T h i r d  P o i n t : The child who died was the creature, possession, servant, and with all his members the artefact of the Most Compassionate Creator; he belonged to Him and was a friend of his parents, put temporarily under their supervision. The Creator made the parents the child’s servants. In return for their services, He gave them pleasurable compassion as an immediate wage. Now, if as the requirement  of  mercy  and  wisdom,  the  Compassionate  Creator,  who  owns  nine hundred and ninety-nine shares of the child out of a thousand, takes the child from you  and  puts  an end  to  your  service,  to  cry out  in  grief  and  despair  due to  that apparent single share in the face of the true owner of the thousand shares in a way that infers complaint, does not befit a believer; it befits rather the people of neglect and misguidance.

Fo u r t h   P o i n t : If the world had been eternal,  and man was to have remained in it eternally, and separation had been unending; grievous sorrow and despairing woe would have had some meaning. But since this world is a guesthouse, wherever the dead child has gone, you, and we too, shall go there. Moreover, he is not the only one to die; it is a general highway. And, since separation is not for ever, you will meet with him in the future, both in the Intermediate Realm and in the hereafter. One should say: “The command is God’s. He gave him and He took him away;” and: “All praise be to God for all circumstances,” and offer thanks in patience.

F i f t h  P o i n t : Compassion, one of the most subtle, beautiful, agreeable, and sweet manifestations of divine mercy, is a luminous elixir. It is much more direct than passionate love; it is a swift means of union with Almighty God. Temporary love and worldly love are transformed  into true love and find Almighty God  only with the greatest  difficulty,  but  compassion  binds  the  heart  to  Him  in  purer,  more  direct fashion – and without difficulty. Both father and mother love their child more than all the world. If they are fortunate and are true believers, when he is taken from them it turns their faces from this world and they find the True Bestower of Bounties. They say: “The world is transitory and not worth binding one’s heart to.” They become attached to where the child has gone, and this gains high spiritual rank for them.

The people of neglect and misguidance are deprived of the happiness and good news of these five points. You can see from the following how grievous their situation is: they see their only child in the throes of death, and because they imagine the world is eternal and as a result of their heedlessness and misguidance, they suppose death is non-existence and eternal separation. They think of him in the earth of his grave in place  of his soft  bed,  and due to  their  heedlessness  or misguidance,  the merciful Paradise  and bounteous  heaven of the Most  Compassionate  of the Compassionate does not occur to them.

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