ereignty and expedients of government, he opens a field of competition in order to make public how deserving the official is of reward, and he gives the command to his minister and invites the people to watch. He organizes a welcoming ceremony, and, as a result of a grand, elevated trial and examination, favours him in a distinguished assembly; he proclaims his worthiness. You can think of further examples in the same way.

Thus, “And God’s is the highest similitude”(16:60), the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity has numerous most beautiful names. Through the manifestations of His glory and appearances of His beauty, He has many attributes and titles. The name, title, and attribute which necessitate the existence of light and darkness, summer and winter, and Paradise and Hell, require also numerous general laws like the law of generation, those of competition and mutual assistance, and the making general to a degree also of the law of contest. From the contest of inspirations and satanic whisperings around the heart to the contest between angels and devils on the bounds of the heavens, [^4] they require that law to be all-embracing.

[^4]:See, Tirmidhī, Tafsīr al-Sūra 2:36; Nasā’ī, al-Sunan al-Kubrā, vi, 305; Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Ṣaḥīḥ, iii, 278.

Fifth Step

FIFTH STEP: Since there is coming and going from the earth to the heavens, and there is descent and ascent from the heavens to the earth and important necessities for the earth are sent from there; and since good spirits rise to the heavens, for sure, imitating the good spirits, evil spirits will also attempt to ascend to the realm of the heavens. For they are light and subtle in respect of their beings. However, they will doubtless be repulsed and expelled, for by nature they are evil and inauspicious. Moreover, there will doubtless be a sign, an indication, in the Manifest World of this important exchange, this contest outside the realm of materiality. For the wisdom of the sovereignty of dominicality requires that it should place a sign and leave an indication of these significant disposals in the Unseen for man in particular, whose most important duty is observation, witnessing, supervision, and acting as a herald; in the same way that it has made rain an indication of the endless miracles of spring, and made apparent causes signs of the wonders of divine art. It thus summons the people of the Manifest Realm to witness them; indeed, it attracts the attentive gazes of all the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth to that wondrous exhibition. That is, it shows the vast heavens to be a castle or city arrayed with towers on which sentries are posted, so that they may reflect on the majesty of dominicality.

Since wisdom requires that there should be an announcement for this