The Words | 33. Word | 709
(683-723)

In Short: According to the meaning of the verse,

And gives life to the earth after its death,30

just as this living earth testifies to the Maker with the spring, so with its death it turns man's gaze to the miracles of Divine power lined up on the two wings of time, the past and the future; it alludes to thousands of miracles of power in place of one miracle. And each of those springs testifies more certainly than this present spring, for those which have departed towards the past have gone together with their apparent causes, and after them others like them have come in their places. This means that apparent causes are nothing: only that an Ail-Powerful One of Glory creates the springs, and tying them to causes with His wisdom shows that He has sent them. As for the faces of the earth lined up in future time, they testify still more brilliantly. For they will be made anew from nothing, from non-being, and sent; they will be put on the earth, made to do their duty, and then sent away.

And so, O heedless one deviated into nature and drowning in its swamp! How can something which does not possess hands wise and powerful enough to reach all the past and all the future interfere in the life of the earth? Can your total nonentity of nature interfere in it? If you want to be saved, say: "At the very most, nature is a notebook of Divine power. And as for chance, it is a veil to hidden Divine wisdom which conceals our ignorance." Approach the truth!

Twenty-Fifth Window

Like one struck points to the striker, and a finely fashioned work of art necessitates the artist, and an offspring requires a parent, and an under surface demands a top surface, and so on... like all these qualities known as relative matters which are not absolute and cannot exist without each other, contingency, which is apparent in particulars in the universe as well as in it as a whole, points to necessity. And the state of being acted upon which is to be seen in all of them points to an act, and the createdness apparent in all of them points to creativity, and the multiplicity and composition to be seen in all demand unity. And necessity, an act, creativity, and unity clearly and necessarily require one who is not contingent, acted upon, numerous, compounded, and created, but bears the attributes of being necessary, an agent, one, and a creator. In which case, all contingency, states of being acted upon, createdness, multiplicity and composition testify to the Necessarily Existent One, the One Who acts as He wills, the Creator of All Things, the Single One of Unity.

In Short: Just as necessity is apparent from contingency, the act from the state of being acted upon, and unity from multiplicity, and the existence of the former indicate the latter with certainty, in the same way, qualities like createdness and having all their needs provided for, which are to be seen in beings, clearly point to the existence of attributes like Making and Providing. In turn the existence of these attributes point necessarily and self-evidently to the existence of an All-Compassionate Maker Who is a Creator and a Provider. That is to say, with the tongues of the hundreds of attributes of this sort which they bear, every being testifies to hundreds of the Necessarily Existent One's Most Beautiful Names. If this testimony is not admitted, it becomes necessary to deny all the attributes of this sort pertaining to beings.

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30.Qur'an 30:19

No Voice