Trust No Man Save Him Whose Breast Hath Been Dilated

In the early collection *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas,* published by the Bahai Publishing Society of Chicago in 1909 and now in the public domain, a brief Tablet from the Master to a Western *servant of God* takes up the question of trust. The specific occasion has not been preserved by the compilers; from internal evidence it appears that the recipient had asked the Master how to discern, in the course of his teaching work, whom he could safely take into close spiritual association.

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The Master's answer is direct.

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> Trust no man save him whose breast hath been dilated by God > through the light of faith, whom God hath confirmed in His > Religion, and who is severed from all else save God and > attracted by His Fragrances.

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The standard the Master sets is exact. The trustworthy companion is not, in the first place, identified by his social status or by his eloquence in speaking about the Cause. The trustworthy companion is identified by three internal signs.

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His breast has been *dilated by God through the light of faith* — the old Eastern image of the breast widened, made roomy, by the entry of the divine spirit; in plainer English, his soul has been opened by an experience of God that was not of his own manufacturing.

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He has been *confirmed* in the Religion of God — meaning that the experiences of his life since accepting the Faith have, on his own observation, vindicated his original choice; he is not new and uncertain, drifting and likely to drift back.

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He is *severed from all else save God* — meaning that his deepest attachments are not to political ideologies, to social ambitions, to the approval of his peers, but to the divine Beloved Himself.

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The Tablet then offers, by implication, the practical counsel. Trust must be *extended slowly.* The friend who comes quickly into the inner circle of one's spiritual life on the basis of an enthusiastic first conversation may not be the friend who will remain there. The Master is asking the recipient to *watch* — patiently, without unkindness — for the slow signs by which a soul of real depth makes itself known.

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This is not a Tablet of suspicion. It is a Tablet of discernment. The Master wishes the believer to be open-hearted to all and yet careful with the inmost gifts of his confidence. The Cause has, in its early years, suffered too often from the opposite mistake — from the trusting placement of weight on souls who could not, finally, bear it. The recipient is being quietly trained to avoid the same.

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The instruction is small but exact. It has continued, across generations, to govern the way the friends form their deepest spiritual partnerships.

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