The Words | Contents | 9
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THE TWENTY-THIRD WORD contains two Chapters .......................319

First Chapter: Five 'Points' describing the virtues and advantages of belief: how man acquires value through belief by manifesting the Divine Names; how belief illuminates both man, and the universe, and the past and future; how belief affords man strength; how belief makes man a true man, making his essential duty belief and supplication ...........................319

Second Chapter: Five 'Remarks' explaining man's possible progress through infinite degrees, and possible decline. For he is a miracle of Divine power and art, the result of creation, who has been cast into the arena of trial and before whom two ways have been opened ............................................................328

THE TWENTY-FOURTH WORD consists of five Branches' from the luminous tree of the verse, God, there is no god but He; His are the Most Beautiful Names ....................... .341

First Branch: The manifestations of the Divine Names in the realms and worlds of the universe, and their diversity.....................341

Second Branch: A comparison which in examining the three ways of approaching reality, shows the reasons for the differences and even contradictions in the truths experienced by the saints through illumination, and among scholars arrived at by rational proofs, and why previous to the Qur'an, all the pillars of belief were not taught in detail by the prophets ...............344

Third Branch: Twelve 'Principles' explaining certain figurative Hadiths that speak of the signs of the end of time, and of the merits of certain acts, which have been misunderstood ............350

Fourth Branch: The four categories of workers in the palace of the universe: the angels, the animals, plants and inanimate creatures, and man, and their diverse duties of worship .................361

Fifth Branch: Five 'Fruits': on love and fear; worship is not the introduction to further reward, but the result of previous bounty; limitless acts pertaining to the hereafter in a brief life; do not imitate the worldly; turning from multiplicity to unity and from transience to permanence .......................................367
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The Words