The Book of Akbar 3.2.4

3.2.4

On hearing this soul-refreshing message, the morning breeze of felicity arose; the stock of eternal bliss was collected; the eye of hope grew bright; the outer world became current coin; the inner world exulted; the skirt of success fell into my hand; the wished-for countenance came in sight. Good God! What a strange mystery it is that in historical writings, praise of the pure Giver is introduced as an adornment to the book, whereas here, the book is adorned in order to the praise of the Creator. In the pages of secularists, praise comes in as ancillary to the design of the book, but in this glorious history, the design is subservient to the praise. According to the old method, God’s praise was effected by utterance; in this new rendezvous on Reason’s highway, action is praise. My predecessors relied on speech for God’s praise; in this exordium of rare writing, recourse is had to the perfect man who is a God-worshipping king, viz., that Lord of the World who, by virtue of his God-seeking and God-apprehending, has removed the veil from between the external and the internal and has established love between the sections of the recluse and the layman and has lifted up the curtain from in front of the apparent and the real.