world itself. Faith also bestows on ephemeral man all he will need for life eternal; delivers from eternal annihilation wretched man who waits on the gallows for the arrival of fate; and opens to man an eternal treasury of everlasting felicity. The traveller then said to himself:

“Onward! In order to gain a further degree from among the infinite degrees of faith, let us refer to the totality of the cosmos, and listen to what it says. We will then be able to perfect and illumine the lessons we have received from its components and parts.”

Looking through the broad and comprehensive telescope he had taken from the Qur’an, he saw the cosmos to be so meaningful and well-ordered that it took on the shape of an embodied book of the Glorious One, an incarnate dominical Qur’an, a finely adorned palace of the Eternally Besought One, an orderly city of the Most Merciful. All the suras, verses, and words of that book of the universe, even its very letters, chapters, divisions, pages, and lines, through their constant meaningful effacement and reaffirmation, their wise changes and alternations, gave unanimous expression to the existence and presence of One Who has Knowledge of all things and Power over all things as the author of the book, of a Glorious Inscriber and a Perfect Scribe seeing all things in all things and knowing the relationship of all things with all things.

So too all the species and particles of the cosmos, all its inhabitants and contents, all that enters it and leaves it, all the providential changes and the wise processses of rejuvenation that occur in it — these proclaim in unison the existence and unity of an exalted craftsman, a peerless Maker Who sets to work with limitless power and infinite wisdom. The testimony of two great and vast truths, of a piece with the immensity of the cosmos, affirms this supreme witness of the cosmos.

FIRST TRUTH: These are the truths of ‘createdness’ and ‘contingency’ established with countless proofs by the gifted scholars of the principles of religion and the science of theology, as well as the sages of Islam. They said that since change and mutation are to be observed in the world and all things, the world must be ephemeral and created; it cannot be uncreated. If it is created, then there must be a Maker who created it. And if there is no cause to be found in the essence of a thing either for its being or for its non-being, so that