February 20
... know
that the Christian and Jewish peoples have not grasped the intent of the words
of God and the promises He hath made to them in His Book, and have therefore
denied His Cause, turned aside from His Prophets, and rejected His proofs. Had
they but fixed their gaze upon the testimony of God itself, had they refused to
follow in the footsteps of the abject and foolish among their leaders and
divines, they would doubtless have attained to the repository of guidance and
the treasury of virtue, and quaffed from the crystal waters of life eternal in
the city of the All-Merciful, in the garden of the All-Glorious, and within the
inner reality of His paradise. But as they have refused to see with the eyes
wherewith God hath endowed them, and desired things other than that which He in
His mercy had desired for them, they have strayed far from the retreats of
nearness, have been deprived of the living waters of reunion and the wellspring
of His grace, and have lain as dead within the shrouds of their own selves. (Baha’u’llah,
‘Gems of Divine Mysteries’, ‘Javáhiru’l-Asrár’)
