ye cause this mighty nation to fall from the heights
of its former glory, to pass from its place at the heart and center of the
civilized world? Ye were well able to take hold of such measures as would
lead to the high honor of this people. This ye failed to do, and ye even
went on to deprive them of the common benefits enjoyed by all. Did not
this people once shine out like stars in an auspicious heaven? How have ye
dared to quench their light in darkness! Ye could have lit the lamp of
temporal and eternal glory for them; why did ye fail to strive for this
with all your hearts? And when by God's grace a flaming Light flared up,
why did ye fail to shelter it in the glass of your valor, from the winds
that beat against it? Why did ye rise up in all your might to put it out?"

"And every man's fate have We fastened about his neck: and on the Day of
Resurrection will We bring it forth to him a book which shall be proffered
to him wide open."(69)

Again, is there any deed in the world that would be nobler than service to
the common good? Is there any greater blessing conceivable for a man, than
that he should become the cause of the education, the development, the
prosperity and honor of his fellow-creatures? No, by the Lord God! The
highest righteousness of all is for blessed souls to take hold of the
hands of the helpless and deliver them out of their ignorance and
abasement and poverty, and with pure motives, and only for the sake of
God, to arise and energetically devote themselves to the service of the
masses, forgetting their own worldly advantage and working only to serve
the general good. "They prefer them before themselves, though poverty be
their own lot."(70) "The best of men are those who serve the people; the
worst of men are those who harm the people."

Glory be to God! What an extraordinary situation now obtains, when no one,
hearing a claim advanced, asks himself what the speaker's real motive
might be, and what selfish purpose he might not have hidden behind the
mask of words. You find, for example, that an individual seeking to
further his own petty and personal concerns, will block the advancement of
an entire people. To turn his own water mill, he will let the farms and
fields of all the others parch and wither. To maintain his own leadership,
he will everlastingly direct the masses toward that prejudice and
fanaticism which subvert the very base of civilization.

Such a man, at the same moment that h