Chapter I: Repentance
There are two classes of men : On class of young men have got no attraction towards evils. They grow on good things and give up evils. The Prophet said : Your Lord is pleased with that young man who has got no attraction towards evils, such a man is rare, but most honoured. The second class of men are not free from attraction towards evils. They are subdivided into two-those who repent after commission of sins and those who are engaged in sins all the time. Tauba cannot be earned without curable medicine. He who cannot diagnose a disease cannot know its medicine. Every disease has got its primary or root cause and to remove that case is its medicine. Without an opposite thing, it cannot be removed. Greed and negligence are the causes of engagement in sins. Carefulness is opposite to negligence and patience is opposite to greed. Negligence is the root of all evils. God says : They are negligent, there is no doubt that they will be losers in the next world.' The medicine of Tauba is the mixture of some ingredients-sweetness of knowledge and bitterness of patience. A mind affected with the disease of repeatedly committing sins should be treated with a mixture of knowledge and patience.
Question : Is every knowledge profitable for removal of repeated sins ?
Answer : There is expert knowledge about a special disease, just as the science of treatment is necessary for treatment of general diseases. A man of this type of disease must have faith in several subjects.
(i) He must have faith that there are certain causes of disease and health. God has recorded their causes and given us freedom to select those causes. Firm faith grows out of it in the root- science of medicine as he who has no faith in this science will not take to treatment and has got nothing but ruirj. Similarly repeated commission of sins cannot be removed without faith in the fundamental matters of religion. That is -this. There are causes of fortunes in the next world and those causes are virtues, and there are causes of misfortunes in the next world and those , causes are sins. This is the faith in the basic principle of religion.
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(ii) The second subject is that a patient must have faith in a certain physician tha t he has got expert knowledge in a particular branch of medicine and special proficiency in the process of treatment. Similarly the sinner must have faith in the fact that the prophet is a true Prophet and all that he said are true without the slightest tinge of falsehood.