22 Preface هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذي لا إِلٰهَ إِلّا هُوَ ۖ عالِمُ الغَيبِ وَالشَّهادَةِ ۖ هُوَ الرَّحمٰنُ الرَّحيمُYusuf AliGod is He, than Whom there is no other god;-1 Who knows (all things) both secret and open; He, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Here follows a passage of great sublimity, summing up the attributes of God. In this verse, we have the general attributes, which give us the fundamental basis on which we can form some idea of God. We start with the proposition that there is nothing else like Him. We think of His Unity; all the varying and conflicting forces in Creation are controlled by Him and look to Him, and we can never get a true idea of Him unless we understand the meaning of Unity. His knowledge extends to everything seen and unseen, present and future, near and far, in being and not in being: in fact these contrasts, which apply to our knowledge, do not apply to Him. His Grace and His Mercy are unbounded: see 1:1, and n. 19; and unless we realise these, we can have no true conception of our position in the working of His Will and Plan. (R).