Pleasing and acceptable as is a righteous person before
God's Holy Threshold, yet good works should proceed from knowledge. However matchless
and exquisite may be a blind man's handiwork, yet he himself is deprived of
seeing it. How sorely do certain animals labour on man's behalf, what loads
they bear for him, how greatly they contribute to his ease and comfort; and
yet, because they are unwitting, they earn no recompense for all their pains.
The clouds rain down their bounty, nurturing the plants and flowers, and
imparting verdure and enchantment to the plain and prairie, the forest and the
garden; but yet, unconscious as they are of the results and fruit of their
outpourings, they win no praise or honour, nor earn the gratitude and
approbation of any man. The lamp imparteth light, but as it hath no
consciousness of doing so, no one is indebted to it. This apart, a man of
righteous deeds and goodly conduct will assuredly turn towards the Light, in
whichever quarter he behold it. The point is this, that faith compriseth both
knowledge and the performance of good works.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (A revised
translation of a Tablet in ‘Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, vol. 3, p. 549’; included
in a Memorandum from the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice,
dated 28 March 1996 attached to a letter written on behalf of the Universal
House of Justice to an individual believer, dated 22 October, 1996)
