And thus, with all His own ordeals and cares, and banished from His home, He Whom the world wronged devoted Himself to counselling and nurturing the people with the utmost loving-kindness, divinely admonishing them, leading and guiding them at all times to complete and utter steadfastness in the Cause of God.
From one direction He would ward off the assaults of the nations, from another He would hold back the people of hatred from tormenting the believers. Now He would scatter the waverers’ clouds of doubt, again He would demonstrate the truth of the clear and manifest Verses, and at all times and seasons He would guard the Cause of God with His very life, and protect its Law.
His fundamental purpose in enduring that continual toil and pain, and bearing those calamities, was to safeguard the divine and all-embracing Word, to shelter the tree of unity, to educate persons of capacity, to refine those who were pure in heart, and to transform the hearts of the receptive, to expound the mysteries of God and illumine the minds of the spiritual.
All praise be to Bahá’u’lláh! The meaning of those bounties became apparent and the splendour of those bestowals was made manifest: that conclusive Text, the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was given us, and what had been hidden at the beginning was made known at the end. His infinite grace became clearly manifest, and with His own mighty pen He made a perfect Covenant, naming Shoghi Effendi the Chosen Branch and Guardian of the Faith. Thus, by God’s bounty, what had been a concealed mystery and a well-guarded secret, was at last made plain.
This greatest of bestowals came as a lightning-flash of glory to the righteous, but to those evil ones who broke the Covenant, it was the thunderbolt of God’s avenging wrath.
55: Although the ascension of the beloved ...
[181] Although the ascension of the beloved Centre of the Covenant was the ultimate calamity, the severest of ordeals, and the fire of that bereavement consumed our hearts and souls, and there were no eyes but wept their tears of blood to mourn Him, no breast but uttered fiery sighs—still, God be praised, the Will and Testament of that Wellspring of bounty and grace, and the designation by Him of the Centre of the Faith and the Covenant, quieted our burning grief and stilled our sighing, and came as balm to our sorely-wounded hearts.
The power of the Faith prevailed, the awesome majesty of the Word of God flashed out, and day by day reveals in increasing measure its overpowering might.