No less urgent were the pleadings of His own kindred and friends, particularly His twelve-year old Son, ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Whose grief and loneliness had so consumed His soul that, in a conversation recorded by Nabíl in his narrative, He had avowed that subsequent to the departure of Bahá’u’lláh He had in His boyhood grown old.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)