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the writer has for this reason felt it necessary to put
down, for the sake of God alone and as a tribute to this
high endeavor, a brief statement on certain urgent
questions. To demonstrate that His one purpose is to
promote the general welfare, He has withheld His
name. (5b) Since He believes that guidance toward
righteousness is in itself a righteous act, He offers these
few words of counsel to His country's sons, words
spoken for God's sake alone and in the spirit of a faithful
friend. Our Lord, Who knows all things, bears
witness that this Servant seeks nothing but what is
right and good; for He, a wanderer in the desert of
God's love, has come into a realm where the hand of
denial or assent, of praise or blame, can touch Him
not. "We nourish your souls for the sake of God; We
seek from you neither recompense nor thanks." (6)
"The hand is veiled, yet the pen writes as bidden;
The horse leaps forward, yet the rider's hidden."
O people of Persia! Look into those blossoming pages
that tell of another day, a time long past. Read them
and wonder; see the great sight. Írán in that day was as
the heart of the world; she was the bright torch flaming
in the assemblage of mankind. Her power and glory
shone out like the morning above the world's horizons,
5b. The original Persian text written in 1875 carried no author's name, and the first English translation published in 1910 under the title The Mysterious Forces of Civilization states only "Written in Persian by an Eminent Bahai Philosopher."
6. Qur'án 76:9.
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