fold, service of religion is mostly deficient in this country, and either is partial, minor, or just personal; or defeated and underground; or condones innovations; or utilizes forced interpretations and corruptions of the holy texts.

Since you possess powerful belief and strong spiritual influence, you should become staunch students of the Risale-i Nur with complete sincerity and humility, so that you may share in the spiritual partnership of thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of students which looks to the hereafter, and your good works and virtues may become universal rather than particular, and your trade for the next life may be truly profitable.

S a i d   N u r s i ∗∗∗

► (035) ◄

My Dear, Loyal Brothers !

Today I took a look at a large gilded and bound collection containing the pieces sent to me as a memento by the innocent children and community of unlettered elderly, which was one of the books handed over to me by the court after two years' investigation. It occurred to me to send you a short piece included at the beginning of the collection, which I had written for Kastamonu. Perhaps a copy was sent to you before. I felt certain that this collection written with innocent sincerity by the children and unlettered had played an important part in defeating the philosophers and the obdurate; it had broken their obduracy and caused the unjust to be fair-minded. We had gathered together in three volumes the pieces sent to me by the unlettered, and I am sending you the piece that I saw had been written at the beginning.

I am sending together with this, a collection composed of eight pieces indicating the Risale-i Nur's acceptance, and a piece that deserves to be written at the beginning of the collection, which in addition to The Wonders of the Gawth al-A'zam, The Wonders of Imam 'Ali, and The Qur'anic Signs, has had added to it three or four pieces consisting of additional letters and so on.

I send my greetings to my brothers and especially to the innocents and the unlettered, and I pray for them and await their prayers. And I ask God to bless them. Whoever sees their writings, applauds them delightedly.

They sent me the copies written by fifty to sixty innocent young students, and I have collected them together in three volumes. Below are some of them as an example:

Ömer, 15 years old; Mustafa, 13; Hâfız Nebi, 14; Hicret, 15; Hüseyin,