together with his enemy, he becomes a helper against himself. His enemy casts fire upon his blessings while the servant fans the flames; it was he who enabled the enemy to hurl the fire and then aided him by fanning it. When the blaze grows fierce, he pleads for rescue from the conflagration, and all he can do in the end is rebuke destiny:

A mind too weak lets its chance slip away,
Then, when the moment is gone, reproaches fate. (1)

Section

Among the most precious kinds of knowledge is to know the Lord—glorified be He—through His beauty. This knowledge belongs to the elect among creation. Every creature knows Him by one of His attributes, but the fullest knowledge is reserved for those who recognize His perfection, majesty, and beauty, for nothing resembles Him in any of His attributes.

Imagine every creature fashioned in the loveliest form, each one possessing that same perfection of form, and then compare all their outward and inward beauty to the beauty of the Lord, exalted is He; the relation would be less than that of a weak lamp to the blazing disk of the sun.

It suffices to grasp His beauty that, were He to lift the veil from His Face, the brilliance of His radiance would burn everything His gaze reaches of creation. (2)

It suffices to grasp His beauty that every visible and hidden beauty in this world and the Hereafter is but a trace of His handiwork—so what, then, of the One from Whom such beauty originates?

It suffices to grasp His beauty that all might is His, all power is His, every generosity, every act of beneficence, all knowledge, and all grace belong to Him, and by the light of His Face the