and be Thou not of
them that waver. The day is approaching when God will have exalted His
Cause and magnified His testimony in the eyes of all who are in the
heavens and all who are on the earth. Place, in all circumstances, Thy
whole trust in Thy Lord, and fix Thy gaze upon Him, and turn away from all
them that repudiate His truth. Let God, Thy Lord, be Thy sufficing
succourer and helper. We have pledged Ourself to secure Thy triumph upon
earth and to exalt Our Cause above all men, though no king be found who
would turn his face towards Thee.

24 Call Thou to remembrance Thine arrival in the City, how the Ministers
of the Sultan thought Thee to be unacquainted with their laws and
regulations, and believed Thee to be one of the ignorant. Say: Yea, by My
Lord! I am ignorant of all things except what God hath, through His
bountiful favour, been pleased to teach Me. To this We assuredly testify,
and unhesitatingly confess it.

25 Say: If the laws and regulations to which ye cleave be of your own
making, We will, in no wise, follow them. Thus have I been instructed by
Him Who is the All-Wise, the All-Informed. Such hath been My way in the
past, and such will it remain in the future, through the power of God and
His might. This, indeed, is the true and right way. If they be ordained by
God, bring forth, then, your proofs, if ye be of them that speak the
truth. Say: We have written down in a Book which leaveth not unrecorded
the work of any man, however insignificant, all that they have imputed to
Thee, and all that they have done unto Thee.

26 Say: It behoveth you, O Ministers of State, to keep the precepts of
God, and to forsake your own laws and regulations, and to be of them who
are guided aright. Better is this for you than all ye possess, did ye but
know it. If ye transgress the commandment of God, not one jot or one
tittle of all your works shall be acceptable in His sight. Ye shall,
erelong, discover the consequences of that which ye shall have done in
this vain life, and shall be repaid for them. This, verily, is the truth,
the undoubted truth.

27 How great the number of those who, in bygone ages, have committed the
things ye have committed, and who, though superior to you in rank, have,
in the end, returned unto dust, and been consigned to their inevitable
doom! Would that ye might ponder the Cause of God in your hearts! Ye shall
follow in their wake, and shall be made to enter a habitation wherein none
shall