the exalting of the illiterate faithful above the learned opposers of the Faith.  In another sense, they mean the appearance of that immortal Beauty in the image of mortal man, with such human limitations as eating and drinking, poverty and riches, glory and abasement, sleeping and waking, and such other things as cast doubt in the minds of men, and cause them to turn away.  All such veils are symbolically referred to as “clouds.”

These are the “clouds” that cause the heavens of the knowledge and understanding of all that dwell on earth to be cloven asunder.  Even as He hath revealed:  “On that day shall the heaven be cloven by the clouds."(57) Even as the clouds prevent the eyes of men from beholding the sun, so do these things hinder the souls of men from recognizing the light of the divine Luminary.  To this beareth witness that which hath proceeded out of the mouth of the unbelievers as revealed in the sacred Book:  “And they have said:  ’What manner of apostle is this?  He eateth food, and walketh the streets.  Unless an angel be sent down and take part in His warnings, we will not believe.’"(58) Other Prophets, similarly, have been subject to poverty and afflictions, to hunger, and to the ills and chances of this world.  As these holy Persons were subject to such needs and wants, the people were, consequently, lost in the wilds of misgivings and doubts, and were afflicted with bewilderment and perplexity.  How, they wondered, could such a person be sent down from God, assert His ascendancy over all the peoples and kindreds of the earth, and claim Himself to be the goal of all creation,—­even as He hath said:  “But for Thee, I would not have created all that are in heaven and on earth,”—­and yet be subject to such trivial things?  You must undoubtedly have been informed of the tribulations, the poverty, the ills, and the degradation that have befallen every Prophet of God and His companions.  You must have heard how the heads of their followers were sent as presents unto different cities, how grievously they were hindered from that whereunto they were commanded.  Each and every one of them fell a prey to the hands of the enemies of His Cause, and had to suffer whatsoever they decreed.

It is evident that the changes brought about in every Dispensation constitute the dark clouds that intervene between the eye of man’s understanding and the divine Luminary which shineth forth from the dayspring of the divine Essence.  Consider how men for generations have been blindly imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith.  Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation, hath been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith—­principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to regard