To Love Him

Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah 27

“Having created the world and all that lives and moves therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him—a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation.… Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.”

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh is a compilation of selected tablets and extracts from tablets by Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith. Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith from 1921 to 1957, made the selection and performed the translation, which was first published 1935.

The work consists of “a selection of the most characteristic and hitherto unpublished passages from the outstanding works of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation,” according to Shoghi Effendi [1]. The passages come from the whole range of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, dated from about 1853 to 1892. [Rúḥíyyih Rabbání, Shoghi Effendi’s widow, called it “a magnificent gift” to the Western Bahá’ís.]

–[1] Shoghi Effendi [quoted in Rúḥíyyih Rabbání*, The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1988)] p. 93.