And yet, immeasurably exalted as is the station of the Báb, and marvellous
as have been the happenings that have signalized the advent of His Cause,
so wondrous a Revelation cannot but pale before the effulgence of that Orb
of unsurpassed splendor Whose rise He foretold and whose superiority He
readily acknowledged. We have but to turn to the writings of the Báb
Himself in order to estimate the significance of that Quintessence of
Light of which He, with all the majesty of His power, was but its humble
and chosen Precursor.
Again and again the Báb admits, in glowing and unequivocal language, the
préeminent character of a Faith destined to be made manifest after Him and
to supersede His Cause. “The germ,” He asserts in the Persian Bayán, the
chief and best-preserved repository of His laws, “that holds within itself
the potentialities of the Revelation that is to come is endowed with a
potency superior to the combined forces of all those who follow me.” “Of
all the tributes,” the Báb repeatedly proclaims in His writings, “I have
paid to Him Who is to come after Me, the greatest is this, My written
confession, that no words of Mine can adequately describe Him, nor can any
reference to Him in my Book, the Bayán, do justice to His Cause.”
Addressing Siyyid Yaḥyáy-i-Darábí, surnamed Vahíd, the most learned and
influential among his followers, He says: “By the righteousness of Him
Whose power causeth the seed to germinate and Who breatheth the spirit of
life into all things, were I to be assured that in the day of His
Manifestation thou wilt deny Him, I would unhesitatingly disown thee and
repudiate thy faith.... If, on the other hand, I be told that a Christian,
who beareth no allegiance to My Faith, will believe in Him, the same will
I regard as the apple of Mine eye.”
The Outpouring of Divine Grace
“If all the peoples of the world,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself affirms, “be
invested with the powers and attributes destined for the Letters of the
Living, the chosen disciples of the Báb, whose station is ten thousand
times more glorious than any which the apostles of old have attained, and
if they, one and all, should, swift as the twinkling of an eye, hesitate
to recognize the Light of my Revelation, their faith shall be of no avail,
and they shall be accounted among the infidels.” “So tremendous,” He
writes, “is the outpouring of Divine grace in this Dispensation that if
mortal hands could be swift enough to record them, within the space of a
single day and night, there would stream verses of such number as to be
equivalent to the whole of the Persian Bayán.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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