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. Jn 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.
As for the other commandments, they are derivatives of certitude, faith, assurance and mystical insight. Nevertheless, because this blessed cycle is the most mighty of divine dispensations, it encompasses all of the spiritual and physical aspects [of human life] (marátib-i rawhaní va jismání) and is perfect in its power and sovereignty (quvvat va saltanat). Therefore those universal (all-encompassing) matters which are the foundations of the holy law (sharí`at) of God are revealed (mansús) [in the scriptures] and all secondary (subsidiary) matters (mutafarri`át) are to be referred to the House of Justice.
