God willing, this Thirty-Third Letter of Thirty-Three Windows will bring to belief those without belief, strengthen the belief of those whose belief is weak, make certain the belief of those whose belief is strong but imitative, give greater breadth to the belief of those whose belief is certain, lead to progress in knowledge of God –the basis and means of all true perfection–.
The Words is the first volume of the Risale-i Nur and consists of thirty-three independent parts or Words, which explain and prove aspects of the fundamental matters of belief. These consist of such matters as God s existence and unity, the manifestation of the Divine Names and attributes in creation, the resurrection of the dead and the hereafter, prophethood, the miraculousness of the Qur’an, the angels, the immortality of man s spirit, Divine Determining (fate or destiny), together with such questions as the true nature of man and the universe, and man s need to worship God. Each subject is explained with comparisons and allegories, and demonstrated with reasoned arguments and logical proofs. The most profound aspects of the truths of belief, which were formerly studied only by advanced scholars, are explained in such a way that everyone, even those to whom the subject is new, may understand without difficulty. This work answers brilliantly the attacks made on the Qur’an in the name of science and philosophy, and demonstrates the rationality of belief in God and logical absurdity of denial. It shows too that man s happiness and salvation both in this world and the next lie only in belief in God and knowledge of God.
A contemporaneous reviewer called James Fenimore Cooper's England "unquestionably the most searching and thoughtful, not TO say philosophical of any" of the books "published by an American on England." Another cited with approval the "potent causticity" with which a fellow reviewer "develope[d] the gangrene of the author's mind in its most foul and diseased state." Such were the extremes of response elicited by publication in 1837 of the fourth and most controversial book in Cooper's travel series, Gleanings in Europe. Partly because of his ambivalence for most things British, England is perhaps the most fascinating of the travel volumes to the modern reader. Probably no American of his time was received more hospitably by the British upper classes, nor did any reciprocate with shrewder or more scalding criticism. Cooper himself thought well of his book, taking some delight in the stir it made in London and expecting it to do much good at home. The modern reader will be delighted by his novelist's eye for the revealing scene or detail and by the multidimensional perspective he provides on British-American cultural conflicts of the 1820s and 1830s.
