The following story in the life of Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, the
outstanding scholar of the Cause and its famous apologist, is one which
demonstrates that reading the Word of God with the eye of intellect can lead a
man astray.
Mirza Abu’l-Fadl, himself, has recounted the story that soon
after he came in contact with the believers, they gave him the Kitáb-i-Íqán to
read. He read it with an air of intellectual superiority and was not impressed
by it. He even commented that if the Kitáb-i-Íqán was a proof of Bahá'u'lláh's
claims, he himself could certainly write a better book.
At that time he was the head of a theological college in
Tihran. The following day a prominent woman arrived at the college and
approached some students asking them to write an important letter for her. In
those days people who were not educated often paid a small sum of money to a
learned man to write letters for them. The essential requirements for writing
good letters were good composition and fine penmanship.
The students referred her to Mirza Abu'l-Fadl saying that he
was an outstanding writer, a master of eloquence and a man unsurpassed in the
art of composition. Mirza Abu'l-Fadl took up his pen to write, but found
himself unable to compose the first sentence. He tried very hard but was
unsuccessful. For several minutes he scribbled in the corner of the page and
even drew lines on his own fingernail, until the woman realized that the
learned scribe was unable to write. Losing her patience she arose to go and
mockingly said to Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, 'If you have forgotten how to write a
simple letter why don't you say so instead of keeping me here while you
scrawl?'
Mirza Abu'l-Fadl says that he was overcome with feelings of shame as a result of this incident, and then suddenly remembered his own comments the night before about his being able to write a better book than the Kitáb-i-Íqán. He had a pure heart and knew that this incident was nothing but a clear answer to his arrogant attitude towards that holy Book.
However, it took Mirza Abu'l-Fadl several years to be
convinced of the truth of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh. He reached a stage where he
accepted the Faith intellectually, but for years his heart was not convinced.
The only thing which caused him to recognize the truth of the Cause of God
after having struggled for so long was to submit himself and surrender his
intellectual gifts to God.
One evening he went into his chamber, and prayed with
yearning as tears flowed from his eyes, beseeching God to open the channels of
his heart. At the hour of dawn he suddenly found himself possessed of such
faith that he felt he could lay down his life in the path of Bahá'u'lláh.
The same person who once had said he could write a better
book than the Kitáb-i-Íqán, read this book many times with the eye of faith and
found it to be an ocean of knowledge, limitless in scope. Every time he read it
he found new pearls of wisdom within it and discovered new mysteries which he
had not come across before.
(Adapted from ‘The Revelation of Baha'u'llah vol. 2’,
by Adib Taherzadeh)
