The Abhá Beauty endured the most afflictive of calamities.
He bore countless agonies and ills. He enjoyed not a moment’s peace, drew not
an easeful breath. He wandered, homeless, over desert sands and mountain
slopes; He was shut in a fortress, and a prison cell. But to Him, His pauper’s
mat of straw was an eternal throne of glory, and His heavy chains a sovereign’s
carcanet. By day, by night, He lived under a whirring sword, and He was ready
from moment to moment for death on the cross. He bore all this that He might
purify the world, and deck it out with the tender mercies of the Lord God; that
He might set it at rest; that conflict and aggression might be put to flight,
the lance and the keen blade be exchanged for loving fellowship, malevolence
and war turn into safety and gentleness and love, that battlefields of hate and
wrath should become gardens of delight, and places where once the
blood-drenched armies clashed, be fragrant pleasure grounds; that warfare
should be seen as shame, and the resort to arms, even as a loathsome sickness,
be shunned by every people; that universal peace raise its pavilions on the
loftiest mounts, and war be made to perish forever from the earth.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’)
