O ye who have turned your faces toward the Exalted Beauty! By night, by
day, at morningtide and sunset, when darkness draweth on, and at early
light I remember, and ever have remembered, in the realms of my mind and
heart, the loved ones of the Lord. I beg of Him to bestow His
confirmations upon those loved ones, dwellers in that pure and holy land,
and to grant them successful outcomes in all things: that in their
character, their behaviour, their words, their way of life, in all they
are and do, He will make them to achieve distinction among men; that He
will gather them into the world community, their hearts filled with
ecstasy and fervour and yearning love, with knowledge and certitude, with
steadfastness and unity, their faces beauteous and bright.
O ye beloved of the Lord! This day is the day of union, the day of the
ingathering of all mankind. 'Verily God loveth those who, as though they
were a solid wall, do battle for His Cause in serried lines!'(69) Note
that He saith 'in serried lines'--meaning crowded and pressed together, one
locked to the next, each supporting his fellows. To do battle, as stated
in the sacred verse, doth not, in this greatest of all dispensations, mean
to go forth with sword and spear, with lance and piercing arrow--but rather
weaponed with pure intent, with righteous motives, with counsels helpful
and effective, with godly attributes, with deeds pleasing to the Almighty,
with the qualities of heaven. It signifieth education for all mankind,
guidance for all men, the spreading far and wide of the sweet savours of
the spirit, the promulgation of God's proofs, the setting forth of
arguments conclusive and divine, the doing of charitable deeds.
Whensoever holy souls, drawing on the powers of heaven, shall arise with
such qualities of the spirit, and march in unison, rank on rank, every one
of those souls will be even as one thousand, and the surging waves of that
mighty ocean will be even as the battalions of the Concourse on high. What
a blessing that will be--when all shall come together, even as once
separate torrents, rivers and streams, running brooks and single drops,
when collected together in one place will form a mighty sea. And to such a
degree will the inherent unity of all prevail, that the traditions, rules,
customs and distinctions in the fanciful life of these populations will be
effaced and vanish away like isolated drops, once the great sea of oneness
doth leap and surge and roll.
I swear by the Ancient Beauty, that at such a time overwhelming grace will
so encircle all, and the sea of grandeur will so overflow its shores, that
the narrowest strip of water will grow wide as an endless sea, and every
merest drop will be even as the shoreless deep.
O ye loved ones of God! Struggle and strive to reach that high station,
and to make a splendour so to shine across these realms of earth that the
rays of it will be reflected back from a dawning-point on the horizon of
eternity. This is the very foundation of the Cause of God. This is the
very pith of the Law of God. This is the mighty structure raised up by the
Manifestations of God. This is why the orb of God's world dawneth. This is
why the Lord establisheth Himself on the throne of His human body.
O ye loved ones of God! See how the Exalted One(70)--may the souls of all
on earth be a ransom for Him--for this high purpose made His blessed heart
the target for affliction's spears; and because the real intent of the
Ancient Beauty--for Him may the souls of the Concourse on high be offered
up--was to win this same supernal goal, the Exalted One bared His holy
breast for a target to a myriad bullets fired by the people of malice and
hate, and with utter meekness died the martyr's death. On the dust of this
pathway the holy blood of thousands upon thousands of sacred souls gushed
out, and many a time the blessed body of a loyal lover of God was hanged
to the gallows tree.
The Abha Beauty Himself--may the spirit of all existence be offered up for
His loved ones--bore all manner of ordeals, and willingly accepted for
Himself intense afflictions. No torment was there left that His sacred
form was not subjected to, no suffering that did not descend upon Him. How
many a night, when He was chained, did He go sleepless because of the
weight of His iron collar; how many a day the burning pain of the stocks
and fetters gave Him no moment's peace. From Niyavaran to Tihran they made
Him run--He, that embodied spirit, He Who had been accustomed to repose
against cushions of ornamented silk--chained, shoeless, His head bared; and
down under the earth, in the thick darkness of that narrow dungeon, they
shut Him up with murderers, rebels and thieves. Ever and again they
assailed Him with a new torment, and all were certain that from one moment
to the next He would suffer a martyr's death. After some time they
banished Him from His native land, and sent Him to countries alien and far
away. During many a year in 'Iraq, no moment passed but the arrow of a new
anguish struck His holy heart; with every breath a sword came down upon
that sacred body, and He could hope for no moment of security and rest.
From every side His enemies mounted their attack with unrelenting hate;
and singly and alone He withstood them all. After all these tribulations,
these body blows, they flung Him out of 'Iraq in the continent of Asia, to
the continent of Europe, and in that place of bitter exile, of wretched
hardships, to the wrongs that were heaped upon Him by the people of the
Qur'an were now added the virulent persecutions, the powerful attacks, the
plottings, the slanders, the continual hostilities, the hate and malice,
of the people of the Bayan. My pen is powerless to tell it all; but ye
have surely been informed of it. Then, after twenty-four years in this,
the Most Great Prison, in agony and sore affliction, His days drew to a
close.
To sum it up, the Ancient Beauty was ever, during His sojourn in this
transitory world, either a captive bound with chains, or living under a
sword, or subjected to extreme suffering and torment, or held in the Most
Great Prison. Because of His physical weakness, brought on by His
afflictions, His blessed body was worn away to a breath; it was light as a
cobweb from long grieving. And His reason for shouldering this heavy load
and enduring all this anguish, which was even as an ocean that hurleth its
waves to high heaven--His reason for putting on the heavy iron chains and
for becoming the very embodiment of utter resignation and meekness, was to
lead every soul on earth to concord, to fellow-feeling, to oneness; to
make known amongst all peoples the sign of the singleness of God, so that
at last the primal oneness deposited at the heart of all created things
would bear its destined fruit, and the splendour of 'No difference canst
thou see in the creation of the God of Mercy,'(71) would cast abroad its
rays.
Now is the time, O ye beloved of the Lord, for ardent endeavour. Struggle
ye, and strive. And since the Ancient Beauty was exposed by day and night
on the field of martyrdom, let us in our turn labour hard, and hear and
ponder the counsels of God; let us fling away our lives, and renounce our
brief and numbered days. Let us turn our eyes away from empty fantasies of
this world's divergent forms, and serve instead this pre-eminent purpose,
this grand design. Let us not, because of our own imaginings, cut down
this tree that the hand of heavenly grace hath planted; let us not, with
the dark clouds of our illusions, our selfish interests, blot out the
glory that streameth from the Abha Realm. Let us not be as barriers that
wall out the rolling ocean of Almighty God. Let us not prevent the pure,
sweet scents from the garden of the All-Glorious Beauty from blowing far
and wide. Let us not, on this day of reunion, shut out the vernal downpour
of blessings from on high. Let us not consent that the splendours of the
Sun of Truth should ever fade and disappear. These are the admonitions of
God, as set forth in His Holy Books, His Scriptures, His Tablets that tell
out His counsellings to the sincere.
The glory rest upon you, and God's mercy, and God's blessings.