Upon
thee [1], O Branch of God! be the remembrance of God and His praise, and the
praise of all that dwell in the Realm of Immortality, and of all the denizens
of the Kingdom of Names. Happy art thou in that thou hast been faithful to the
Covenant of God and His Testament, until Thou didst sacrifice thyself before
the face of thy Lord, the Almighty, the Unconstrained. Thou, in truth, hast been
wronged, and to this testifieth the Beauty of Him, the Self-Subsisting. Thou
didst, in the first days of thy life, bear that which hath caused all things to
groan, and made every pillar to tremble. Happy is the one that remembereth
thee, and draweth nigh, through thee, unto God, the Creator of the Morn.
(Baha’u’llah, quoted by Shoghi Effendi in a letter dated December 21, 1939; ‘Messages to America’)
[1] The Purest Branch, ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s younger
brother
