ould remedy
unhealing wounds, and the medicine of His unending grace was a cure for
mortal ills. Through His tenderness and care the sorrowful found comfort,
and through His Words the despairing received the blissful consolation of
their incomparable Lord. He would hearten the despised and the rejected
with outpourings of grace.

In the pathway of Baha'u'llah, He made His holy breast a shield to bear
adversities, made His beauteous face a target for the blows that rained
upon Him from all sides. He, the Wronged One of the world, was compassed
about by rebel hosts; the armies of treachery assailed Him from every
direction. The disaffected were not remiss in their cruelty and
aggression; never once did that arrogant crew fail to spread a calumny or
to show their opposition and their malice. At every moment, they inflicted
wounds upon Him, injured Him, brought fresh grief to His heart. Their sole
aim was to bring down the structure of the Holy Faith and to destroy its
very base and foundation. They did all in their power to split the Baha'i
community, and in their strivings to shatter the union of the believers,
they neglected nothing. They joined hands with every enemy of the Faith,
became boon companions of all who betrayed it. There was no mischief, no
plot, no slander, no aspersion, that they would not allow themselves, no
individual so vile that they would not cleave to him.

And thus, with all His own ordeals and cares, and banished from His home,
He Whom the world wronged devoted Himself to counselling and nurturing the
people with the utmost loving-kindness, divinely admonishing them, leading
and guiding them at all times to complete and utter steadfastness in the
Cause of God.

From one direction He would ward off the assaults of the nations, from
another He would hold back the people of hatred from tormenting the
believers. Now He would scatter the waverers' clouds of doubt, again He
would demonstrate the truth of the clear and manifest Verses, and at all
times and seasons He would guard the Cause of God with His very life, and
protect its Law.

His fundamental purpose in enduring that continual toil and pain, and
bearing those calamities, was to safeguard the divine and all-embracing
Word, to shelter the tree of unity, to educate persons of capacity, to
refine those who were pure in heart, and to transform the hearts of the
receptive, to expound the mysteries of God and illumine the minds of the
spiritual.