The holy
ones of past ages and centuries have, each and all, yearned with tearful eyes
to live, though for one moment, in the Day of God. Their longings unsatisfied,
they repaired to the Great Beyond. How great, therefore, is the bounty of the
Abhá Beauty Who, notwithstanding our utter unworthiness, hath through His grace
and mercy breathed into us in this divinely-illumined century the spirit of
life, hath gathered us beneath the standard of the Beloved of the world, and
chosen to confer upon us a bounty for which the mighty ones of bygone ages had
craved in vain.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Quoted by Shoghi
Effendi in a letter dated February 8, 1934; ‘The Dispensation of
Baha’u’llah’)
