e. For this greatest of gifts it is fitting that we
should return a thousand thanks to the one Beloved, and offer a thousand
praises to His court of holiness.

Likewise, the hand of divine grace has reared blessed souls who are
shining today like lamps of guidance in the assemblage of the Company on
High, and who like luminous stars are casting their bright rays across the
skies of faithfulness. How often we heard the Master, the Centre of the
Covenant, say: 'At the time when Christ rose out of this mortal world and
ascended into the Eternal Kingdom, He had twelve disciples, and even of
these, one was cast off. But because that handful of souls stood up, and
with selflessness, devotion and detachment, resolved to spread His holy
Teachings and to scatter abroad the sweet fragrances of God, disregarding
the world and all its peoples, and because they utterly lost themselves in
Christ--they succeeded, by the power of the spirit, in capturing the cities
of men's hearts, so that the splendour of the one true God pervaded all
the earth, and put the darkness of ignorance to flight.

'Now when I shall depart from this world, I shall leave more than fifty
thousand blessed individuals, every one of whom is staunch and firm as the
high mountains, shining out over the earth like sparkling stars. These are
the quintessence of loyalty and fellowship and love. They are the
self-sacrificing watchers over the Cause, and they are the guides to all
who seek after truth. Judge from this what the future will be!'

It is certain that when we act in accordance with the Teachings of the
Abha Beauty and the counsels of 'Abdu'l-Baha, then will this world become
the Abha Paradise, and its thorns and brambles of cruelty will change into
a blossoming garden of the faithful.

May we all be enabled to achieve this end.

32: O faithful servant of the Best-Beloved, the ...

(144) O faithful servant of the Best-Beloved, the Most Glorious! O
steadfast friend, flourishing in the garden of His luminous Beauty! The
brief but informative letter you had written to Shoghi Effendi, the Chosen
Branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God, has been received together with
the scrolls of doubt you had enclosed. Indeed, men whose nostrils have
been perfumed by the fragrance of the Abha Paradise, whose ears have been
exhilarated by the sweet melodies of the nightingale warbling in the
rose-garden of immortality, and whose souls have been refreshed and
quicke