-- provisional translation by Moojan Momen
He is the All-Glorious!
O you who are clinging fast to the hem of Covenant, your
letter was read and your detailed questions were noted. Although calamities,
like deadly poison, have affected my limbs, my members and my joints, such that
my pen is prevented from writing and my tongue from speaking, and my tasks are
so many that it is not possible to describe them, yet nevertheless, out of the great
love that this servant has for that gentleman, a spiritual answer will be
given, which will be compatible with Divine wisdom, concise and illuminating, perfectly
explaining the matter. It will be a comprehensive explanation concerning this
question and will contain acceptable and sought-after insights such that by
this explanation, clarification, analysis, allusion, commentary and spiritual
interpretation, one hundred doors will be opened up by each of its doors. Otherwise,
were the horizons to become pages, it would not be enough to encompass [this
theme].
You have asked about the wisdom of assigning some of the
important legislation (ahkám) to the House of Justice. The first [point to be
made] is this that this divine cycle is purely spiritual (rawhání), divine (rahmání)
and moral (vujdání). It is not so much concerned with the physical (jismání), the
worldly (mulkí) or with the stages of material existence (shu’ún-i násutí). Similarly,
the Christian cycle was purely spiritual and in the entirety of the Gospels,
there is nothing except the prohibition of divorce and an allusion to the
lifting of the [law of the] Sabbath. All of the laws (ahkám) are spiritual and
the morals divine. Just as it is said: “The Son of Man did not come to judge
the world but to give it life.” [cf. John 3:17; 12:47] Now this great cycle is
also purely spiritual and is the giver of eternal life, for the fundamental
basis of the religion of God is to adorn [people] with good character, to
improve them with virtuous conduct and to regulate their interactions. The
intention is this that beings who were veiled [from the light] might attain to the
vision [of His Beauty] and that darksome reality might become filled with
light.
