limbs are dear to us, and we do not desire the loss or hurt any of them, it is clear that our love for every one of our limbs is not of the same degree and quality. In fact, the love of our principal limbs upon which largely depends the carrying out of our purposes, prevails over our hearts. Similarly in our estimation the totality of our limbs is far greater than our love for any particular limb. Thus when we are confronted with a situation in which the security of a superior limb depends upon wounding or cutting or breaking an inferior limb, we reconcile ourselves to such an operation. We are grieved at the wounding or cutting of a limb that is dear to us, but through the apprehension lest the disorder of the inferior limb should operate to destroy a superior limb, we are reluctantly reconciled to its cutting. This illustration should help us to realize that when God observes that His righteous servants are in peril of being destroyed at the hands of the worshippers of falsehood and that this would lead to great disorder He manifests His appropriate design, whether from