| Kitáb-i-Íqán | 149 |
of truth." (1) And now, be fair; How could those
people living in the days of Muhammad have existed,
thousands of years before, in the age of
Adam or other Prophets? Why should Muhammad,
that Essence of truthfulness, have charged
the people of His day with the murder of Abel or
other Prophets? Thou hast none other alternative
except to regard Muhammad as an impostor or a
fool--which God forbid!--or to maintain that
those people of wickedness were the self-same
people who in every age opposed and caviled at
the Prophets and Messengers of God, till they
finally caused them all to suffer martyrdom.
Ponder this in thine heart, that the sweet gales
of divine knowledge, blowing from the meads of
mercy, may waft upon thee the fragrance of the Beloved's
utterance, and cause thy soul to attain the
Ridván of understanding. As the wayward of every
age have failed to fathom the deeper import of
these weighty and pregnant utterances, and imagined
the answer of the Prophets of God to be irrelevant
to the questions they asked them, they
therefore have attributed ignorance and folly to
those Essences of knowledge and understanding.
