Everyone agrees in
acknowledging that it would be absolutely impossible for him to proclaim loudly
his doctrine or to spread it among men. He had to act as does a physician to
children, who must disguise a bitter medicine in a sweet coating in order to win
over his young patients. The people in the midst of whom he appeared were, and
still are, alas, more fanatical than the Jews were at the time of Jesus, when
the majesty of Roman peace was no longer there to put a stop to the furious
excesses of religious madness of an over-excited people. Therefore, if Christ,
in spite of the relative calm of the surroundings in which He preached, thought
it necessary to employ the parable, Siyyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad, [the Báb] a fortiori,
was obliged to disguise his thought in numerous circuitous ways and only pour
out, one drop at a time, the filter of his divine truths. He brings up his
child, Humanity; he guides it, endeavoring always not to frighten it and
directs its first steps on a path which leads it slowly but surely, so that, as
soon as it can proceed alone, it reaches the goal pre-ordained for it from all
eternity.
- A. L. M. Nicolas (Introduction to volume I of “Le Bayán Persan”
(pp. 3–5); inserted footnote by Shoghi Effendi in ‘The Dawn-Breakers’)
