Loyalty and fidelity, compassion and love are exhortations
of old. In this supreme Dispensation the people of Bahá are called upon to
sacrifice their very lives. Notice the extent to which the friends have been
required, in the Sacred Epistles and Tablets as well as in our Beloved's
Testament, to be righteous, well-wishing, forbearing, sanctified, pure, detached
from all else save God, severed from the trappings of this world and adorned
with the mantle of a goodly character and divine attributes.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (quoted by the Universal House of Justice in a message dated 10 February 1980
addressed to the Iranian believers resident in other countries throughout the
world)
