world and in the hereafter, and from the point of view of being sacred service, that it reduces the trouble to nothing. With the exception of one of you, I am the most elderly and it is I who suffers the most troubles, yet I assure you that by practising total patience, offering thanks, and endurance, I am happy at my situation. Thanks in the face of disaster is for the reward to be had from disaster, and for the benefits in this world and the next.

* * *

My Dear Brothers!

With the disappearance of the things preventing the completion of the ‘Topics’ of The Fruits of Belief, writing will recommence, God willing. One of these was the cold, the other was the fright the Masons took at its power. I think of this calamity from the angle of Divine Determining, and my difficulties are transformed into mercy. Yes, as is explained in the Treatise On Divine Determining, there are two causes for every event: one is apparent; people base their judgements on this and frequently act unjustly. The other is reality, according to which Divine Determining judges; it acts with justice in the events in which man acted unjustly.

For example, a man is sent to prison for a theft he did not commit. Divine Determining also sentences him to imprisonment, but for a secret crime, and acts justly within the human injustice. Thus, there are two causes for our having been set this severe trial, the purpose of which is to separate out the diamonds from the pieces of glass, the veracious devotees from the inconstant waverers, and the purely sincere from those unable to give up their egotism and self-interest:

The First is a powerful solidarity and a sincere and remarkable service of religion which aroused the suspicions of the worldly and the politicians; human injustice looks to this.

The Second: Since not everyone on their own could demonstrate their worthiness of this sacred service through complete sincerity and total solidarity, Divine Determining looked to this too. But that Determining is now pure mercy for us within the pure justice, for it brought together brothers who greatly missed each other, and transformed their hardships into worship and their losses