A person from Tihrán has written that the Universal Will is
always manifest; that is to say, God is always manifest in human form. I have
sent him an emphatic reply and urge you also to remember that between two
Manifestations there are days of concealment. There is no doubt that for the
Sun of Reality there is no rising or setting in its own sanctified center but,
owing to the exigencies of the contingent world, it rises and sets. Those
persons who say in the days of concealment and interval that God is manifest in
human form and that ‘He always shows Himself in different forms like an artful
beloved' are the sources of difference in the Cause and create discord among
the people. All these evasive statements of theirs are mere pretensions. Their
only object is to get themselves known as persons in whom divine signs are
centered. We must, therefore, adhere to the explicit text, to the literal
meaning of what is written in the Tablets, and must not deviate from this even
to a hair's breadth.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha aboard the Cedric,
April 6, 1912, recorded by Mahmud Zarqani; ‘Mahmud’s Diary’)
