[The] Súriy-i-Haykal,
the Súrih of the Temple, one of Bahá’u’lláh’s most challenging works. It was originally revealed during His
banishment to Adrianople and later recast after His arrival in ‘Akká. In this version He incorporated His messages
addressed to individual potentates—Pope Pius IX, Napoleon III, Czar Alexander
II, Queen Victoria, and Násiri’d-Dín Sháh.
It was this composite work which, shortly after its
completion, Bahá’u’lláh instructed be written in the form of a pentacle,
symbolizing the human temple. To it He
added, as a conclusion, what Shoghi Effendi has described as “words which
reveal the importance He attached to those Messages, and indicate their direct
association with the prophecies of the Old Testament”:
“Thus have We built the Temple with the hands of power and
might, could ye but know it. This is the
Temple promised unto you in the Book.
Draw ye nigh unto it. This is
that which profiteth you, could ye but comprehend it. Be fair, O peoples of the earth! Which is preferable, this, or a temple which
is built of clay? Set your faces towards
it. Thus have ye been commanded by God,
the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.”
(The Universal House of Justice, from Introduction
to the book: ‘Summons of the Lord of Hosts’)
