until the rise of the sun of the Muhammadan Dispensation?  What law could be their stay and guide?  How could such people be made the victims of the avenging wrath of God, the omnipotent Avenger?  How could they be afflicted with the scourge of chastisement by the heavenly King?  Above all, how could the flow of the grace of the All-Bountiful be stayed?  How could the ocean of His tender mercies be stilled?  We take refuge with God, from that which His creatures have fancied about Him!  Exalted is He above their comprehension!

Dear friend!  Now when the light of God’s everlasting Morn is breaking; when the radiance of His holy words:  “God is the light of the heavens and of the earth"(67) is shedding illumination upon all mankind; when the inviolability of His tabernacle is being proclaimed by His sacred utterance:  “God hath willed to perfect His light;"(68) and the Hand of omnipotence, bearing His testimony:  “In His grasp He holdeth the kingdom of all things,” is being outstretched unto all the peoples and kindreds of the earth; it behooveth us to gird up the loins of endeavour, that haply, by the grace and bounty of God, we may enter the celestial City:  “Verily, we are God’s,” and abide within the exalted habitation:  “And unto Him we do return.”  It is incumbent upon thee, by the permission of God, to cleanse the eye of thine heart from the things of the world, that thou mayest realize the infinitude of divine knowledge, and mayest behold Truth so clearly that thou wilt need no proof to demonstrate His reality, nor any evidence to bear witness unto His testimony.

O affectionate seeker!  Shouldst thou soar in the holy realm of the spirit, thou wouldst recognize God manifest and exalted above all things, in such wise that thine eyes would behold none else but Him.  “God was alone; there was none else besides Him.”  So lofty is this station that no testimony can bear it witness, neither evidence do justice to its truth.  Wert thou to explore the sacred domain of truth, thou wilt find that all things are known only by the light of His recognition, that He hath ever been, and will continue for ever to be, known through Himself.  And if thou dwellest in the land of testimony, content thyself with that which He, Himself, hath revealed:  “Is it not enough for them that We have sent down unto Thee the Book?"(69) This is the testimony which He, Himself, hath ordained; greater proof than this there is none, nor ever will be:  “This proof is His Word; His own Self, the testimony of His truth.”

And now, We beseech the people of the Bayan, all the learned, the sages, the divines, and witnesses amongst them, not to forget the wishes and admonitions revealed in their Book.  Let them, at all times, fix their gaze upon the essentials of His Cause, lest when He, Who is the Quintessence of truth, the inmost Reality of all things, the Source of all light, is made manifest, they cling unto certain passages of the Book, and inflict