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household goods shall not divert them from [the thought of]
that day whereon the mountains shall be made like carpets.
Though they rejoice at that which hath befallen Us of calamity,
there shall come a day whereon they shall wail and weep.
By My Lord, were I given the choice between the glory and
opulence, the wealth and dignity, the ease and luxury wherein
they are, and the distress and affliction wherein I am, I would
certainly choose that wherein I am today, and I would not now
exchange one atom of these afflictions for all that hath been
created in the kingdom of production! Were it not for
afflictions in the way of God My continuance would have no
sweetness for Me, nor would My life profit Me. Let it not be
hidden from the discerning and such as look towards the
chiefest outlook that I, during the greater part of My days, was
as a Servant sitting beneath a sword suspended by a single hair
who knoweth not when it shall descend upon Him, whether it
shall descend instantly or after a while. And in all this We give
thanks to God the Lord of the worlds, and We praise Him
under all circumstances: verily He is a witness unto all things.
"We ask God to extend His shadow, (47) that the unitarians
may haste thereto, and that the sincere may take shelter therein;
and to bestow on [these] servants flowers from the garden
of his grace and stars from the horizon of his favors; and to assist
him in that which he liketh and approveth; and to help him
unto that which shall bring him near to the Dayspring of His
Most Comely Names, that he may not shut his eyes to the
wrong which he seeth, but may regard his subjects with the eye
of favor and preserve them from violence. And we ask Him
(exalted is He) to make thee a helper unto His religion and a
regarder of His justice, that thou mayest rule over [His] servants
as thou rulest over those of thy kindred, and mayest
choose for them what thou wouldest choose for thyself. Verily