(6) When Zuleikha tempted Joseph she cast a cloth over the face of the idol she used to worship. Joseph said to her, "O Zuleikha, thou art ashamed before a block of stone, and should I not be ashamed before Him who created the seven heavens and the earth?" A man once came to the saint Junaid and said, "I cannot keep my eyes from casting lascivious looks. How shall I do so?" "By remembering," Junaid answered, "that God sees you much more clearly than you see anyone else." In the traditions it is written that God has said, "Paradise is for those who intend to commit some sin and then remember that My eye is upon them and forbear." Abdullah Ibn Dinar relates, "Once I was walking with the Caliph Omar near Mecca when we met a shepherd's slave boy driving his flock. Omar said to him, "Sell me a sheep." The boy answered, "They are not mine, but my master's." Then, to try him, Omar said, "Well, you can tell him that a wolf carried one off, and he will know nothing about it." "No, he won't", said the boy, "but God will." Omar then wept, and, sending for the boy's master, purchased him and set him free, exclaiming, "For this saying thou art free in this world and shalt be free in the next."

(40) And Joseph ruled over all the land of Egypt, and all the princes of Pharaoh, and all his servants, and all who did the king's business loved him, for he walked in uprightness, for he was with- out pride and arrogance, and he had no respect of persons, and did not accept gifts, buthe judged in uprightness all the people of the land

(114) Is the blessed moon of love thereby eclipsed? The beauty of Joseph was not visible to his brethren; Was it therefore hidden from the eyes of Jacob? The eyes of Moses regarded his staff as a stick, The eye of the head was at issue with the divine eye, To the eyes of Moses his hand looked a mere hand, This subject in its entirety is endless, The only realities to him are lust and gluttony; To us believers lust and gluttony are only ideas, To all men whose creed is lust and gluttony,

(39) And he com- mitted all things into his hands, and the chief of the prison guards knew of nothing that was with him, for Joseph did everything, and the Lord perfected it. Joseph interprets the Dreams of the Chief Butler and the Chief Baker (xxxix. - ; cf. Gen. xl.).

(56) Therefore, O Man, look to it! [have a care] how you use the bestial Lust; it is (in itself) an Abomination before God, whether it be in the State of Wedlock, or out of it. But the right Love and Fidelity (in the Fear of God) covers it before the Countenance of God; and (through the Sun of the Virgin) it is regenerated to be a pure undefiled Creature again, in the Faith, if thy Confidence be in God.

(12) When those Egyptian women sacrificed their reason, They penetrated the mansion of Joseph's love; The Cup-bearer of life bore away their reason, Joseph's beauty was only an offshoot of God's beauty; Be lost, then, in God's beauty more than those women. Love of God cuts short reasoning, O beloved, Through love bewilderment befalls the power of speech, It no longer dares to utter what passes; For if it sets forth an answer, it fears greatly Therefore it closes lips from saying good or bad, In like manner the Prophet's companions tell us

(37) Behold, I give you a true Similitude: Suppose that thou wast a young Man, or young Maid, [or Virgin,] (as Adam was both of them in one [only] Person,) how dost thou think thou shouldst stand? Suppose thus, set a young Man of good Complexion, beautiful, and virtuous; and also a fair chaste modest Virgin, [or young Maid,] curiously featured, and put them together; and let them not only come to speak together, and converse lovingly one with another, but so that they may also embrace one another; and command them not to fall in love together, not so much as in the least Thought, also not to have any Inclination to it, much less any Infection in the Will; and let these two be thus together forty Days and forty Nights, and converse with one another in mere Joy; and command them further, that they keep their Will and Mind steadfast, and never conceive one Thought to desire one another, and not to infect [themselves] with any Essence or Property at all, but that their Will and Inclination be most steadfast and firm to the Command; and that the young Man shall will [and purpose] never to copulate with this, or no other Maid [or Virgin;] and in like Manner, the Maid, [or Virgin] be enjoined the same. Now, thou Reason, full of Misery, Defects, and Infirmities, how do you think you should possibly stand here? Would you not promise fair with Adam? But you would not be able to perform it.

(40) And the Lord gave Joseph favour and mercy in the eyes of Pharaoh, and Pharaoh said unto his servants : " We shall not find such a wise and discreet man as this man, for the spirit of the Lord is with him."

(1) The elementary teaching, then, of this the perfecting service, through the things done over the Divine Muron, shews this, in my judgment, that, that which is holy and of sweet savour in the minds of devout men is covered, as with a veil, since it Divinely enjoins upon holy men to have their beautiful and well-savoured assimilations in virtue to the hidden God not seen for vain glory. For the hidden comeliness of God is unsullied, and is sweet beyond conception, and manifested for spiritual contemplation to the intellectual alone, through a desire to have the unsullied images of virtue in souls of the same pattern. For by looking away from the undistorted and well imitated image of the Godlike virtue to that contemplated and fragrant beauty, he thus moulds and fashions it to the most beautiful imitation. And, as in the case of sensible images, if the artist look without distraction upon the archetypal form, not distracted by sight of anything else, or in any way divided in attention, he will duplicate, if I may so speak, the very person that is being sketched, whoever he may be, and will shew the reality in the likeness, and the archetype in the image, and each in each, save the difference of substance; thus, to copyists who love the beautiful in mind, the persistent and unflinching contemplation of the sweet-savoured and hidden beauty will confer the unerring and most Godlike appearance. Naturally, then, the divine copyists, who unflinchingly mould their own intellectual contemplation to the superessentially sweet and contemplated comeliness, do. none of their divinely imitated virtues "to be seen of men, as the Divine text expresses it; but reverently gaze upon the most holy things of the Church, veiled in the Divine Muron as in a figure. Wherefore, these also, by religiously concealing that which is holy and most Divine in virtue within their Godlike and God-engraved mind, look away to the archetypal conception alone; for not only are they blind to things dissimilar, but neither are they drawn down to gaze upon them. Wherefore, as becomes their character, they do neither love things, merely seeming good and just, but those really being such; nor do they look to opinion, upon which the multitude irrationally congratulate themselves, but, after the Divine example, by distinguishing the good or evil as it is in itself, they are Divine images of the most supremely Divine sweetness, which, having the truly sweet within itself, is not turned to the anomalously seeming of the multitude, moulding Its genuineness to the true images of Itself.