“Certain ones among you,” He declared, “have said: ‘He it is Who hath laid claim to be God.’ By God! This is a gross calumny. I am but a servant of God Who hath believed in Him and in His signs... My tongue, and My heart, and My inner and My outer being testify that there is no God but Him, that all others have been created by His behest, and been fashioned through the operation of His Will.... I am He that telleth abroad the favors with which God hath, through His bounty, favored Me. If this be My transgression, then I am truly the first of the transgressors....”(103) Bahá’u’lláh’s writings seize upon a host of metaphors in their attempt to express the paradox that lies at the heart of the phenomenon of God’s Revelation of His Will: I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the drooping wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight.(104) This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred. Can it be still when the tempestuous winds are blowing? Nay, by Him Who is the Lord of all Names and Attributes! They move it as they list....(105) THE COVENANT OF GOD WITH HUMANKIND In June 1877, Bahá’u’lláh at last emerged from the strict confinement of the prison-city of Akká, and moved with His family to “Mazra‘ih”, a small estate a few miles north of the city.(106) As had been predicted in His statement to the Turkish government, Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz had been overthrown and assassinated in a palace coup, and gusts from the winds of political change sweeping the world were beginning to invade even the shuttered precincts of the Ottoman imperial system. After a brief two-year stay at Mazra‘ih, Bahá’u’lláh moved to “Bahjí”, a large mansion surrounded by gardens, which His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had rented for Him and the members of His extended family.(107) The remaining twelve years of His life were devoted to His writings on a wide range of spiritual and social issues, and to receiving a stream of Bahá’í pilgrims who made their way, with great difficulty, from Persia and other lands. Throughout the Near and Middle East the nucleus of a community life was beginning to take shape among those who had accepted His message. For its guidance, Bahá’u’lláh had revealed a system of laws and institutions designed to give practical effect to the principles in His writings.(108) Authority was vested in councils democratically elected by the whole community, provisions were made to exclude the possibility of a clerical elite arising, and principles of consultation and group decision making were established.