He Who
is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof, revealeth
that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him
and shamelessly deny Him. These thou hast already heard and witnessed.
Such deeds and words have been solely instigated by leaders of religion,
they that worship no God but their own desire, who bear allegiance to
naught but gold, who are wrapt in the densest veils of learning, and who,
enmeshed by its obscurities, are lost in the wilds of error. Even as the
Lord of being hath explicitly declared: "What thinkest thou? He who hath
made a God of his passions, and whom God causeth to err through a
knowledge, and whose ears and whose heart He hath sealed up, and over
whose sight He hath cast a veil--who, after his rejection by God, shall
guide such a one? Will ye not then be warned?"(166)

Although the outward meaning of "Whom God causeth to err through a
knowledge" is what hath been revealed, yet to Us it signifieth those
divines of the age who have turned away from the Beauty of God, and who,
clinging unto their own learning, as fashioned by their own fancies and
desires, have denounced God's divine Message and Revelation. "Say: it is a
weighty Message, from which ye turn aside!"(167) Likewise, He saith: "And
when Our clear verses are recited to them, they say, 'This is merely a man
who would fain pervert you from your father's worship.' And they say,
'This is none other than a forged falsehood.'"(168)

Give ear unto God's holy Voice, and heed thou His sweet and immortal
melody. Behold how He hath solemnly warned them that have repudiated the
verses of God, and hath disowned them that have denied His holy words.
Consider how far the people have strayed from the Kawthar of the divine
Presence, and how grievous hath been the faithlessness and arrogance of
the spiritually destitute in the face of that sanctified Beauty. Although
that Essence of lovingkindness and bounty caused those evanescent beings
to step into the realm of immortality, and guided those destitute souls to
the sacred river of wealth, yet some denounced Him as "a calumniator of
God, the Lord of all creatures," others accused Him of being "the one that
withholdeth the people from the path of faith and true belief," and still
others declared Him to be "a lunatic" and the like.

In like manner, thou observest in this day with what vile imputations they
have assailed that Gem of Immortality, and what unspeaka