Bahá'u'lláh's Tablet to Badí'u'lláh

The passage printed in Lights of Guidance comes from a letter dated 8 March 1936, written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to a believer who asked about an apparent contradiction between the encouragement of charity in the Tablet and the prohibition of begging in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.² Shoghi Effendi’s indisputable mastery of Persian and Arabic is demonstrated by his matchless translations of the Writings and his interpretation of them. It seems highly unlikely that Shoghi Effendi based his understanding of the Tablet in question on a poor translation, as he himself had recently translated the Tablet and published it in Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh. However, the enquirer posed his question by citing the passage as it appears in an early translation of Epistle to the Son of the Wolf; the answer speaks directly to the enquirer’s question by quoting that translation in response.

Shoghi Effendi’s response through his secretary focuses on the meaning of the entire passage, not only the one phrase that concerns Mr. ____. In this Tablet Bahá’u’lláh had exhorted His son Badí‘u’lláh to a high standard of moral conduct which he in fact failed to uphold. Shoghi Effendi draws attention to the purport of the Tablet in which Bahá’u’lláh urges His son to develop and use the capacities that God has bestowed upon every human being, while giving a vision of the high possibilities of morality that humanity can strive towards. Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation of the phrase serves to give encouragement to the enquirer, whose letter expresses doubt in his own capacity and his longing to find strength and confirmation to teach the Cause.

¹ bahai.org/r/174232426.

² Hornby, Helen Bassett, comp., Lights of Guidance: A Bahá’í Reference File (New Delhi: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988), no. 1586, pp. 479–480.