The Third Letter

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

(Part of a letter sent to the well-known student of his.[1])

F i f t h l y : You wrote in one of your letters to me that you wanted to share my feelings here, so listen now to one thousandth of them.

One night at the height of a hundred-storey building in my tree-house at the top of a cedar tree, I looked at the beautiful face of the heavens gilded with stars and saw an elevated light of miraculousness and brilliant secret of eloquence in the All-Wise Qur’an’s oath of,

So verily I call to witness the planets * That recede, go forth, or hide.(81:15-16)

This verse, which refers to the planets and their being concealed and spread abroad, displays to the gaze of observers an elevated embroidery full of art and an exalted, instructive tapestry. The planets emerge from the sphere of the sun, their commander, and entering that of the fixed stars, display fresh embroideries and instances of art in the  skies.  Sometimes   they  come  shoulder   to  shoulder   with  another   star  like themselves  and display a beautiful  situation.  At other times they enter  among the small stars and assume the position of commander. Especially in this season after evening,  Venus  on  the  horizon,  and  before  the  early  dawn  one  of  its  shining companions, display a truly graceful and lovely scene. Later, after carrying out their duties as inspectors  and acting as shuttles  in the tapestries  of art, they return, and entering the dazzling sphere of the sun, hide themselves. Now they demonstrate as brilliantly as the sun the majestic dominicality and glittering divine sovereignty of the One who spins this earth of ours and the planets described in the above verse with perfect order in space, each like a ship or aeroplane. See that majestic dominion which has under its sway ships and aeroplanes a thousand times larger than the earth, and that travel thousands of times faster.