Say: O concourse of monks! Seclude not yourselves in your
churches and cloisters. Come ye out of
them by My leave, and busy, then, yourselves with what will profit you and
others. Thus commandeth you He Who is the Lord of the Day of Reckoning. Seclude yourselves in the stronghold of My
love. This, truly, is the seclusion that befitteth you, could ye but know it.
He that secludeth himself in his house is indeed as one dead. It behoveth man
to show forth that which will benefit mankind.
- Baha'u'llah (Tablet to Napoleon
III, Suriy-i-Haykal [Tablet of Temple]; ‘The Summons of the Lord of Hosts’)
