(34) It continued a long Time in the Covenant of Circumcision (in the Life and Light of the Father) with the Shadows and Types of the Incarnation of the Son; but these could not reach the Earnestness of the Coming again of the Body out of the Grave; but the Word must become Man, if Man must rise again out of the Grave. It [the Covenant] ransomed the Soul indeed, so. that it could stand before the Father (in the Gate of the Corruptibility) in the Fire of the Sharpness, but not in the pleasant Joy, before the Light of the holy Trinity; and besides, it could not bring the new Body forth out of the Element, for it was defiled too much with Sin.

(3) A little further consideration will show how entirely distinct the human soul is from the body and its members. Limb after limb may be paralysed and cease working, but the individuality of the soul is unimpaired. Further, the body which you have now is no longer the body which you had as child, but entirely different, yet your personality now is identical with your personality then. It is therefore easy to conceive of it as persisting when the body is done with altogether, along with its essential attributes which were independent of the body, such as the knowledge and love of God. This is the meaning of that saying of the Koran, "The good things abide." But if, instead of carrying away with

(15) We being here in describing the Corruptibility of Adam, the Spirit frames in our Thoughts a heavenly Mystery, concerning Adam's Rib, which the Fiat took from him, and made a Woman of it; which [Rib] Adam afterwards must want; for the Text in Moses rightly says, God closed up the Place with Flesh.

(6) On the authority of Al-Numan bin Basheer, who said: I heared the messenger of Allah say:

"That which is lawful is plain and that which is unlawful is plain and between the two of them are doubtful matters about which not many people know. Thus he who avoids doubtful matters clears himself in regard to his religion and his honor, but he who falls into doubtful matters falls into that which is unlawful, like the shepherd who pastures around a sanctuary, all but grazing therein. Truly every king has a sanctuary, and truly Allah's sanctuary is His prohibitions. Truly in the body there is a morsel of flesh which, if it be whole, all the body is whole and which, if it be diseased, all of it is diseased. Truly it is the heart."

narrated by Bukhari and Muslim

(5) There is a very great difference between the earlier and the later texts of this chapter. Former translators, having chiefly the Turin text before them, have understood the title of the chapter as intended “to remove the impurities from the heart of the deceased person.” The Turin text of the chapter is really unintelligible, and even in the earlier texts certain passages are so corrupt as to defy translation

(17) Although God is Almighty, He can only work in a heart when He finds readiness or makes it. He works differently in men than in stones. For this we may take the following illustration: if we bake in one oven three loaves of barley-bread, of rye-bread, and of wheat, we shall find the same heat of the oven affects them differently; when one is well-baked, another will be still raw, and another yet more raw. That is not due to the heat, but to the variety of the materials. Similarly God works in all hearts not alike but in proportion as He finds them prepared and susceptible.

If the heart is to be ready for the highest, it must he vacant of all other things. If I wish to write on a white tablet, whatever else is written on the tablet, however noble its purport, is a hindrance to me. If I am to write, I must wipe the tablet clean of everything, and the tablet is most suitable for my purpose when it is blank. Similarly, if God is to write on my heart, everything else must come out of it till it is really sanctified. Only so can God work His highest will, and so the sanctified heart has no outward object at all.

(1) And after this they will turn to Me in all uprightness and with all (their) heart and with all (their) soul, and I shall circumcise the foreskin of their heart and the foreskin of the heart of their seed, and I shall create in them a holy spirit, and I shall cleanse them so that they shall not turn away from Me from that day unto eternity.

(5) And if the Soul had not been within it, then Adam should have continued to be an unreasonable Beast; but seeing the Soul out of the Limbus had been breathed into Adam by the Holy Ghost, therefore now the Mercifulness (viz. the Heart of God) must do its best again, and bring again the Center out of the heavenly Limbus, and himself become Flesh, and by the Fiat generate the new Man in the Soul, which is hidden in the old. For the old belongs only to the Corruptibility, and goes into its Ether, and the new remains for ever. But how this came to pass, you have the following fundamental Information of it, wherein if you be regenerated from God, you may see the old and new Man into the very Heart, because you have the Pearl; but if not, then you shall scarce see here the old Adam, and you shall not so much as look upon the new.

(3) When men are set free from the womb the primordial spirit dwells in the square inch (between the eyes), but the conscious spirit dwells below in the heart. This lower leshly heart has the shape of a large peach: it is covered by the wings of the lungs, supported by the liver, and served by the bowels. This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terri ying it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the Heavenly Heart in the head, when would it have been in the least moved? Dost thou ask: Can the Heavenly Heart not be moved? Then I answer: How could the true thought in the square inch be moved? If it really moves, it is not well. For when ordinary men die, then it moves, but that is not good. It is best indeed if the Light has. already forti ied itself in a spirit-body and its life-force gradually penetrated the instincts and movements. But that is a secret which has not been revealed for thousands of years.

It is related that the Prophet was once present at a banquet, and after he had eaten and drunk, his servant Anas threw the napkin which he had used into the fire, and the napkin was not burnt, 'but only purified by the fire. On another occasion a caravan of Arabs was traveling in the desert, and was in sore distress through lack of water, whereupon the Prophet miraculously increased the water in a single water-skin, so that it sufficed to supply the needs of all the travelers. Moreover, the negro who carried the water-skin was rendered as white and fair as Joseph. Again, a heathen woman came to the Prophet carrying her infant, aged only two months, and the infant saluted the Prophet as the veritable apostle of God. Again, when the prophet was about to put on his sandals, an eagle swooped down upon one of them and carried it off, when a viper was seen to drop from the sandal. The Prophet was at first inclined to grumble at this stroke of ill-luck; but when he saw the viper his discontent was turned into thankfulness to God, who had thus miraculously saved him from being bitten by the viper.

(2) When Joseph was taken, his father Jacob lost his sight because of the tears of blood that flowed from his eyes. The name of Joseph was always on his lips. At last the Angel Gabriel went to him and said: ' If ever again you utter the

word ''Joseph'' I will strike your name from the roll of prophets and messengers.' When Jacob received this message from God the name of Joseph was lifted from his tongue, but he did not cease to repeat it in his heart. One night he saw Joseph in a dream, and would have called to him, but remembering God's command, he beat his breast and heaved a sad sigh from his immaculate heart. Then Gabriel came: ' God says that although you have not pronounced the name "Joseph" with your tongue, you have heaved a sigh, and thus destroyed all the effect of your repentance.'

(27) And as Adam (after his Entrance into the Spirit of this World) must have his Essences broken, when the Woman was made out of him, and a Rib was broken from his Side for a Wife, so must Blood flow out of all the Essences of Christ in his Scourging, and his Side must be opened with a Spear, that therein we may behold the broken Man within us, which the Devil had mocked; thus this Christ must bear the Reproach for us in his Body.

(4) That body again in man is the heart within man, for in it the prânas (which are everything) rest, and do not go beyond.

(2) Therefore, when the womb of the soul, by the father's will, turns itself inward, she is baptized and immediately cleansed of external pollution forced upon her, just as dirty clothing is soaked in water and stirred until the dirt is removed and it is clean. So the cleansing of the soul is to recover the freshness of her former nature and to become as she was.

(18) And now there was no [Remedy or] Counsel for this Image, except it were new regenerated by the Soul, through the Heart and Light of God, through which the new Element before God (viz. the Body of the Soul) is regenerated; or else the Deity would not, and could not dwell therein; this, Man (by his own Virtue or Power) was not able to attain; therefore if it was to be done, then the Barmhertzigkeit, Mercifulness, or Mercy of God must do it.

(107) And he arose in the hands of the midwife, and opened his mouth and blessed the Lord of heaven.

(98) Now the heart signifieth the sun, which is the beginning of life in the outward body of this world. Now, while the body stands in the mobility or life, thou canst not say that the animated or soulish birth goeth away or departeth from the heart.

(7) In like manner also the spirit went forth from the heart into all the qualifying or fountain veins of the body, and kindled all the seven spirits, and so the royal body was glorified instantaneously, and there he stood as a king of God, in an unsearchable clarity or brightness, transcendently excelling the whole heavenly host or army.

(33) And there the noble Virgin (in the Spirit of the Prophets) pointed at the Seed of the Woman, at his Incarnation [or becoming Man,] his suffering and dying for the poor Soul of Man, that it might be delivered from the eternal Death, and be regenerated anew, in the Son of the Virgin; which was done after three Thousand nine Hundred and seventy Years; and then the Word of the Promise, which God promised to Adam and Eve in the Paradise in the Garden of Eden, when they fell into Sin, and which imaged [or imprinted] itself in the Center of the Life, through which all Men that come to God are justified, became Man.

(19) Therefore Eve was for certain created out of all Adam's Essences, and so Adam thereupon had a great Rent; and so likewise the Woman might come to her Perfection to [be] the Image of God; and this again shows a great Mystery, whereby the Virgin very preciously witnesses again, that the Son of the Virgin has not only suffered his Side to be pierced through, and shed his Blood out of the Hole of his Side, but he has also suffered his Hands and Feet to be struck through, and a Crown of Thorns to be pressed upon his Head, so that the Blood gushed out from thence; and in his Body he endured to be whipped, so that his Blood run down all over. So very lowly has the Son of the Virgin debased himself, to a help the sick and broken Adam, and his weak and imperfect Eve, to repair them and bring them again into the first Glory,