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of clay?”
And said, “Dost thou consider this one whom thou hast honoured above me? Verily, if thou didst spare me till the day of Resurrection, I would utterly destroy his offspring, all but a few!”
God said, “Begone; but whosoever of them followeth thee, verily, Hell is to be your reward—reward enough!
And tempt whom thou canst of them by thy voice; and assail them with thy horsemen and thy footmen, and share with them in their riches and their children, and make them promises. (But the Devil’s promises are deceitful.)
Verily thou hast no power over my servants: and thy Lord sufficeth for a defender.”
It is your Lord who driveth your ships on the sea, that ye may seek of His abundance, verily He is merciful to you.
And when a harm befalleth you at sea, they whom ye call on beside Him are missing! Then when He bringeth you safe to land, ye stand aloof: for man was ever thankless.
Are ye sure that He will not swallow you up on the shore, or send a sand-storm against you? then ye would not find for you any defender.
Or are ye sure that He will not turn you back again to sea, and send against you a storm of wind and drown you, because ye were thankless? Then shall ye find for yourselves no helper against us.
And we have honoured the sons of Adam; and we have borne them on the land and on the sea, and have fed them with good things, and distinguished them above many of our creatures.
On a day we will summon all men with their scripture: then whoso is given his book into his right hand,—these shall read their book and not be wronged a whit.
And he who has been blind in this life shall be blind in the life to come, and miss the road yet more.
And verily they had well-nigh tempted thee from what we revealed to thee, to forge against us something false; and then they would have taken thee to friend;
And had we not prevented thee, thou hadst well-nigh inclined to them a little:
In that case we would have made thee to taste of torment double in life and double in death, then should’st thou find for thyself no helper against us.
And they well-nigh frightened thee from the land, to drive thee out of it; but if they had, they should only have tarried a little while behind thee.
[This was our] custom with our apostles whom we sent before thee, and thou shalt find no changing in our custom.
Perform prayer from the setting of the sun till the fall of night, and the recital at dawn,—verily the recital at dawn is witnessed:
And watch thou part of the night as a voluntary service; it may be that thy Lord will raise thee to a place of praise:
And say: O my Lord, cause me to enter with a right entry, and to come forth with a right forthcoming, and grant me from thyself a power of defence.
And say: Truth is come and falsehood is fled away: verily falsehood is a fleeting thing.
And we send down from the Korān healing and mercy to the faithful; but it shall only add to the ruin of the wicked.
And when we are gracious to man, he turneth away and standeth aloof; but when evil touches him he is in despair.
Say: Every one doeth after his own fashion, but your Lord knoweth perfectly who is best guided on the road.
And they will ask thee of the Spirit; Say: The Spirit cometh at my Lord’s behest, and ye are given but scant knowledge.
And assuredly, if we pleased we could take away what we have revealed to thee: then wouldst thou not find for thyself a defender against us,
Save in mercy from thy Lord; verily His bounty towards thee is great.
Say: Surely if mankind and the Jinn united in order to produce the like of this Korān, they could not produce its like, though they helped one another.
We have varied every kind of parable for men in this Korān, but most men consent only to discredit it.
And they say, “We will by no means believe in thee till thou makest a spring to gush forth for us from the earth;
Or till there cometh to thee a garden of palm-trees and grapes, and thou makest rivers to gush forth abundantly in its midst;
Or thou make the heaven to fall down in pieces upon us, as thou pretendest; or bring God and the angels before us;
Or thou have a house of gold; or thou ascend up into Heaven; and we will not believe in thy ascent until thou send down to us a book which we may read.” Say: Extolled be the glory of my Lord! Am I aught save a man, a messenger?
And nothing prevented men from believing, when the guidance came to them, but their saying, “Hath God sent a mere man as a messenger?”
Say: Had there been angels upon the earth walking at ease, we had surely sent them an angel from heaven as an apostle.
Say: God is witness enough between me and you: verily He knoweth and seeth His servants.
And whom God guideth, he is guided, and whom He misleadeth, thou shalt find him no protectors beside Him; and we will gather them on the day of Resurrection upon their faces, blind, and dumb, and deaf, hell is their abode; so oft as its fire dieth down, we will stir up the flame.
This is their reward, for that they believed not our signs, and said, “When we are become bones and dust, shall we indeed be raised a new creature?”
Do they not see that God, who created the heavens and the earth is able to create their likes? and He hath made an appointed term for them: there is no doubt of it; but the wicked consent only to deny it!
Say: If ye possessed the treasures of the mercy of thy Lord, ye would then assuredly keep them, in fear of spending: for man is niggardly.
Heretofore We brought to Moses nine evident signs: Ask then the Children of Israel [the story]—when he came unto them, and Pharaoh said unto him, “Verily I consider thee to be bewitched, O Moses.”
He said, “Thou knowest that none hath sent these down as proofs but the Lord of the heavens and the earth; and verily I consider thee, O Pharaoh, accursed.”
So he sought to drive them out of the land; but we drowned him and those with him, every one.
And after this we said to the Children of Israel, “Dwell ye in the land, and when the promise of the life to come befalleth, we will bring you in a troop to judgment.”
And in truth have we sent down [the Korān], and in truth came it down, and we have sent thee only to give good tidings and to warn.
And the Korān have we divided that thou mayest recite it unto men by degrees; and we have sent it down by [separate] sendings.
Say: Believe ye therein or believe ye not;—those verily to whom knowledge hath been given before, when it is told to them, fall down on their faces in adoration, and say, “Extolled be the glory of our Lord! verily the promise of our Lord is accomplished.”
And they fall down upon their faces weeping, and it increaseth their humility.
Say: Call upon God, or call upon the Merciful, whichever ye call Him by; for His are the goodliest names. And be not loud in thy prayer, nor yet mutter it low; but follow a course between.
And Say: Praise be to God who hath not taken a son, and who hath no partner in the Kingdom, and no protector hath He for abasement; and glorify Him gloriously.

(xvii.)

THE SPEECHES AT MEKKA

III. THE ARGUMENTATIVE PERIOD

Aet. 46-53
a.d. 615-622

THE BELIEVER.
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
H. M. The revelation of the Book is from God the Mighty, the Wise,
Forgiver of sin, and accepter of repentance,—heavy in punishment,
Long-suffering: there is no God but He, to whom is your journeying.
None dispute about the signs of God save those who disbelieve; but let not their trafficking in the land deceive thee.
Before them the people of Noah, and the allies after them, denied, and every folk hath purposed against its apostle to overmaster him, and they argued with falsehood to rebut the truth therewith; but I did overmaster them and how great was my punishment!
And thus was the sentence of thy Lord accomplished upon those who disbelieved, that they should be inmates of the Fire!
They that bear the Throne and they that are round about it magnify the praise of their Lord and believe in Him and beg forgiveness for those who believe:—“O our Lord! thou embracest all things in mercy and knowledge, give pardon to those who repent and follow thy path, and keep them from the torment of hell,
O our Lord, and bring them into the gardens of eternity which thou hast promised to them and to the just among their fathers and their wives and their offspring; verily thou art the Mighty, the Wise;
And keep them from evil; for he whom thou keepest from evil on that day, on him hast thou had mercy—and that is the great prize!”
Verily to those who disbelieve shall come a voice, “Surely the hatred of God is greater than your hatred among yourselves, when ye are called to the faith, and disbelieve.”
They shall say, “O our Lord, twice hast thou given us death, and twice hast thou given us life: and we acknowledge our sins: is there then a way to escape?”—
“That hath befallen you because when one God was proclaimed, ye disbelieved: but when Partners were ascribed to Him, ye believed: but judgment belongeth unto God, the High, the Great.”
It is He who showeth you His signs, and sendeth down to you provision from heaven: but none mindeth except the repentant.
Then call on God with due obedience, though loth be the infidels;
Of high degree, Lord of the throne; He sendeth down the Spirit at His will upon whom He pleaseth of His servants to warn men of the day of the Tryst:—
The day when they shall come forth, and when nothing of theirs shall be hidden from God. Whose is the kingship on that day? It is God’s, the One, the Conqueror!
The day every soul shall be rewarded for what it hath earned: no injustice shall there be on that day! Verily God is swift to reckon.
And warn them of the approaching Day, when their hearts shall choke in their throats,
When the wicked have no friend nor intercessor to prevail.
He knoweth the deceitful of eye, and what the breast concealeth,
And God judgeth with truth; but those gods whom they call on beside Him cannot judge aught. Verily it is God that heareth and seeth!
Have they not journeyed in the earth, and seen what was the end of those who were before them? Those were mightier than they in strength, and in their footprints on the earth: but God overtook them in their sins, and there was none to keep them from God.
That was because apostles had come
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