‘Abdu’l-Bahá in New York/Foreword
| ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in New York Foreword |
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This book has been compiled by the New York Bahá’ís in commemoration of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s presence in this city during the year 1912.
Approved by the Reviewing Committee of the National Spiritual Assembly.
FOREWORD
[edit]WHEN ‘Abdu’l-Bahá visited this country for the first time in 1912, he found a large and sympathetic audience waiting to greet him personally and to receive from his own lips his loving and spiritual message. A few from this Western world had already visited him at his home in Haifa, but there were thousands more, whose souls had been attracted by the Bahá’í message, who were eager to welcome its great leader to the United States.
During the months that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent in New York City, the doors of many churches and other organizations of various kinds, as well as of many private homes, were thrown wide open to the man and his message. It is primarily for the sake of the organizations thus privileged and the homes thus blessed that this little book, which records some of his addresses in New York, has been prepared. But it is also believed that the addresses published in this form may prove to be of vital interest and inspiration to that larger and ever growing company of friends who were not permitted to hear him in person in 1912.
Running all through these addresses there is clearly discernible that rare blending of the spiritual note with the scientific, which gives to the Bahá’í message its distinctive appeal to these modern times. Truly emancipated from all bondage to the letter of traditional creeds and doctrines,
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and fearlessly dedicated to the independent investigation of reality, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stood before these New York audiences as the visible exemplification of one whose life was rooted and grounded in a profoundly immediate and personal experience with God, whom he had discovered within himself and saw in all men, and at the same time, one who had translated this spiritual experience into its moral, social and political applications to the world of today.
It was vastly more than a vision of the unity underlying all diversities—the unity that the world is blindly seeking and that it must surely find ere long—that found expression in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words; it was an actual realized spiritual unity that existed for him even now—the real unity underlying all races and nations, all classes and individuals, the real unity underlying all religions of whatsoever name, the essential unity of science and religion, of man and woman everywhere. It is out of this realization of spiritual unity that there emerges his broad and comprehensive program for World Peace, based on universal education, on an international language, a just solution of the complex economic problems and an international tribunal.
Religion, as voiced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in these addresses, is not a religion based upon theological distinctions and niceties, or on any ecclesiastical forms or rituals. It springs rather from universal moral and spiritual principles that are rooted in the spiritual nature of man, and that are directly applicable to every domain of human activity and to every problem of man’s life, both individual and collective. It means religion, freed from all the accretions and admixtures of the past, lifted above all that is transient
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and partial and exclusive and unspiritual, and translated frankly and fully into its universal, social and spiritual terms.
But while these printed addresses breathe the universal spirit of this great soul, they do not begin to convey all the wonderful inspiration that was imparted to those who were privileged to meet him personally and to hold sweet converse with him on the things of the spirit. Beyond the words spoken there was something indescribable in his personality that impressed profoundly all who came into his presence.
The dome-like head, the patriarchal beard, the eyes that seemed to have looked beyond the reach of time and sense, the soft yet clearly penetrating voice, the translucent humility, the never failing love—but above all, the sense of power mingled with gentleness that invested his whole being with a rare majesty of spiritual exaltation that both set him apart, and yet that brought him near to the lowliest soul—it was all this, and much more that can never be defined, that have left with his many New York friends, memories that are ineffaceable and unspeakably precious.
To all Americans of whatever persuasion, these addresses should have a special richness of meaning, for through them ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gives expression to his great faith in America and in the guiding part that the United States is yet to play in establishing World Peace, and in enthroning justice and love in the life of all mankind. He realized full well the many complex problems confronting us as a nation, but he believed in our limitless spiritual resources, and in our capacity to awaken and apply these, as yet untouched sources of power, to all our manifold life. It was in this
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strong faith that he could say, “I desire to make manifest among the friends in America a new light that they may become a new people, that a new foundation may be established and complete harmony be realized; for the foundation of Bahá’u’lláh is love.”
To help toward that “new foundation” and the realization of that “complete harmony,” this little book is lovingly and confidently sent forth.
The Community Church, November 26, 1922.