n its hole, and whose
desire is to depart from your midst, and vanish from your sight, by reason
of that which the hands of men have wrought. God, verily, hath been
witness between Me and His servants." And again: "Woe is Me, woe is Me!...
All that I have seen from the day on which I first drank the pure milk
from the breast of My mother until this moment hath been effaced from My
memory, in consequence of that which the hands of the people have
committed." Furthermore, in His Qasidiy-i-Varqa'iyyih, an ode revealed
during the days of His retirement to the mountains of Kurdistan, in praise
of the Maiden personifying the Spirit of God recently descended upon Him,
He thus gives vent to the agonies of His sorrow-laden heart: "Noah's flood
is but the measure of the tears I have shed, and Abraham's fire an
ebullition of My soul. Jacob's grief is but a reflection of My sorrows,
and Job's afflictions a fraction of my calamity." "Pour out patience upon
Me, O My Lord!"--such is His supplication in one of His prayers, "and
render Me victorious over the transgressors." "In these days," He,
describing in the Kitab-i-Iqan the virulence of the jealousy which, at
that time, was beginning to bare its venomous fangs, has written, "such
odors of jealousy are diffused, that ... from the beginning of the
foundation of the world ... until the present day, such malice, envy and
hate have in no wise appeared, nor will they ever be witnessed in the
future." "For two years or rather less," He, likewise, in another Tablet,
declares, "I shunned all else but God, and closed Mine eyes to all except
Him, that haply the fire of hatred may die down and the heat of jealousy
abate."

Mirza Aqa Jan himself has testified: "That Blessed Beauty evinced such
sadness that the limbs of my body trembled." He has, likewise, related, as
reported by Nabil in his narrative, that, shortly before Baha'u'llah's
retirement, he had on one occasion seen Him, between dawn and sunrise,
suddenly come out from His house, His night-cap still on His head, showing
such signs of perturbation that he was powerless to gaze into His face,
and while walking, angrily remark: "These creatures are the same creatures
who for three thousand years have worshipped idols, and bowed down before
the Golden Calf. Now, too, they are fit for nothing better. What relation
can there be between this people and Him Who is the Countenance of Glory?
What ties can bind them to the One Who is the supreme