The holy ones of past ages and centuries have, each and all,
yearned with tearful eyes to live, though for one moment, in the Day of God.
Their longings unsatisfied, they repaired to the Great Beyond. How great,
therefore, is the bounty of the Abhá Beauty Who, notwithstanding our utter
unworthiness, hath through His grace and mercy breathed into us in this
divinely-illumined century the spirit of life, hath gathered us beneath the
standard of the Beloved of the world, and chosen to confer upon us a bounty for
which the mighty ones of bygone ages had craved in vain.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Quoted
by Shoghi Effendi, in a message dated 8 February 1934, printed as ‘The
Dispensation of Baha'u'llah’ in ‘The World Order of Baha'u'llah’)
