such heights
that they far transcend the dispensations gone before: truly this rod is
purest gold, while those of other days were of iron and wood.

This is a brief answer that hath been written for thee, because there was
no time for more. It is certain that thou wilt forgive me. The handmaids
of God must rise to such a station that they will, by themselves and
unaided, comprehend these inner meanings, and be able to expound at full
length every single word; a station where, out of the truth of their
inmost hearts, a spring of wisdom will well up, and jet forth even as a
fountain that leapeth from its own original source.

143: O THOU WHO HAST DRAWN NIGH UNTO THE SPIRIT OF ...

O thou who hast drawn nigh unto the spirit of Christ in the Kingdom of
God! Verily the body is composed of physical elements, and every composite
must needs be decomposed. The spirit, however, is a single essence, fine
and delicate, incorporeal, everlasting, and of God. For this reason whoso
looketh for Christ in His physical body hath looked in vain, and will be
shut away from Him as by a veil. But whoso yearneth to find Him in the
spirit will grow from day to day in joy and desire and burning love, in
closeness to Him, and in beholding Him clear and plain. In this new and
wondrous day, it behoveth thee to seek after the spirit of Christ.

Verily the heaven into which the Messiah rose up was not this unending
sky, rather was His heaven the Kingdom of His beneficent Lord. Even as He
Himself hath said, 'I came down from heaven,'(47) and again, 'The Son of
Man is in heaven.'(48) Hence it is clear that His heaven is beyond all
directional points; it encircleth all existence, and is raised up for
those who worship God. Beg and implore thy Lord to lift thee up into that
heaven, and give thee to eat of its food, in this age of majesty and
might.

Know thou that the people, even unto this day, have failed to unravel the
hidden secrets of the Book. They imagine that Christ was excluded from His
heaven in the days when He walked the earth, that He fell from the heights
of His sublimity, and afterwards mounted to those upper reaches of the
sky, to the heaven which doth not exist at all, for it is but space. And
they are waiting for Him to come down from there again, riding upon a
cloud, and they imagine that there are clouds in that infinite space and
that He will ride thereon and by that means He will descend. Whereas the
truth is that a c