These verses state that all things together with all their states are recorded before they come into existence, when they come into existence, and after they have departed, and that they are being recorded. In order to be convinced of this elevated truth, we point out to be observed the following. The All-Glorious Inscriber includes and preserves in immaterial fashion in the seeds and roots of the innumerable well-ordered creatures which He changes every season on the page of the earth and particularly in the spring, the indexes of their beings, their life histories, and the principles according to which they act. And when they die He inscribes in immaterial fashion with the same pen of divine determining those indexes, life-histories and principles in the simple seeds in their fruits. And every passing spring even He preserves them – whether fresh or dry – in perfect order in seeds resembling dry chips of wood and bones, limited and tiny. It is as if each spring is attached like a flower to the face of the earth in extremely orderly and balanced fashion by the hand of One All-Beautiful and All-Glorious, then is plucked from it; each is placed on it, then removed. While the reality is this, one of the strangest forms of man’s misguidance is that he calls this natural writing, this artful inscribing, this passive pattern of wisdom which is an index of dominical art and only a reflection and manifestation of the Preserved Tablet, “nature,” and considers it to be the source and active and effective. Can there be any comparison between the ground and the Pleiades? Can there be any comparison between reality and the notions of the heedless?

The Third

THE THIRD: For example, the Bringer of Sure News stated concerning the Bearers of the Throne, the angels appointed to the earth and the skies, and other sorts of angels, that they glorify God with forty thousand heads, and with the forty thousand tongues in each head, and in forty thousand ways with each tongue. In order to ascend to this truth, consider the following carefully. With verses like,

The seven heavens and the earth and all within them glorify and extol Him.(17:44) ∗ It was We Who made the hills declare in unison with him Our praises.(38:18) ∗ We did indeed offer the Trust to the heavens and the earth and the mountains,(33:72)

the All-Glorious One expresses clearly that even the greatest and most universal of beings demonstrate that they glorify Him in accordance with their universality and in a way appropriate to their vastness. It appears to be thus. Just as the words of glorification of the heavens, which are an ocean glorifying God, are the suns, moons, and stars, so the words of praise of the earth, a flying thing praising and glorifying, are the animals,