The Words | 13. Word | 150
(150-154)

The Thirteenth Word

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

And We send down [stage by stage] in the Qur'an that which is a healing and a mercy to those who believe1 * We have not instructed [the Prophet] in poetry, nor is it meet for him2

If you want to compare the results yielded by the wisdom of the All-Wise Qur'an and of the sciences of philosophy, and their instruction and teaching and the degrees in their knowledge, then listen carefully to the following words:

With its acute expositions, the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition rends the veil of familiarity and the habitual cast over all the beings in the universe, which are known as ordinary things but are all extraordinary and miracles of Divine power, and reveals those astonishing wonders to conscious beings. It attracts their gazes and opens up before their minds an inexhaustible treasury of knowledge.

As for philosophy, it conceals within veils of the commonplace all the miracles of power, which are extraordinary, and passes over them in an ignorant and indifferent fashion. It only puts forward to be noted freaks, which have fallen from being extraordinary and deviated from the order of creation, and sheered away from the perfections of their true natures; it offers them to conscious beings as objects of wise instruction. For example, it says that man's creation is ordinary, despite its being a comprehensive miracle of power, and looks on it indifferently. But then with cries of astonishment, it points out as an object of instruction a person who has diverged from the perfection of creation, and has three legs or two heads.

And for example, it considers ordinary the regular sustenance of infants and young, bestowed from the treasury of mercy, which is a most delicate and general miracle of mercy, and draws a veil of ingratitude over it. Whereas, on spotting an insect under the sea which is an exception from the general order and is alone and isolated from its fellows, being fed with green sea-weed, it wants to make the fishermen weep for it, because of the Divine favour and munificence manifested on it.3

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1. Qur'an, 17:82.
2. Qur'an, 36:69.
3. Just such an event occurred in America.

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The Words