And further We have said: "Regard ye the world as a man’s body, which is
afflicted with divers ailments, and the recovery of which dependeth upon
the harmonizing of all of its component elements. Gather ye around that
which We have prescribed unto you, and walk not in the ways of such as
create dissension. Meditate on the world and the state of its people. He,
for Whose sake the world was called into being, hath been imprisoned in
the most desolate of cities (Akká), by reason of that which the hands of
the wayward have wrought. From the horizon of His prison-city He summoneth
mankind unto the Dayspring of God, the Exalted, the Great. Exultest thou
over the treasures thou dost possess, knowing they shall perish? Rejoicest
thou in that thou rulest a span of earth, when the whole world, in the
estimation of the people of Bahá, is worth as much as the black in the eye
of a dead ant? Abandon it unto such as have set their affections upon it,
and turn thou unto Him Who is the Desire of the world. Whither are gone
the proud and their palaces? Gaze thou into their tombs, that thou mayest
profit by this example, inasmuch as We made it a lesson unto every
beholder. Were the breezes of Revelation to seize thee, thou wouldst flee
the world, and turn unto the Kingdom, and wouldst expend all thou
possessest, that thou mayest draw nigh unto this sublime Vision."
We bade a Christian dispatch this Tablet, and he informed Us that he
transmitted both the original and its translation. God, the Almighty, the
All-Knowing, hath knowledge of all things.
One of the sections of the Súratu’l-Haykal is the Tablet addressed to His
Majesty, the Czar of Russia—may God, exalted and glorified be He—assist
him:
"O Czar of Russia! Incline thine ear unto the voice of God, the King, the
Holy, and turn thou unto Paradise, the Spot wherein abideth He Who, among
the Concourse on high, beareth the most excellent titles, and Who, in the
kingdom of creation, is called by the name of God, the Effulgent, the
All-Glorious. Beware that nothing deter thee from setting thy face towards
thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Most Merciful. We, verily, have heard the
thing for which thou didst supplicate thy Lord, whilst secretly communing
with Him. Wherefore, the breeze of My loving-kindness wafted forth, and
the sea of My mercy surged, and We answered thee in truth. Thy Lord,
verily, is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. Whilst I lay, chained and
fettered, in the prison of Ṭihrán, one of thy ministers extended Me his
aid. Wherefore hath God ordained for thee a station which the knowledge of
none can comprehend except His knowledge. Beware lest thou barter away
this sublime station."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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