Page 291 صفحة ٢٩١

if it were not for your Lord’s mercy: His favour to you has been truly great.

Say, ‘Even if all mankind and jinn came together to produce something like this Quran, they could not produce anything like it, however much they helped each other.’

In this Quran, We have set out all kinds of examples for people, yet most of them persist in disbelieving.

They say, ‘We will not believe for you [Muhammad] until you make a spring gush out of the ground for us;

or until you have a garden of date palms and vines, and make rivers pour through them;

or make the sky fall on us in pieces, as you claimed will happen; or bring God and the angels before us face to face;

or have a house made of gold; or ascend into the sky- even then, we will not believe in your ascension until you send a real book down for us to read.’ Say, ‘Glory be to my Lord! Am I anything but a mortal, a messenger?’

The only thing that kept these people from believing, when guidance came to them, was that they said, ‘How could God have sent a human being as a messenger?’

Say, ‘If there were angels walking about on earth, feeling at home, We would have sent them an angel from Heaven as a messenger.’

Say, ‘God is witness enough between me and you. He knows and observes His servants well.’