All praise is for Allah, the Creator of the servants, the One who spread out the earth, made rivers flow, and rendered the hills green and lush. There is no beginning to His existence, nor any end to His infinity. He is the First, eternal from pre-eternity and ever-abiding without end. Foreheads bow to Him in prostration, and lips confess His oneness. He defined all things with particular forms at the moment of their creation to keep Himself distinct from their like. Imagination cannot define Him by limits, movement, limbs, or senses. It cannot be said about Him 'since when?' nor be limited by 'until when?'. He is manifest, but not as 'manifested from what'; He is hidden, but not 'within something'. He is not a body to disappear, nor concealed by any veil to become confined. He is not so near to things that He could be touched, nor physically separate so as to be distant. Nothing escapes Him: neither a prolonged gaze, nor whispered words, nor a height glimpsed afar or steps taken in secret, not in the darkness of nights, nor in the dense gloom which a shining moon shades, nor in the radiance of the sun as it alternates through cycles bringing light after darkness, with the coming and departing of night and day. He existed before every span, end, number, or reckoning. Those who attach boundaries, sides, residence, or locations to Him are imposing the restrictions meant for creation upon Him, but He is infinitely above such attributions. All limitations were set for His creatures, not for Him. He created things not from a pre-existing substance, nor modeled on prior examples; rather, whatever He created, He established perfectly and gave it good form. Nothing can defy His command, and He gains no benefit from obedience. His knowledge of those who died long ago is as complete as of those yet alive; as He knows the highest heavens, so too He knows the lowest earths. (A part of this sermon:) O creature whose form was perfected, who was nurtured in the womb's darkness and enveloped in layers and was protected in every way—your beginning was from an extract of clay; you were placed for a known period in a secure resting place, moving about in your mother's belly, unable to answer a call or hear a sound. Then you were brought forth from that lodging into a place unfamiliar to you, not knowing how to benefit from it. Who guided you to your mother's breast and showed you where to seek your need at the proper time? If a person cannot fully understand the attributes of a creature with form and limbs, how should he not be even more incapable and helpless about the attributes of the Creator, or how could he hope to reach Him through the limitations that apply to His creation?