290

may attain, is to be without an attribute and with-
out a mark. It was said:

" He who has no mark, his mark are we."

Besides, those who acknowledge an ascent with-
out a limit, if in the pure being and true essence of
the glorious and most high God, who is exempt and
free from ascent and descent, color, odor, outward-
ness and inwardness, increase and decrease, they
admit a progression, it must also be admissible in
the existence of a Sufi professing the unity of God.
And if they do not admit a gradation of progress
in God, then they ought not to admit it in the pro-
fessor of the divine unity, who in the exalted state
of purity and holiness became united with him.
When a devotee among men,, having left the con-
nexion with works of supererogation, arrives at that
of divine precepts, he realises the words :

" When thou didst cast thy arrows against them, thou didst not cast
** them, hut God slew them."i

It may be said : Certainly, he who became one
with God, and of whose being not an atom remained,

1 Koran, chap. .VIII. v. 17. We have mentioned (p. 100, note 2) Mu-
hammed's victory gained at Bedr over a superior force of the Koreish. The
prophet, by the direction of the angel Gabriel, took a handful of gravel,
and threw it towards the enemy, saying:" May their faces be confounded:"
whereupon they immediately turned their backs and fled. Hence the
above passage is also rendered: " Neither didst thou, 0 Muhammed!
" cast the gravel into th<$r eyes, when thou didst seem to cast it, but God
*' cast it"