ble transgressions
they have heaped upon Him Who is the Source of purity. Although God hath
throughout His Book and in His holy and immortal Tablet warned them that
deny and repudiate the revealed verses, and hath announced His grace unto
them that accept them, yet behold the unnumbered cavils they raised
against those verses which have been sent down from the new heaven of
God's eternal holiness! This, notwithstanding the fact that no eye hath
beheld so great an outpouring of bounty, nor hath any ear heard of such a
revelation of lovingkindness. Such bounty and revelation have been made
manifest, that the revealed verses seemed as vernal showers raining from
the clouds of the mercy of the All-Bountiful. The Prophets "endowed with
constancy," whose loftiness and glory shine as the sun, were each honoured
with a Book which all have seen, and the verses of which have been duly
ascertained. Whereas the verses which have rained from this Cloud of
divine mercy have been so abundant that none hath yet been able to
estimate their number. A score of volumes are now available. How many
still remain beyond our reach! How many have been plundered and have
fallen into the hands of the enemy, the fate of which none knoweth.

O brother, we should open our eyes, meditate upon His Word, and seek the
sheltering shadow of the Manifestations of God, that perchance we may be
warned by the unmistakable counsels of the Book, and give heed to the
admonitions recorded in the holy Tablets; that we may not cavil at the
Revealer of the verses, that we may resign ourselves wholly to His Cause,
and embrace wholeheartedly His law, that haply we may enter the court of
His mercy, and dwell upon the shore of His grace. He, verily, is merciful,
and forgiving towards His servants.

And likewise, He saith: "Say, O people of the Book! do ye not disavow us
only because we believe in God and in what He hath sent down to us, and in
what He hath sent down aforetime, and because most of you are doers of
ill?"(169) How explicitly doth this verse reveal Our purpose, and how
clearly doth it demonstrate the truth of the testimony of the verses of
God! This verse was revealed at a time when Islam was assailed by the
infidels, and its followers were accused of misbelief, when the Companions
of Muhammad were denounced as repudiators of God and as followers of a
lying sorcerer. In its early days, when Islam was still to outward seeming
devoid of authority and power, th