Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Helen Reed Bishop, Kitab-i-Íqan: Introduction to the 1950 Edition, bahai-library.com.
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Kitáb-i-Íqán:

Introduction to the 1950 Edition

Helen Reed Bishop

1950

Page iv

INTRODUCTION

A Bahá'í, whether of the Occident
or the Orient, cannot be persuaded easily to venture into a preface befitting
to the Kitáb-i-íqán. Every believer has
been seized with amazement and love for a Book that is "...foremost
among the priceless treasures cast forth from the billowing ocean of Bahá'u'lláh's
Revelation...."
With this metaphor
The Íqán's
rank
is fixed by the Guardian of the Faith, Shoghi Effendi, in a passage from
God
Passes By. The latter is a historical study and tells the time
and circumstance in which the Writing was revealed — earlier than the Prophet's
declaration of His mission, closing the period of sequestration in 'Iráq.
(Circa 1863 A.D.)
Shoghi Effendi's translation into English recaptures
for us the vision of divine truth. And, possessed though we be by
the beauty of it, yet we shall not receive and then keep all in silence.
The gift evokes some testimony of faith as a gesture of response out from
a Community moved to boundless gratitude. Herewith a new edition
is presented to all seekers after the central truth for a

Page v

New Age. The Introduction has been added in the hope of disarming
the reluctance of Western students and their interest in the profundity
of progressive Revelation from God.
"Kitáb-i-íqán"
is Persian for The Book of Certitude. As the title implies,
this book is the creative Word of God: it takes the Logos to confer upon
the soul of man a positive knowledge of things divine. By his unaided
effort a man cannot become spiritual. Conversion changes the soul's
misgivings into assurance through rebirth. For the soul this is a
higher station — or residence in "The City of Absolute Certitude."
Whoever dwells there has discovered that faith is not merely the mind's
consent to take on wider beliefs, nor even to a radical change of doctrine:
faith is an endowment from the Higher Kingdom and changes all beliefs into
an aliveness in the spirit. The quickening of the soul renews the
atoms of the body to the very marrow of the bone. "It bestoweth
wealth without gold, and conferreth immortality without death."
Thus transformed, the soul is thereafter and
eternally established in the Kingdom of God. Around it there is an
inimitable fragrance of attraction. Its advancement leads on through
valleys of growth as it unfolds hidden virtues and exercises powers.
The capacity for response to sorrows and joys, humility and exaltation
has been heightened

Page vii

greatly. At given stages the awakened soul may be dominated by
the Word as knowledge, at others by the Word as love. Although these
qualities are bestowed upon every believer, the individuality of each soul
is sustained throughout all stages of illumination and nearness.
Nonetheless, the soul born again through the Word is forever beyond the
unfaith that assails an uncommitted majority of mankind.
No lesser station can reward the deathless
quest for certainty within the soul of man. At mid-century the outcry
is compelling. Inexorable conflicts long held in check have become
spiritual crises. To be sure, there are multitudes which have not
joined in searching for the meaning of existence. Among them are
men and women madly in pursuit of happiness, but they betray the excitement
of running away from themselves rather than towards the goal. And
even if worldlings do find surcease in the enjoyment of the earth as their
all in all, — fulfillment is something else. Inescapably, the years
of maturity precipitate an inner crisis, which adolescence cannot know
anything about. Let the pagans tell us if they are finding alegria — joy
of the world — nowadays? For there is almost no serenity.
The attainment of serenity in certain epochs
of the past is more than a legendary golden age. Illustrious pages
of history yet may be rewritten

Page viii

as a rhythm of seeking and finding the lost certainties. There
have been centuries in which the most highly differentiated personalities
were men of faith. Largemindedness embraced both the science and
religion of the period and reconciled the facts of nature with the truths
of religion. In so gentle a climate for the soul, artists thrived
and painted wondrous pictures reflecting the joy of the world in the Madonna
and Child in company with the saints.
Amid the imposing cultures, the mutuality of
the love of God was the underlying bond between important individuals and
the masses which held to religion with unquestioning faith. In every
unified society, the learned as well as the unlearned were assimilated
under the only demonstrable yoke of any civilization — the religious law.
The classes then had more serenity under a code of restraint than modern
personalities are displaying without one.
In the springtime and lingering summer of the
brilliant seasons — for Israel, Christendom, or in Islám's halcyon
days — religion pervaded the atmosphere and engaged the temperaments or talents
of all types of men. The common denominator and most persistent feature
of distinctive cultures has been the sense of dependence upon God — the Mover
of all things. The certainty of a Higher Dominion over the world
quieted the restlessness

Page ix

of man's instinctive nature as society struggled for a more human condition
throughout the making and unmaking of states.
By concern with the Will of God as well as
the daily exigencies, the common man's life was conditioned to purpose
and took on some meaning. He had submitted to a divine Plan and thereby
was bound to others under it. Indeed, he was related to the whole
world — or that small part he knew of it.
By faith a whole people or union of peoples
entered into a stage of peace, or at least an awareness in harmony with
the time in which they were living. Rulers and artists, warriors,
landlords and serfs worked within the frame of limitations, but they all
rested in the certainty of the promised Kingdom of Heaven.
Were not they — our ancestors — the same breed
of men? Cannot modern men and women be cured of hypertension and
begin through the Word once again to find the lost certainty? Through
faith will come serenity and maturity.
The Íqán
claims that the
renewal principle at work from age to age lies within the offices of the
Holy Spirit. The Word is the Bearer of the Spirit that restores and
redeems the soul. Man is dwarfed whenever he is deprived of its bestowals.
And yet deprived man will be — if the clergy
stands between the seeker and the divine light.

Page x

Therefore, in the first paragraph of The Íqán,
Bahá'u'lláh
proclaims that certainty can never be regained until man renounces his
dependence upon self-appointed leaders — learned or ignorant — and turns for
divine guidance only to the Messengers sent by God. The Prophets
are Themselves the standard for man's knowledge of God: all religious truth
has its root in Their Revelation. Theirs is the Voice proclaiming
God's challenge: to Them alone man shall make his response. With
this mighty theme and the explanation it deserves the succeeding pages
of The Íqán are inscribed.
This Book verifies the respective stations
and missions of the Founders of religion. With none of the Prophets
does the Author find fault: to Them He gives praise, and affirms the oneness
of Their primary Teachings. Abraham, Moses, Christ, Muhammad, — and,
in this Day, the Báb, — are the Names of the Revealers of divine Law.
Unto Them God entrusted the moral education of the race. With Them
is centered the Covenant made in heaven for man's redemption.
Their Succession is a cosmic drama, which unfolds
the architectural design of the universe. Their Messages tell progressively
the pattern of society, its supernatural government, true history and destiny.
They released the collective Spirit which recurrently animated the daily
lives of men. They proclaimed the laws out of which came the

Page xi

ties of fraternity, marriage, family, and the larger community which
is civilization. And Theirs is the luminous Message of the Kingdom
of God eventually to rule the earth through the Coming of a World Redeemer.
The Íqán proves the Báb's
two-fold station as the Forerunner of the World Redeemer, besides, His
rank in the Succession out of Abraham's lineage. In answer to a twentieth
century poet's demand, "Where is that Prophet crying within my heart?",
the Báb is the eternal — Here am I! For what the Báb
says is that same utterance which brings to pass mediation between Heaven
and earth. He is "The Gate" to "The City
of Absolute Certitude." In His appearance the Prophet comes
again to earth as "a flamelike Youth" — speaks — then dies a
sacrifice under the relentless magic worked together by bad kings and priests.
Admittedly the drama is traditional and its concatenation of events both
touching and fearful. But for modern men, the Episode of the Báb
is far more compelling because its enactment takes place at the beginning
of their own age. (1844-1850)
Implicit in The Íqán is
the station of Bahá'u'lláh. His Coming is inherent
in the destiny of mankind. By right of the Spirit, Bahá'u'lláh
is the World Redeemer: its Effulgence through His Revelation is able to
bestow the sense of certainty on the entire human race.

Page xii

The barriers of prejudice and tribal consciousness
are dissolved by the waters of life flowing through His majestic verses.
All the outmoded limitations based upon ancestral patterns, pride in race,
militant nationhood, hereditary warfare, religious sectarianism or something
else are ended by divine decree. The world of mankind in the sight
of its maker stands revealed in the reality of oneness. Only the
separateness of the human time-sense resists fulfilment
of the Kingdom of Heaven in the world of actuality.
And, therefore, Bahá'u'lláh is
summoning all mankind to arise as an entity, gladly adopting His universal
Principles and building the worldwide Commonwealth. Through the collaboration
of nations, the unseen hosts now brooding over the earth will inform the
reign of divine law and peace. The qualifications foretold by Isaiah
have been met: The Mighty Counsellor" has taken "the
government upon his shoulder." The superhuman ruler of the
nascent civilization is a heavenly King: and yet to His followers in ninety-one
countries, He is a Father, watching from Above over them one and all.
Wisdom, majesty, love — such were among the qualities
Bahá'u'lláh embodied while He lived on earth (1817-1892).
From His native land of Írán He was banished by the judgment
from authority vested in temporal and spiritual rulers. The Sultanate

Page xiii

and the Caliphate held Him as a Prisoner so that the old order might
be preserved. But Bahá'u'lláh steadfastly proclaimed
that the old order cannot be preserved. To external conditions that
brought Him sorrow for forty years, He never capitulated because His Kingliness
was divine.
Finally, Bahá'u'lláh was exiled
in company with His disciples to the grim fortress at 'Akka, Syria.
By this decision His enemies carried out in their blindness and ignominiousness,
the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy: "Carmel and Sharon — they
shall see the Glory of the Lord." At long last The Bible
is no longer a sealed Book, — for Daniel closed it only until "the
time of the end," when its ultimate meaning and mystery were to
be disclosed by that Promised One for Whom it was written.
The Íqán is invincibly
true because God does not make His Self-Revelation immanent within the
creatures. The Oneness of God does not descend into the variety and
multiplicity of His creation. The immemorial dogma of the Unknowableness
of God's Essence is affirmed once again; moreover, as this is a mature
age, The Íqán proclaims it with matchless clarity.
The place, form, nature, and relations imagined by man as categories of
his Maker are beyond intellection: God
is — and yet is transcendent
to the human mind and consequently exalted above all definitions.
In the desert of contemporary bewilderment,

Page xiv

there are many puzzled seekers after God. Some of them have a
ferocity for their own deification. Such engaging and speculative
minds are instances of sophisticated credulity: men and women take on the
fads of the day. The popularity of "new thought" has
been gaining by the crumbling of orthodoxy. Many of the liveliest
minds have turned away from ancestral beliefs to the substitution of mentalism
for religion. And even within what remains of orthodoxy's citadel,
there are mystics who claim to be directly in communion with the Godhead.
Notwithstanding, both schools of thought are
quoting the Scriptures to prove their souls are not dependent upon an Intermediary
Power. By reciting chapter and verse of The Bible, it is made
obvious to all save themselves how intimately dependent they are on its
inspiration. Without the mediation of the Founders of religion, they
would know nothing of their Maker nor of themselves. Should the cord
of the revealed verses be severed man would have no spiritual consciousness
at all.
Bahá'u'lláh's followers view
the mystic's path that lies beyond the Messenger as impassable, — and man's
vain groping for it as an impertinence. Nor is a Bahá'í
troubled by the inconceivability of God the Essence. For he is of "the
people of adoration" — with dispassionate reasoning about Imponderableness
the lovers have nothing to do.

Page xv

Allow rationalists to become metaphysical about
God if they insist upon limiting their hearts to principles and categories
of thought. Once again the people of faith are invulnerable to arguments:
they have a Person. The believers belong to an all-knowing and all-loving
Person. For them Bahá'u'lláh is that sovereign Personality
because He is able to enform the soul's need for certainty and fulfilment.
The Manifestation is the embodiment of the
First Principle, which is the Effulgence of the Holy Spirit proceeding
from the indivisible Essence of God. Clothed with a body, the divine
Spirit is a Prophet, speaking the Eloquence of God in the midst of mortal
men. The Manifestation is the Reflection of the Holy Spirit — the shining
and moving Reality that can be known by all men. Nor is there anything
anonymous about it. The Founders of religion are singled out among
the nations: They can be named and Their stations differentiated in terms
of Personality, time and rank; but in the essential unity of the divine
Spirit the Many are become the One.
Never can there be any Separatenesses from
the Oneness and Unity of God. Theology mistakenly brings Christ to
earth as a Uniqueness or Incarnation of the Godhead. Rather it is
the personal Qualities of God — the radiance of the godly Attributes and
only the Attributes — which are immanent

Page xvi

in the Manifestations past and present. Through the intermediary
rays of the Holy Spirit, the divine and beloved Person — whenever He returns — makes
the soul of man remember his Maker. The divine Person by His love
wins the soul's response to the love of God and His knowledge lends to
the human soul a little knowledge of what is eternal. The Word of
the divine Person is uniquely the Word of God — spoken from age to age — and
to it men must accommodate their lives.
Bahá'u'lláh pleads with Israel
as "the people of the Book" to become conscious of the meaning
of its Words. "The time of the end," "Judgment," "Life," "Tomb,"
"Resurrection," "Return" and other Biblical accents are not merely symbols
and great poetry. (Although they are also that.) The Íqán
proves the Scriptures are interwoven with prime symbols backed by reality:
the key Words foretell the drama of redemption which recurs with every
renewal of the Covenant made by God with Abraham. By intervention
of the Prophet in human affairs, the unchangeable Attributes of God reenter
history. For the relative truths and material laws are outmoded by
the revolutions of time marking the progression from age to age.
The grand adjustment to the Spirit should have
been made by Israel when Christ the Saviour appeared. For He abrogated
the material law of

Page xvii

Moses as the secondary truth, which is relative to the absolute truth
of religion.
Israel is precious to Bahá'u'lláh
because of its kinship with the Prophets through Whom is our salvation.
Jewish history gives the plainest lesson on the rhythm of a Prophet's challenge
and a people's response to the Light. The divine Truth-telling is
forever the rally to greatness. Israel was rightly named "God's
Champion" — the transmitter of monotheism and preserver from idolatry
amid the nations. But when Israel turned away from the renewal principle
to take up man-made goals, then between her people and the Light there
fell the shadow. (After all, it is the earth's turning from the sun
that brings on darkness — with the sun there is always light.)
The Bahá'ís are gladdened by
Israel's statehood and fulfilment of her traditional hope of homecoming.
But the ten thousand square miles of earth in which "a remnant"
can live and build is less important that her recognition of Him by Whom
the victory is won. For the Jews there can be no homecoming more
glorious than meeting with the Father of mankind and fraternity in the
worldwide Community of the Most Great Name.
The World Faith and World Community founded by the
World Redeemer, Bahá'u'lláh, is the magnificent finale of
the homelessness of the Jews. Besides, it is the culmination of Israel's

Page xviii

higher mission: the non-nationalistic ideal of world salvation that
reached its apogee in Isaiah.
Nothing smaller than the redemption of all
mankind would bring to a close the long Day of Atonement. Once in
the calendar year, for a day lasting twenty-four hours, Jewish Temples
hold commemoration of the past. There is the grandeur of the verses
of repentance and praise and the haunting beauty of Israel's genius.
The Rabbi lifts high the gleaming scrolls of the torah, whilst its little
silver bells ring, and in a golden voice he implores in sonorous Hebrew — then
in English:
"Lift up your heads, O ye Gates!

And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors,

That the King of Glory may come in.

Who is the King of Glory?

The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory!"
The plight of Christendom parallels Israel's tragedy.
As the Jewish people have been out of touch with the Prophetic guidance
and bereft of mediation by Christ their Messiah, so has Christendom's denial
of Muhammad cheated her of the direct bestowals of the Holy Spirit.
Wanting the renewal principle, the unity and wholeness of Christendom began
to break away.
In His Day, Christ was the perfect Mediator.
Through Him the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost

Page xix

entered history. The alchemy of His Cause wrought the transmutation
of souls: The unity of the Gospels called into existence the world Christian
community of the Middle Ages. Its central Authority then had power
to cut off kings who broke the peace. (Leaders of Christendom no
longer have power to make binding pronouncements for peace, — or even family
relations and other inevitable crises of daily life. For the Christian
vitality spent itself many centuries ago.)
Enthralling pages of The Íqán
tell how the eyes of Christendom were blinded by Muhammad's Sun.
When the winter of the Dark Ages was ended by divine decree, the Sun of
religion arose in Arabia. "No Prophet of God hath suffered
such harm as I have suffered," lamented Muhammad under the
prevailing resistance to His Cause.
Even in this century of analytical thought,
Muhammad is judged under the standards of men, whereas He is — in
the Succession of the Founders of religion — the Standard by which to measure
all other things. For He was the Fountainhead of a brilliant civilization.
Ignorance of Muhammad is ignorance of the pattern of the theocratic
state. The Qur'án reveals the civil and religious code
that integrated a higher nationhood. Islám was the far-reaching
culture that grew like a plant out of the seed of truth and unity.
Importantly, Islám was an Empire, which aimed to rule over a vast

Page xx

geographical area under a constitution of laws set forth in a Book from
God.
Travellers to the ancient cities of the East
have had intimations — if ever they were awakened at dawn by the mysterious
and loving Call to Prayer — that Islám is an intensely beautiful religion.
It has a powerful Eros principle sublimated as the soul's approach unto
God. The Mu'adhdhin is the heart-beat of a nation for a moment
becoming ecstatic in surrender to the divine Will. With the discrimination
cultivated by The Íqán, Westerners can now realize
how vital was Islám's part in the unity of religion.
The concept of finality is the cardinal weakness
of Islám. That was the stumbling-block of the Muslims to recognition
of the Báb. Hence, The Íqán proclaims
the infinitude of truth from God:
"Thou are surely aware of their idle contention, that
all Revelation is ended, that the portals of divine mercy are closed, that
from the day-springs of eternal holiness no sun shall rise again, that
the Ocean of everlasting bounty is forever stilled, and that out of the
Tabernacle of ancient glory the Messengers of God have ceased to be made
manifest."
For Christendom a new orientation is imperative.
And it will be reached in the simple way: by turning to the light from
the horizon of this new day. (The efficacy of the Gospels cannot
be recaptured by exegesis, nor vitality by struggling for

Page xxi

survival in the preaching of fragmentary truths. Renewal does
not come out of changing forms of church organization.)
What about the "Second Coming"
in the Glory of the Father? The Íqán defines
"the clouds" in which the Father has come as the obscuring notions
or superstitions, which are interposed by Christians between their own
true vision and the rising Sun of Truth. For "the new earth"
of knowledge is already here in the accomplishments of science; and
"the stars" of ecclesiastical authority have fallen from the
heaven of ancestral religion. (The hour is later than the Old Churches
realize.)
The challenge of The Íqán
at this compelling hour is for man to recognize the Source of the Light.
The Glory of the Father (Bahá) is the Attribute most becoming
to the Lord as He takes an empire over the wavering hearts. By "union
with God" is not meant partnership, but, rather, becoming supremely
conscious of Him. The wholeness of spiritual experience lies in response
to Bahá'u'lláh. With the eyes of the spirit opened
by The Íqán, it can be seen that the dead have drawn
the breath of renewed life and been raised from "the tomb of self"
and separateness: abandoning the superstitions of the nations, the confident
souls are moving in the stream of universality. And they are united
in binding the invisible tie that yet shall

Page xx

link each soul with every other soul throughout the planet.
"In the soil of whose heart will these
holy seeds germinate?"

REFERENCES

"Foremost among the priceless treasures cast forth from the billowing
Ocean of Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation."
God Passes
By, pp. 138-9.
"It bestoweth wealth without gold, and immortality without death."
Kitáb-I-Iqán,
p. 198.
"Thou are surely aware of their idle contention...."
Ibid.,
p. 137.
"In the soil of whose heart will these holy seeds germinate?"
Ibid., p. 61.

HELEN REED BISHOP

Source: Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i-íqán:
The Book of Certitude, translated by Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette,
Ill.: Bahá'í Publishing Committee, 1950).

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