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 points to thousands of springs in place of one spring; 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 the springs that have departed for 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 All-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, then be sent away.
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 nonentities of chance and 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 that conceals our ignorance.” Approach the truth!
Twenty-Fifth Window
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 a being 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.