Fourth phrase:

His is the Kingdom means that He owns everything—from Earth to God’s Throne, the ground to the sky, the minutest particles to all heavenly bodies, as well as everything within both past and future eternity and within this world and the Hereafter.[3] He has the highest and most comprehensive degree of ownership, and the greatest manifestation of Divine Unity. A very strong proof for these truths once occurred to me in Arabic. For the sake of that pleasant memory, I expound upon those phrases below:

His is the Kingdom because the macrocosm is like the microcosm; both are works of His Power and missives of His Destiny. He invented the macrocosm, making it a place of prostration and worship, and created the microcosm, causing it to prostrate. He built the former and made it His property, and invented the latter, making it a servant. His art in the former was manifested as a book, and His fashioning and “coloring” in the latter exhibited itself through speech. His Power in the former reveals His Majesty, and His Mercy in the latter organizes His bounties. His Majesty in the former bears witness to His Unity, and His bounty in the latter proclaims that He is One and Unique. His stamp on the former is on all things having totality, and His seal on the latter is on each particular body and limb.

First section: As both the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (humanity) are His Power’s works and His Destiny’s missives, they both display the proofs of His Oneness written with the Pen of Divine Power and Destiny.

Humanity displays, albeit on a small scale, the same well-ordered art seen in the universe. Just as the universe’s art points to the Single Maker, humanity’s microscopic art testifies to that Maker and demonstrates His Oneness. Just as humanity is a meaningful missive of the Lord, a well-composed ode of His Destiny, the universe is another well-composed ode written by the same Pen of Destiny but on a vast scale. Given this, how could anything or anyone other than the Single One of Unity place His stamp on people’s faces, thereby giving them the same structure and appearance but making each one unique, or set His seal of Unity on the universe, all of whose creatures work with each other so closely?

Second section: He invented the macrocosm and made it a place of prostration and worship. The All-Wise Maker created the macrocosm in a novel and wonderful form, and inscribed His Grandeur’s signs upon it to make it a huge mosque. Within it, He created men and women as intellectual beings to read those signs, and with a disposition to bow before Him in worship and prostrate in wonder at His miraculous art and wonderful, originative Power. Given this, how can humanity worship something other than that Single Maker of Unity?

Third section: He created the microcosm, causing it to prostrate. He owns the former and makes the latter His servant. The Majestic Master of Sovereignty made the macrocosm, especially Earth, in the form of countless concentric spheres, each one being an arable field in which He sows, reaps, and harvests crops throughout eternity. He unceasingly administers His property and causes it to work. He made the World of Particles or Atoms  (the largest sphere) a field in which He sows and harvests the universe’s crops with His Power and Wisdom, and then dispatches them to the Invisible World, from the Sphere of Power to the Sphere of Knowledge. Earth (a medium sphere) is another place of cultivation in which He plants species every season and then reaps and harvests them. He sends its immaterial crops (results of every thing’s life) to the immaterial World of the Unseen.

He constantly fills each garden (a smaller sphere) with Power and empties it with Wisdom. He causes all animate creatures (an even smaller sphere) to yield crops far greater than themselves. In short, that Majestic Master of Sovereignty makes all things as models and dresses them in ever-different ways.

Using the His art’s weavings, He embellishes them with ever-new inscriptions to manifest His Names and His Power’s miracles. Everything is a page on which He inscribes in countless ways His meaningful missives, displays His Wisdom’s signs, and has conscious beings to read them. Having  made the macrocosm a cultivated property, He created and endowed humanity with structures and organs, senses and emotions, and especially with a soul. He then implanted such desires, appetites, drives, and demands that each person is in infinite need of the whole of that vast property.

Given this, who or what thing or being could have free control over that property and be lord of its servants other than that Majestic Master of Sovereignty, Who made everything a cultivated property; Who appointed humanity (despite its physical insignificance) as a superintendent, inspector, tiller, merchant, herald, and worshipper in that vast property; and Who took men and women as His honored guests and beloved addressees?

Fourth section: His art in the former was manifested as a book, and His fashioning and “coloring” in the latter exhibited itself through speech. The Majestic Maker manifests His meaningful art in the macrocosm as a book, thus making the universe intelligible. As a result, people acquire all true scientific knowledge from it and write all scientific treatises according to it. This universal book of wisdom, based on absolute truth, is proclaimed in the form of the Qur’an, a copy of that vast manifest book.

Just as His perfect art is manifested as above, His coloring and His Wisdom’s inscriptions in humanity open the flower of speech. In other words, His art is so meaningful, delicate, and beautiful that it causes the components of that animate being to speak.

That Divine art so colored humanity (the “fairest of forms”), that an immaterial, incorporeal, and yet organic thing—the flower of speech—opens within each person’s material, corporeal, and solid head. Further, that Divine art equipped the power of speech and expression with the developed tools and elaborate abilities and faculties needed for it to evolve into the Eternal Sovereign’s addressee. Thus the Divine coloring in humanity’s essential nature opened the flower of Divine speech. Who or what else, other than the Single One of Unity, can do such a miraculous thing?

Fifth section: His Power in the former reveals His Majesty; His Mercy in the latter organizes His bounties. The Maker’s Power, manifesting Itself through grandeur and majesty, creates the universe as a magnificent palace adorned and illuminated with the sun (its electric light), the moon (its lamp), and stars (candles). He makes Earth a laden table, an arable field and garden, and each mountain a storehouse, a peg, a fortress. He provides all things on a vast scale and in the form of that palace’s necessities, thereby demonstrating His Lordship’s majesty in a most dazzling manner.

Similarly, He manifests His Mercy in the form of graciousness by bestowing His bounties on every living creature. As He sustains them through His Bountifulness, He adorns them with manifestations of His Kindness and Generosity. And so He causes huge bodies like the sun to proclaim His Majesty through His Names the All-Gracious, Great, reciting: “O Glorious One, O Great One, O Mighty One,” while tiny animate creatures like flies and fish proclaim His Mercy, reciting: “O Gracious One, O Compassionate One, O Generous One.” Who or what else, other than the Gracious One of Majesty, the Majestic One of Grace, can interfere in this macrocosm’s creation?

Sixth section: His Majesty in the former bears witness to His Unity; His bounty in the latter proclaims that He is One and Unique. Just as His Lordship’s Majesty manifested throughout the universe proves and demonstrates God’s Unity manifested with all His Names, His Lordship’s Bounty, which dispatches every living creature’s regular provision, proves and demonstrates His Oneness or Uniqueness manifested with some of His Names on parts or particulars.

God is Wahid: all creatures belong to, look to, and are created by One God. God is Ahad: most of the Creator’s Names are manifested in every individual thing.[4] For example, sunlight’s reflection on Earth may be seen as analogous to Unity, whereas the sun manifesting itself in each transparent object and water drop simultaneously (by its light, heat, and the seven colors within its light) may offer an analogy to Oneness. In the same way, the manifestation of most Divine Names in each thing, especially in each living creature and above all in each person, points to Oneness.

Thus this section indicates that the Lordship’s Majesty, which controls the universe, makes that huge sun a servant, a lamp, and a furnace for Earth’s living creatures; the mighty Earth a cradle, mansion, and place of trade; fire as a cook and friend; clouds as water filters and a means of nourishment; mountains as storehouses and treasuries; air as a fan for living creatures, all of which breathe; and water as a nurse to newcomers to life, a distributor of sweet drink supplying animate beings with the moisture necessary for existence. This Divine Lordship clearly demonstrates Divine Unity.

Who but the One Creator can make the sun serve Earth’s inhabitants? Who but the Single One of Unity can arrange the air and use it as a swift servant with many Earth-related duties? Who but the Single One of Unity can make fire a cook, and cause a tiny flame to consume thousands of tons of things? Every thing, element, and heavenly body points to the All-Majestic One by manifesting Its Lordship’s Majesty.

Just as Unity is apparent on the horizon of Grace and Majesty, Bounty and Benevolence proclaim Divine Oneness on the horizon of Grace and Mercy. Each living creature, especially men and women, are among the highest works of the all-embracing Divine artistry, and contain developed structures and organs that recognize and appreciate, desire and accept, innumerably different bounties. In particular, humanity absorbs the reflections of all Divine Names manifested in the universe. Like a focal point, all people display most of God’s Beautiful Names and proclaim His Oneness together through the mirror of their essential nature.

Seventh section: His stamp on the former is on all things having totality; His seal on the latter is on each particular body and limb. Just as the Majestic Maker’s greatest stamp is on the macrocosm as a whole, His stamp of Unity is on each of its parts and species. Each person’s (the microcosm) face and body demonstrates that God is One, so does each limb. In short, the All-Powerful One of Majesty places on all things a stamp of Unity bearing witness to Him, and on each a seal of Unity pointing to Him.

[3] Past eternity is not just the starting-point of time and therefore essential for the existence of things. In reality, it is like a mirror reflecting all past, present, and future time. People tend to imagine a limit for past time, which extends through a chain of things, and call it past eternity. But this is incorrect, as the following example shows: Imagine yourself holding a mirror that reflects the past on the right and the future on the left. The mirror can reflect only one direction at a time, for to show both simultaneously you would have to rise high above your original position and reach a point where both right and left unite, thereby making it impossible to call anything first or last, beginning or end.