Hadhrat Umar's (ra) Last Sermon

Said 'Umar ibn 'Abdul 'Aziz (radhi Allahu 'anh), the pious caliph, in his last sermon:

"O people! You were not created in jest, neither shall you be abandoned to no purpose. For yours is a place of return, where Allah shall gather you together for decision and judgement between you. That day a servant shall be defeated and dejected only if Allah should expel him from His Mercy, which embraces all things, and from His Heaven, the compass of which is as the heavens and the earth.

"Tomorrow there shall be security only for the person that was in fear and trembling before Allah, who sold little for much, something which must needs perish for something which shall abide forever, and misery for pleasure.

"Perceive you not that you are among those that shall pass away, and that you shall be succeeded by others that remain behind? Perceive you not that every day, by morning and eve, you pay your last respects to a traveller to Allah, who has run his course and whose hope is at an end? You lay him in the depths of a crevice in the earth with neither pillow nor preparation. He has cast off the instruments of subsistence, and departed from his loved ones, and now confronts the Reckoning.

"By Allah! I pronounce this statement of mine not knowing whether any one of you has more sins than I know I myself bear, but it is a just, Divine usage whereby I enjoin His obedience and discommend transgression against Him. I seek Allah's forgiveness..."

Thereupon he covered his face with his sleeve and began to weep until his beard became soaked with his tears. And scarcely had he sat down before he passed away.