clock the machinery of which are the heavenly spheres; its hands count the days, and the years, and the life of mankind, and term of the world. They are the equivalent of the seconds, minutes, hours, and days of your clock. The morning comes after every night, and the summer comes after every spring – resulting from the motion of that clock – which is a concealed sign and subtle hint that the morning of the spring of the resurrection will come, breaking forth from the vast clock of the universe.
• If you were to ask: Things are not resurrected identically in the repeated resurrections in the universe, so how does this show that they will be restored to life identically at the supreme resurrection?
You would be told: A human individual is like a species of other creatures. For the light of thought affords such breadth and expansion to man’s hopes and his spirit that they encompass the past, present, and future. If he were to swallow the past and the future together with the present, it would not satisfy his hopes. For the light of thought renders his nature lofty, his value general, his view universal, his perfection unlimited, his pleasures continuous, and his sufferings constant. As for the members of other species, their natures are particular, their value individual, their views limited, their perfections restricted, their pleasures instantaneous, and their suffering fleeting. So why should the existence of a sort of resurrection in the [other] species not point to a general resurrection of the human individual?
T h e S i x t h P r o o f , which is allusive: This is the unlimited nature of man’s potentialities. Man’s unbounded conceptions and thoughts are born of his infinite hopes. These arise from his unrestricted desires, which in turn arise from his unlimited abilities. These are concealed in his boundless potentialities, planted in the substance of his spirit, which Allah the Most High has ennobled. All of these point testifying to eternal happiness beyond the bodily resurrection of the dead, fixing their gaze on it from afar. Reflect on this!
T h e S e v e n t h P r o o f , conveying the good news that the mercy of the Most Merciful and Compassionate One tells of the coming of the supreme mercy, by which I mean eternal felicity. For it is through eternal felicity that mercy becomes mercy and bounty becomes bounty, and the universe is delivered from the lamentations and general mourning arising from eternal separation, which transforms bounty into an affliction. If the spirit of bounty, that is, eternal felicity, were not to come, all bounties would be transformed into misfortunes, and it would necessitate obstinate denial of the mercy that is self-evidently testified to by the whole universe. O