Know thou, verily I say unto thee that the conditions of this mortal world, even if it be the kingship of the whole expanse of this globe, is ephemeral. It is an illusion. It is ended in nothing; neither does it contain any results, nor, in the estimation of God, is it equal to the wing of a mosquito.
Where are the kings and the queens? Where are the palaces and their mistresses? Where are the imperial thrones and jewelled crowns? Where are the mighty rulers of Persia, Greece and Rome? Verily, their palaces are in ruin and desolation, their thrones destroyed, and their crowns thrown to the dust.
But the signs of anyone of the maid-servants of God who arose in the diffusion of the Fragrances of God, serving the Kingdom of God, summoning the people to the Word of God, are widely spread eternally and handed down through centuries and cycles; her dawn is ever luminous; her star always shining; her flag continually flying; her station divinely glorified; her crown scintillating; her message living; her fame immortal; her voice resonant, her spirit in the apex of the Kingdom and her effulgence in the horizon of the Realm of Might.
I beg of God to make thee one of these maid-servants.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a Tablet, quoted in ‘Diary of Mirza
Ahmad Sohrab,’ July 24, 1913; Star of the West, vol. 4, no. 15, December 12,
1913)
