Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/167

 without ending, abiding without termination. He hath not ceased and He will not cease to be described with glorious epithets; finishing and ending, though the cutting off of the ages and the terminating of allotted times have no rule over Him, but He is the First and Last, the External and the Internal, and He knoweth everything.

"We witness that He is not a body possessing form, nor a substance possessing bounds and limits; He does not resemble bodies, either in limitation or in accepting division. He is not a substance and substances do not exist in Him; and He is not an accident and accidents do not exist in Him, nay He does not resemble an entity, and no entity resembles Him; nothing is like Him and He is not like anything; measure does not bound Him and boundaries do not contain Him; the directions do not surround Him and neither the earth nor the Heavens are on different sides of Him. Lo, He is seated firmly upon His throne ( f arsh), after the manner which He has said, and in the sense in which He willed a being-seated firmly (istawa), which is far removed from contact and fixity of location and being established and being enveloped and being removed. The Throne does not carry Him, but the Throne and those that carry it are carried by the grace of His power and mastered by His grasp. He is above the Throne and the Heavens and above everything unto the limit of the Pleiades, with an aboveness which does not bring