“But as to this sect, it is twenty years and more that they have been tormented by day and by night with the fierceness of the Royal anger, and that they have been cast each one into a [different] land by the blasts of the tempests of the King’s wrath. How many children have been left fatherless! How many fathers have become childless! How many mothers have not dared, through fear and dread, to mourn over their slaughtered children! Many [were] the servants [of God] who at eve were in the utmost wealth and opulence, and at dawn were beheld in the extreme of poverty and abasement! There is no land but hath been dyed with their blood and no air whereunto their groanings have not arisen. And during these few years the arrows of affliction have rained down without intermission from the clouds of fate. Yet, notwithstanding all these visitations and afflictions, the fire of divine love is in such fashion kindled in their hearts that, were they all to be hewn in pieces, they would not forswear the love of the Beloved of all the dwellers upon earth; nay rather with their whole souls do they yearn and hope for what may befall [them] in the way of God. “O King! The gales of the mercy of the Merciful One have converted these servants and drawn them to the region of the [Divine] Unity--‘The witness of the faithful lover is in his sleeve’--but some of the doctors of Persia have troubled the most luminous heart of the King of the Age with regard to those who are admitted into the Sanctuary of the Merciful One and those who make for the Kaaba of Wisdom. O would that the world-ordering judgment of the King might decide that this Servant should meet those doctors, and, in the presence of His Majesty the King, adduce arguments and proofs! This Servant is ready, and hopeth of God that such a conference may be brought about, so that the truth of the matter may become evident and apparent before His Majesty the King. And afterwards the decision is in thy hand, and I am ready to confront the throne of thy sovereignty; then give judgment for Me or against Me. The Merciful Lord saith in the Furqán, which is the enduring proof amidst the host of existences, ‘Desire death, then, if ye be sincere.’(30) He hath declared the desiring of death to be the proof of sincerity; and it will be apparent in the mirror of the [King’s] luminous mind which party it is that hath this day foregone life in the way of Him [Who is] adored by the dwellers upon earth. Had the doctrinal books of this people, [composed] in proof of that wherein they are, been written with the blood which has been shed in His way (exalted is He), books innumerable would assuredly have been apparent and visible amongst mankind. “How, then, can one repudiate this people, whose words and deeds are consistent, and accept those persons who neither have foregone nor will forego one atom of the consideration [which they enjoy] in the way of [God] the Sovereign?