61 Preface ذٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ اللَّهَ يولِجُ اللَّيلَ فِي النَّهارِ وَيولِجُ النَّهارَ فِي اللَّيلِ وَأَنَّ اللَّهَ سَميعٌ بَصيرٌYusuf AliThat is because God merges night into day, and He merges day into night, and verily it is God Who hears and sees (all things).1To some it may appear strange or even irreconcilable that God should be both Merciful and Just: that He should both protect His devotees and yet ask for their self-sacrifice; that he should command them to return good for evil, and yet permit retaliation under certain restrictions. But such thoughts are shortsighted. Do they not see many inconsistencies in all Life, all Nature, and all Creation? Why, even in such simple phenomena as Night and Day, the one merges into the other, and no one can tell when precisely the one begins and the other ends. Yet we can see in a rough sort of way that the one gives rest and the other activity, that the one reveals the beauties of the starry heavens and the other the splendour of the sun. In countless ways we can see there the wisdom and the fine artistry of God. And there are subtle nuances and mergings in nature that our intelligence can hardly penetrate. Now human life and human relations are far more complicated, and it is God alone Who can see all the subtle distinctions and hear the cries of all His creatures, in a world which Tennyson described as “red in tooth and claw” (Cf. 35:13).'