ouse. "Why these
tears and laments?" he was asked. "I weep," he answered, "thinking that
perhaps to-day I have set my foot in an unlawful place, or allowed an
evil word to escape my lips which will cause me to be chased from before
the throne of the most high. 'Away!' it will be said to me; 'thou hast
no access here, thy works of piety are not accepted.' And what answer
shall I make? Behold the reason of my fear." One of his sayings was, "I
never saw a certainty of which there is no doubt bear a greater
resemblance to a doubtful thing of which there is no certainty than
death does."

Hasan Basri had a neighbour named Shamaun, who was an infidel and a
fire-worshipper. He fell ill, and his last hour approached. Some one
said to Hasan, "Shamaun is your neighbour, and his last hour is come;
why don't you go to see him?" Hasan having come to see him, saw that by
reason of his assiduous fire-worship, his hair and beard were quite
blackened by smoke. Hoping that he would become a Moslem, he said to
him, "Come, Shamaun, fear the punishment which the Lord prepares for
thee who hast passed thy life of seventy years in infidelity and
fire-worship." "As for me," answered Shamaun, "I see on the part of you
Moslems three characteristics which I cannot explain, and which hinder
me from becoming a Moslem:--(1) You never cease repeating that the world
is perishable and impure, and yet day and night, without interval or
repose, you heap up its treasures; (2) You say that death is certain and
inevitable, and yet you put the thought of it aside, and practise none
of the works which should fit you for another world; (3) You assert your
belief that in that world it will be possible to contemplate the face of
the Most High, and yet you commit acts which He abhors." "Thou speakest
like one of the initiated," said Hasan, "but although the faithful
commit sins, none the less they confess the unity and the existence of
the Most High, whilst thou hast spent thy life in worshipping the fire.
At the day of judgment, if they cast us both into hell, the fire will
carry thee away at once, but if the grace of the Lord is accorded to me,
it will not be able to scorch one of my eyebrows; this shows that it is
only a creature. And, moreover, you have worshipped it for seventy
years, and I have never worshipped it."

These words made such an impression on Shamaun that he made a profession
of the faith of Islam, dying soon afterwards. On the night of his de