[ON THE KALIMA.]

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As the inhabited world is computed at twenty-four thousand leagues, so, if thou add the hours of night to those of day, there are twenty-four of those torturers of mankind also. Exchange them, if thou art dexterous and versed in transformations, for the twenty-four letters; the qâf of the affirmation of the two testimonies, if these be uttered without deceit or hypocrisy or disputation or contention, will take thee completely out of thy world, bringing thee, not to any instrument, but to kâf and nûn: on this road and

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in this street, beyond where wisdom is, this is thy sufficient task, to repeat, 'None is God but He.'

The confession of the faith when reckoned up gives twenty-four as the number of its letters, half of them twelve jewel-caskets from the ocean of life, the other half the twelve zodiacal constellations of the heavens of the faith; the caskets are full of the pearls of hope, the zodiac filled by the moon and sun:--not the pearls of any sea of this world, not the moon and sun of these heavens; but the pearls of the ocean of the world of Power, the moon and sun of the heaven of peace.