[Page 863]PART FOUR
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I
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
1. THE SUFFERINGS OF BAHÁ’U’LLÁH AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE
By GEORGE TOWNSHEND, M.A.
THE Prayers and Meditations of Bahá’u’lláh which the beloved Guardian has given us is in large measure an intimate remembrance of the Redeemer’s sufferings. And Bahá’u’lláh wished us to meditate on these sufferings. In the Tablet of Aḥmad He says: “Remember My days during thy days, and My distress and banishment in this remote prison.”
In a great poem known as the Fire Tablet He records at length the tale of His calamities and writes at the close:
“Thank the Lord for this Tablet whence thou canst breathe the fragrance of My meekness and know what hath beset Us in the path of God.” He adds: “Should all the servants read and ponder this, there shall be kindled in their veins a fire that shall set aflame the world.”
True religion in all ages has called on the faithful to suffer. On the one hand it brings to mankind a happiness in the absolute and the everlasting which is found nowhere but in religion. No unbeliever knows any joy which in its preciousness can be compared to the joys of religion. “The true monk,” it has been said, “brings nothing with him but his lyre.”
On the other hand Heaven is walled about with fire. This bliss must be bought at a great price. So it has ever been in all religions of mankind.
An ancient hymn of India proclaims a truth as real now as it was in distant times:
The way of the Lord is for heroes. It is not meant for cowards.
Offer first your life and your all. Then take the name of the Lord.
He only tastes of the Divine Cup who gives his son, his wife, his wealth and his own life.
He verily who seeks for pearls must dive to the bottom of the sea, endangering his very existence.
Death he regards as naught; he forgets all the miseries of mind and body.
He who stands on the shore, fearing to take the plunge, attains naught.
The path of love is the ordeal of fire. The shrinkers learn from it.
Those who take the plunge into the fire attain eternal bliss.
Those who stand afar off, looking on, are scorched by the flames.
Love is a priceless thing only to be won at the cost of death.
Those who live to die, those attain; for they have shed all thoughts of self.
Those heroic souls who are rapt in the love of the Lord, they are the true lovers.
All the founders of religions have had to endure rejection and wrong, and as mankind grew more and more mature and the victory of God nearer, these wrongs, these sufferings have grown more and more severe continually.
We read little if anything of martyrdom in the Old Testament. But the New opens with Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, his beheading of John the Baptist; its central figure is a Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief. The Gospels close with the agony in Gethsemane and with the Cross, the Nails, the Spear, and history follows with the martyrdom of all the eleven apostles. The Báb Himself was martyred and His followers gave up their lives for love of Him, not by dozens only but by hundreds and by thousands. In establishing the victory of God
Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá drank the cup of suffering to the dregs.
It is said there are three kinds of martyrdom: one is to stand bravely and meet death unflinchingly in the path of God without wavering or under torture denying for an instant their faith. The second is little by little to detach one’s heart entirely from the world, laying aside deliberately and voluntarily all vanities and worldly seductions, letting every act and word become a speaking monument and a fitting praise for the Holy Name of Baha’u’llah. The third is to do the most difficult things with such self-sacrifice that all behold it as your pleasure. To seek and to accept poverty with the same smile as you accept fortune. To make the sad, the sorrowful your associates instead of frequenting the society of the careless and gay. To yield to the decrees of God and to rejoice in the most violent calamities even when the suffering is beyond endurance. He who can fulfill these last conditions becomes a martyr indeed.
None can attempt to delineate the variety or to analyze the nature of the afflictions which were poured upon Baha’u’llah. Repeatedly He has Himself summarized them in a few brief powerful sentences. In one place He calls our particular attention to the fact that it was not the Black Dungeon of Tihran, for all its horrors and chains, which He named the Most Great Prison. He gave that name to ‘Akká. We are left to surmise why, and we reflect that in the Black Pit His sufferings were chiefly personal and physical; His enemies were external foes, the hope of redeeming the Cause was still with Him. But when He went down to ‘Akká in 1868, the traitor Mirza Yaḥyá had done his deadly work; the kings and leaders had definitely rejected the Message, He was definitely cast out and silenced. Not He Himself alone but the Cause of God was in prison.
We can never imagine what numberless possibilities of immediate redemption the mad, sad, bad world had wantonly flung away; nor can our less sensitive natures know what the anguish of this frustration must have been to the eager longing of a heart as divinely centered, divinely loving as His.
But this much is abundantly plain; that the pains, the griefs, the sorrows, the sufferings, the rejections, the betrayals, the frustrations which were the common lot of all
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the High Prophets reached their culmination in Him.
Yet through all He remained calm, confident, his courage unshaken, his acquiescence forever radiant.
No one is to imagine that the excess of His tribulations means that at any time the power of evil had prevailed against Him. Pondering as He would have us to do, over the significance of these afflictions, we are shown that the truth is quite otherwise. He reveals:
“Had not every tribulation been made the bearer of Thy wisdom, and every ordeal the vehicle of Thy providence, no one would have dared oppose Us, though the powers of heaven and earth were to be leagued against Us.” He writes that God had sacrificed Him that men might be born anew and released from their bondage to sin. He praises God for His sufferings, He welcomes them, and even prays that for God’s sake the earth should be dyed with His blood and His head raised on a spearpoint. He continually protests that with every fresh tribulation heaped upon Him He manifests a fuller measure of God’s Cause and exalts more highly still God’s Word.
How bitterly felt were His tribulations, how acute His anguish, how real His grief and pain is shown a hundred times in His laments. His high divinity did not protect Him from human sensibility, but never did He quail nor blanch, never did He show resentment.
Many of His laments are not over His woes themselves but over the effect they produce on the faithful whose hearts they sorely shook or on the enemies of the Cause whom they fill with joy.
Nothing could exhaust His patience nor dampen His spirit. “Though My body be pained by the trials that befall Me, though it be afflicted by the revelation of Thy decree, yet My soul rejoiceth.” He affirms that the tribulations that He and the faithful are made to endure are such as no pen in the entire creation can record, nor anyone describe. Yet “We swear by Thy Might, every trouble that toucheth us in our love for Thee is an evidence of Thy tender mercy, every fiery ordeal a sign of the brightness of Thy light, every woeful tribulation a cooling draught, every toil a blissful repose, every anguish a fountain of gladness.”
How then is it that “by Thy stripes we are healed?”
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It is because the intensity, the magnitude, the volume of the sufferings of Bahá’u’lláh called forth the fullest possible expression and outpouring of the infinite mercy and love of God.
Wrongs done to the founder of a religion have two inevitable effects: one is that of retribution against the wrong done—the severity of which we may judge from the two thousand year exile of the Jewish people. The other is that of reward to the High Prophet whom they enable to release fresh powers of life that would have otherwise lain latent, to pour forth Divine energies which in their boundlessness will utterly overwhelm the forces of evil and empower Him to say: “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”
The suflerings Of Bahá’u’lláh enable us in some degree to measure the immensity of His love for mankind, to appreciate the sacrifice He made for love of us. The story of them enables us to keep in remembrance the heinous blackness and cruelty of the world of man from which He saved us; it enables us to realize the meaning and the need of Divine redemption, it proves to us the invincibility of God and the lone majesty of God’s victory over evil.
It is for the sake of learning more fully the love and the glory and the might of God that we contemplate this story of Bahá’u’lláh’s tribulations.
In that spirit we are to read it, and as a proof of His triumphant inviolable love He keeps the picture before us in many forms that we may be fortified and uplifted in our poor human struggle with the tests and afflictions of life.
The Fire Tablet adds all the poignancy and impassioned power of divine poetry to the story of the boundless suffering He and His beloved followers had to endure. In language of torrential eloquence He tells of the longing of the faithful for reunion with God being ungratified, He tells of the casting out of those most near to His heart, of dying bodies, of frustrated lovers left afar to
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perish in loneliness, of Satan’s whisperings in every human ear, of infernal delusions spreading everywhere, of the triumph of calamity, darkness, and coldness of heart. He tells of the sovereignty in every land of hate and unbelief while He Himself is forbidden to speak, left in the lonelineSS of His anguish, drowning in a sea of pain with no rescue ship to come and save Him. The light of honor and loyalty and truth are put out; slander prevails and no avenging wrath of an outraged God descends to destroy the wicked and vindicate God’s messenger.
He calls to God for an answer. And the answer comes, showing the inner significance of God’s seeming to forsake His righteous ones.
Man’s evil sets off God’s goodness. Man’s coldness of heart sets off the warmth of God’s love.
Were it not for the night, how would the sun of the Prophet’s valor show forth the splendor of its radiance? Through His loneliness, the unity of God was revealed; through His banishment, the world of divine singleness grew fair.
“We have made misery,” said God to Him, “the garment of Thy glory, and sorrow the beauty of Thy temple. O Thou treasure of the worlds! Thou seest the hearts are filled with hate, and shalt absolve them, Thou Who dost hide the sins of all the worlds! Where the swords flash, go forward, where the shafts fly, press onward, O Thou victim of the worlds.”
In that battle which we—all of us—wage with pain and suffering and sorrow, those are God’s last words to us:
“Where the swords flash, go forward; Where the shafts fly, press onward.”
For love is a priceless thing, only to be won at the cost of death. Those who live to die, those attain; for they have lost all thoughts of self. Those heroic souls who are rapt in the love of the Lord, they are the true lovers.
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THE BAHA’I WORLD
2. THE GOD WHO WALKS WITH MEN
By HORACE HOLLEY
FROM an older day we hear there was a time when God walked with men. That ancient belief is now a faded rose that has lost its glory, but it keeps a precious fragrance which still stirs the heart with wonder and with hope.
God walked with men! The idea seems to change the world from a great, implacable machine into a place of adoration and fulfilled love. It makes us ask, do we live in a universe of mechanical atoms, of strange, perfect stars and suns looking down without feeling or pity upon our griefs and lonely failures, or can we be actually living in the compassionate heart of God?
How could such an exalted idea ever become lost and forgotten? Was it merely a beautiful but empty dream? Or was it a sublime truth we have sold for the price to pay for personal and selfish desires?
This world, we know too well, without a God who walks with men, imprisons us in a vast loneliness where we have to live with our own discontent, our failure, lacking real purpose or aim. It is not enough to become at times part of some officially heralded movement pronounced necessary and noble if the nobility does not penetrate into our own hearts and redeem us from our unsatisfying selves. But the discontent lingers and the hope occasionally returns.
What has happened to human beings that they can be so skillful in doing great things but so helpless when they turn their wonderful powers to the greater task of ordering their own hearts?
1.
Ages ago the Greeks, the Romans, the German peoples and the Scandinavians attempted to fill this world of loneliness with imagined gods who walked with men. Their poets invented nearby heavens filled with deities whom the people worshipped as gods. These deities embodied the hopes, longings, loves and passions of human beings. Entering their daily lives, the imaginary gods and goddesses, fauns, elves and sprites, empowered to punish or reward, seemed for a long time to satisfy the upreaching heart and still the restless mind.
The rise and spread of revealed religions, and coming of the attitude of science which replaced the imagination of childish peoples, denuded the skies, the mountains, the forests and the fields of all these charming maninvented deities. Once more the world became a place of loneliness, unless people could find solace and healing in the proclamations of great religious doctors.
Mighty waves of faith did spread over the pagan world. There was something which the disconsolate person could find to cherish in his secret heart. A purer love and a more ardent adoration of God gave to our fathers and mothers a source of strength and courage—a sense of consecration to their Creator.
The religious systems, too, have attempted to overcome the loneliness of hearts, using the genius of architects, sculptors, painters and poets to create impressive cathedrals and colorful pageants to draw men away from themselves and plunge them into the ecstasy of a high communal experience.
However deeply our fathers and mothers drank of this golden cup, they did not succeed in handing their sense of fulfillment down to us. Nor could they express the nobility of their faith through the redemption of a warring, divided society.
II.
We of today are spiritual orphans. We cannot live as idle heirs of any fortune accumulated in the past. The precious treasure of faith has been wasted in wars, revolutions and the hideous tyrannies which have afflicted our time.
It is very plain to us now that nothing can compensate for the loss of the direct, simple, heart-transforming power of the love of God. However high men rise in their organization of formal worship of God, their work does not take the place of God. Beneath the clamor of religious systems we find with disconsolate fear that the human heart stands alone. Happiness? Yes, there are people who love us and people we love. There are many useful things to do from morning until night. Nevertheless we know there is a conscious solitude even in the happy heart. The world
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about us is terrifying, people become more and more abandoned to pleasure as a flight from the solitude which we know too well is the emptiness where God has not brought His compassion, His understanding, His strength and His healing. It is within this emptiness at the center of being, that our anxieties are distilled.
Of course no one shows his anxieties to others if he can conceal them. We learn to put up a brave front in order to conceal that secret inner void. We talk about everything except the one great thing that really counts. Perhaps we conform to opinion and the public standard of manners and efficiency so successfully that after a while we regard the front as our real self. But if we do this, sooner or later some crisis overtakes us, strikes at our very heart, and makes us more conscious than ever how weak and helpless human beings are without God. What we call strength is often no more than the habit of closing the heart, and this is the most disastrous weakness.
III.
They teach us today that the universe is vast beyond comprehension. In it the little earth, our home, has become reduced to insignificance. There must be a God to create and rule this mighty universe, but can a God so majestic and powerful come down to walk with men? The beautiful old stories of God do not match the new stories of scientifie discovery. The world has changed. There seems to be no connection between our modern universe and the simple spirit of pure love for which we long. Everything has become organized and technically perfected except people themselves.
Who is the God who has walked with men? When does He appear? How does He disclose Himself? Can we still seek and find a deathless love that will claim our erring hearts, touch them with passion and save us from ourselves?
Today a wonderful event has taken place. People have thought that religion was something that happened centuries ago, and its story was complete and finished. Though everything has changed during the past few generations, nothing, they supposed, could change the systems of belief that have been in existence and ruled so long. The world could be uprooted, but God, they tell us, remained silent while millions suffered and the nations lost their way.
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What happened was the bringing forth of a new truth about God’s love for mankind. A great being in the East has revolutionized religion. Though He was persecuted and resisted, His words have been carried slowly but steadily to all parts of the world.
This is the essence of what this heroic, sublime and inspired Person has told the world today. First, that the almighty God of the universe, Creator of man, remains forever concealed, too glorious for any human to approach. Second, He sends His Spirit to inspire a perfect man upon our earth and through Him pour forth His love and His saving truth to all who will listen and believe. Third, God reveals His divine nature and purpose to mankind age after age, so that the world is never left without His assurance of love and redemption.
This perfect being in whom the celestial Spirit enters and takes possession of the man’s own personal powers is the Prophet, or as some say, the Messenger or the Messiah. There is no way to God except through His chosen Messenger.
In His Prophet, God walks with men. Through Him, God’s passionate love for men is poured forth and His inspired guidance written or spoken as inspiration for individuals, races and nations.
IV.
God walks with men! Alas, that in this humble human form some of the powerful leaders have failed to recognize the Spirit of God Himself. They have always resisted and condemned Him whenever He appears in the time of the world’s greatest‘trouble. Though no human will can overcome God’s will, the enemies of the Spirit have killed the Messenger and martyred those nearest and dearest to Him. Afterward, when darkened souls found that His message of love and immortality could not be suppressed, they did everything possible to alter its meaning and restrict its influence. They confined its free, universal, radiant love and living truth within a complicated system of theology, creed and ritual, which confuses all but a few, while proclaiming themselves defenders of the faith, and the champion of its misSlon.
But we are not concerned with systems
and the great disputes about religion. Our
longing is for the God Who walks with men.
What we pray for is the infinite privilege of
hearing His words with our own ears, ad
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mitting His love into our own hearts, and understanding His message with our own minds.
All of us have been taught to revere some Prophet’s name and exalt His mission as explained to us in childhood and youth. But we have been warned that other Prophets are false messengers who arose solely to betray our inherited faith.
The sublime truth that comes to us today is that the Prophets are not hostile to each other, but identical beings all filled with the same Spirit and carrying out the same mission. Details of their Message changed from age to age because different conditions called for new treatment. '
The miraculous bounty of our time is that through this new revelation we can regard the religion of God as one universal faith, which passes through different periods of development but always upholds the one divine love and always works to bring people together as members of the one great human family.
God walks with men!
Let us fear no longer to search out for ourselves the tenderness, the ardor and the compassion of the love which God has poured forth through His Prophets, and to learn, with new minds, the infinite wisdom of His counsel.
The God Who walks with men is the Father of all humanity. There is no longer any religious reason for assuming that He cherishes only one race or one creed or that there is any divine word justifying prejudice and dissension among the many diverse peoples of the human race.
Since there is, beyond all our complicated doubting, a God Who walks with men, let us reverently draw near and join those throngs of people, those fortunate individuals and those dear companions actually standing in the presence of the Messengers who, one by one, stood forth, each in His own age, as the Witnesses and Spokesmen of God on earth. The tongues are different but the speech is one!
V.
Can the seeking heart make a better beginning of this joyous quest than to turn to the words of that great, heroic figure, Moses? Moses, we recall, arose among an exiled and enslaved people subject to the conquering might, the arrogant pride of the ancient Egyptian Empire. There was no
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daily reporting of His words and no description of His presence, but the recorded words carry full conviction that He expressed God’s love and truth to people exactly like ourselves.
The words are not many, but they do seem to lay a foundation for belief in one God and for love of humanity.
“Thou shalt have no other God before me. . . . Thou shalt not kill . . . Lovethy neighbor as thyself.” God walked with men. He pointed the way, and when they took the way they were favored; but when they turned from the way, they fell into misfortune.
This view brings religion back to the individual. God has given religion to all and not made it a monopoly for any group to dispense for a profit. “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
But though the way was so plain, the people must have lost it and become as bewildered as people are today. For we find these terrible words spoken by a later Prophet: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord; and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.”
What were they to seek—the words which they already possessed but had forgotten, or a new way to understand these words; or was it a new word they had to await?
God walked with other races also. To His people, Zoroaster said: “To enjoy the benefits of providence is wisdom; to enable others to enjoy them is virtue. He who is indifferent to the welfare of others does not deserve to be called a man.” How this lifts the heart! “The best way of worshiping God is to allay the distress of the times and to improve the condition of mankind.”
“Have the religions of mankind no common ground? Is there not everywhere the same enrapturing beauty, beaming forth from many thousand places? Broad indeed is the carpet which the All-Loving One has spread, and beautiful the colors He has given it.” “Diversity of worship has divided the human race into countless nations, from all these dogmas we may select one—Divine Love.”
Another said:
Prophet, Muhammad,
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“God is the light of the Heavens and of the earth. . . . God guideth whom He will to His light, and God setteth forth parables to men, for God knoweth all things.” He also said, “There is no compulsion in religion.” Are we not to accept truth freely and cherish it as a blessing rather than bear it as a heavy load? “We make no distinction between any of His Messengers,” Muhammad also said. Thus the djflerent peoples, sharing their holy words, can draw closer in fellowship, acknowledging one God.
When Buddha walked with men, He said: “As a mother even at the risk of her own life protects her son, her only son, so he who has recognized the Truth cultivates good will without measure among all beings, unstinted, unmixed with any feeling of making distinctions or showing preferences.” “To him in whom love dwells, the whole world is but one family.” Among the Hindus their Prophet said, “Like the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all mortal creatures exist depending upon one another.” “Toward all that live, I am the same. . . . Whoever devoutly worships Me, they are in Me and I in them.”
VI.
How inspiringly God walked with men when Jesus went about among the people in His day! His spirit of compassionate understanding, poured out upon humble individuals, upon the sick, the blind and the erring, along with His firm repudiation of hypocrisy and pride, could only be a pure reflection of the power God vested in Him. Perhaps these healings were physical miracles He performed, but they might also have been spiritual healings, to make the inwardly blind see the light of Truth and the religiously dead arise to a new life of faith. Certainly He attributed all His works to the divine Power, and the religion He preached was based on worship of God, not of Himself. “Let your light so shine before men. that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” When an enemy asked Him which was the great commandment, He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind . . . And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
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His work was done among a people whose ancestors had received a religion from God through Moses. The opposers used that religion as their justification. Can God’s religion oppose itself? Or do the people abandon the spirit of their religion and exploit its outer forms and special privilege, so that a new Prophet must appear? The world of Christ’s Beatitudes is a heavenly world, full of illumination and inner peace, but it has not conquered the world of our human strife nor made peace the great law over the nations.
Is it for ever to be thus? The Prophet’s vision a dream, and our struggles and failures the reality? A future heaven but a present chaos? “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot hear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
VII.
This greatest challenge to the human heart has been squarely met by the Bahá’í teachings. They explain that all the Prophets came to prepare the people, race by race or nation by nation, for existence in this very age in which we were born—the age when all peoples would be brought together and have to learn how to live together or else be faced with destruction. The learning how to live together means living according to the standards set for them by all the Prophets. The being faced with destruction means attempting to solve our great, world problems without any true, religious spirit.
Stated that way, anyone can see that all our wars today are the sufferings we impose on each other as punishments for breaking the laws of God. He does not punish uswe punish ourselves.
But how can we bring such a terrible period of suffering to an end? By worshiping the one God, the Father of all peoples, and living according to the laws and principles His Prophet, Baha’u’llah, has revealed for humanity today. The Spirit which animated the Prophets of ancient times has animated Bahá’u’lláh and inspired his words with such truth that every sincere person can say to himself, “Religion is not dead—it is reborn. Religion is not something for primitive people living only simple lives—it is a worldunifying principle, a majestic World Plan for the redemption of a stricken society.” The Bahá’í teachings call to the soul, summoning us to serve in a supreme crusade to
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establish peace and justice through divine Law. Nothing greater can enter the heart than this pure flame of faith in the living God who, once more, has walked with men.
“Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee.” Here speaks the very heart of religion. To the downcast soul, shrinking from its responsibilities, the Prophet says, “Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not, wherefore fearest thou thy perishing? Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished, why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn. Abide then in thy love for Me, that thou mayest find Me in the realm of glory.”
Here are His words to us about brotherhood: “Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.”
The Prophet uncovers a deep source of life within our personality which we can
3. EDUCATING
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never attain by our own effort. The love that God offers us is universal. When we partake of it we know that the same transforming spirit enters all others who believe, and therefore by this sharing of universal love we become united.
How this world can attain peace is proclaimed in these noble words: “The sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith.” When we grasp this divine truth we are able to make our lives count in the terrible struggle now going on between the way of God and the way of unregenerate man.
To accept and to assimilate truth we must prepare ourselves by willingness to give up errors, prejudice and half—truths even though, or rather especially when, these seem to have become the bulwarks of a decadent society. Truth cannot enter the life which consciously profits by error. The gulf between the words of the Prophet and human intellect is wider than this earth, but it can be bridged by every sincere seeker.
“The time fore-ordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the earth is now come. The promises of God, as recorded in the Holy Scriptures, have all been fulfilled.”
God walks with men!
Shall we not arise and walk with Him?
FOR PROGRESS
By STANWOOD COBB
EDUCATION in the past, whether oral or literate, has had as its chief purpose the transmission to each new generation of the knowledge, skills, traditions and mores of the race, thus assuring the stability and perpetuation of particular cultures and civilizations.
Until recently education has not concerned itself with human progress. Its aim has been the perpetuation of the “status quo.” In the Occident all through the Middle Ages, and in Asia until the present century, this devotion to ancestral patterns has resulted in what is termed “medievalism.”
This static type of culture may be characterized by four I's: Ignorance, Illiteracy, Insularity and Inertia. With such characteristics, medievalism will be seen as a vicious circle, self—perpetuating and self-imprisonmg.
The Greeks broke out from traditionalism for a few brilliant centuries and then lapsed again. The Muslims in their turn created a brilliant age of science which has left beneficent results to world civilization. But around the Eleventh Century, this élan died down and Islam sank into that medievalism and obscurantism which has so strikingly
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characterized it for the past five or six centuries.
Europe, stimulated and awakened from her Dark Ages by the brilliant lights of the Islamic—Arabic culture, entered upon a long period of progress which constantly gained in momentum, culminating today in the marvels of our technological age.
II.
Although humanity has made progress by such periodic fiowerings of culture and invention, the concept of human progress, strange to say, has been very late in arriving on the planet. The classical traditions, and the traditions of medieval Christian Europe, were introspective. The Greeks and Romans looked back to a Golden Age from which humanity had degenerated; the Christians looked back to an age of innocence from which a sinful humanity had lapsed.
It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the idea of human progress began to rise, particularly in that free atmosphere of intellectualism in France which has been called the Age of Enlightenment. The discovery of the New World and the voyages and observations of world travelers brought to Europe an important and eye—opening wealth of material regarding the customs and folk-patterns of savages, semi-savages and Asiatics whose varied cultures had hitherto been either totally unknown or little appreciated.
Then thanks to that sheer logic of the French mind, the idea arrived that the untutored lives of the savages probably had been the nature of all human life on the planet at one time; and that the superior standards of living and intellectual enlightenment of the contemporaneous Europe had been due to progress from lower conditions.
Once this concept of past progress was arrived at, it was natural to extend the concept of progress into the future. If man had already developed from low to high conditions, what was there to prevent him from going on and developing still higher?
Thus arose the most dynamic idea that has ever entered the mind of man—PROGRESS. Here is something to inspire man's imagination, to awaken his desires, and to whet his will. Something, in a word, which can in itself—by sheer creative power residing in the concept—stimulate and induce man to erupt from the sterile imprisonment
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of medievalism where he has remained for so many centuries.
We do not need to rehearse here all the amazing ways in which humanity has progressed since the Century of Enlightenment —the discoveries of science and their application to human living; the great enlargement of man’s knowledge and conceptual power; the broadening of his horizons; the narrowing of the planet until all are near neighbors; and the promise of technology to bless and fructify the earth.
The discovery of evolution in the nineteenth century wrought a still vaster expansion of the mind of humanity than had the French Age of Enlightenment. With this new vision which the theory of evolution gave to human thought, everything in the universe from minuscule to majuscule was seen as developing in terms of progress; a progress side-tracked or vitiated here and there by back—currents and eddies, but in the main, persistently at work throughout the cosmos to individualize and form to ever more perfect patterns everything that exists.
Very suddenly—if we speak in terms of human life upon this planet or even in terms of the history of civilization—this lightbringing concept of progress has dawned and begun everywhere to energize the souls of men. The whole world has now become progress-minded. There is not a race, .not a region where the ideas of human progress and the examples of human progress are not working like a subtle yeast to raise the heavy dough of sterile custom into the bread of life.
Naturally this world-shaking concept of progress has penetrated the field of education, which next to religion is the most conserving and conservative force in the life of man. So now education, in addition to handing over to the new generation the knowledges and skills and mores of the past, is aiming also to stimulate the mind with the history of the past as shown in terms of progress, and with the possibility of further progress on and on throughout the coming year.
At this point we may consider the nature and plan of Bahá’í education as it is beginning to unfold, and will unfold more and more with each coming generation.
Bahá’í education is not only progressminded; it also has in the World Order of
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Bahá’u’lláh a distinct pattern of perfection as the goal of human effort.
Almost a century ago Bahá’u’lláh laid down certain definite principles for human progress, leading up to and culminating in a new world civilization dedicated to world unity, peace and prosperity. Since Bahá’u’lláh enunciated these world principlesnot as creations of the human mind but as divine messages to man—Bahá’ís enter upon all study of human progress with a brilliant hope and faith and dedication such as is not to be found elsewhere. And as the patterns of perfection are already authoritatively announced, Bahá’ís are saved from those frictional wastes of energy and those futile digressions which characterize the efforts of liberals to arrive at some commonly accepted scheme of operation.
In accordance with this planetary aim, the core of the Bahá’í curriculum will be the new World Order as edicted by Baha’u’llah. The history of the past, the social and physical sciences, all will be oriented in the practical direction of the achievement in the future of a more orderly and happy world. All Bahá’í students will thus become futureminded and dedicated to world progress.
“He is a true man,” declared Bahá’u’lláh, “who devotes his energies to the building of a better world." Salvation as understood in the Bahá’í Faith is not only the spiritualization of the individual, but also the spiritualization and redemption of humanity and of its institutions.
This new World Order around which Bahá’í education will be centered is best described in the words of the present Guardian and administrator of the Bahá’í World Faith, Shoghi Effendi.
“The unity of the human race, as envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds, and classes are closely and permanently united, and in which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded. This commonwealth must, as far as we can visualize it, consist of a world legislature, whose members will, as trustees of the whole of mankind, ultimately control the entire resources of all the component nations, and will enact such laws as shall be required to regulate the life, satisfy the needs and adjust the relationships of all races and peoples. A world exec THE BAHA’I WORLD
utive, backed by an international Force, will carry out the decisions arrived at, and apply the laws enacted by, this world legislature, and will safeguard the organic unity of the whole commonwealth. A world tribunal will adjudicate and deliver its compulsory and final verdict in all and any disputes that may arise between the various elements constituting this universal system. A mechanism of world inter—communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity. A world metropolis will act as the nerve center of a world civilization, the focus towards which the unifying forces of life will converge and from which its energizing influences will radiate. A world language will either be invented or chosen from among the existing languages and will be taught in the schools of all the federated nations as an auxiliary to their mother tongue. A world script, a world literature, a uniform and universal system of currency, of weights and measures, will simplify and facilitate intercourse . . stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.
“A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is movin .”
gThe formulation of such principles of organization for all humanity and the guidance of humanity into a new World Order is too immense a task for any human personality. It requires a super—power. The function of the individual is to become a channel for a Divine Force and a Divine Plan which would remake this planet into a better and happier home for man. It is through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Light which guided the Prophets and shone forth from them, that the Bahá’ís seek to operate.
“When you breathe forth the breath of
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the Holy Spirit from your hearts into the world, commerce and politics will take care of themselves in perfect harmony. All arts and sciences will become revealed, and the knowledge of God will be manifested. It is not your work, but that of the Holy Spirit Which you breathe forth through the Word. This is a fundamental truth.”1
VI.
It may seem strange to include spiritual love in an educational curriculum. But this quality—the practice of which was the essence and kernel of Christ’s teaching—is again emphasized in the Bahá’í Faith as the corner-stone Of the training for the future world civilization, and as the only means of achieving that functional unity which will effectively bind the nations and races of the world together.
Tolerance, mutual understanding and consideration are not enough. Admirable as these characteristics are, they always fail in frictional contingencies and emotional crises. Spiritual love alone can actually cement together in unbreakable union the diverse races of the world, with their diverse temperaments, customs, and self—interests.
This divine love is none other than the Holy Spirit, through the fostering influence of which man’s animal nature is to be transformed. This is the “second birth” of which Christ spoke. It is the way to the harmonization and spiritualization of man’s nature as an individual. It is the only secure foundation for world harmony and peace. Hence the importance of teaching and training youth in these vital truths that compose what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá called “the spiritual science”#vastly more important in the establishment of a world civilization than are any of the physical or social sciences.
But how can any educational system train children along this line of love-development, this spiritualization of human motives which is the desideration not only of Bahá’í culture but of all world cultures irrespective of creed or circumstance?
Pedagogic inculcation and preachment will not accomplish this basic goal of childdevelopment. Only a dedicated corps of teachers—themselves aflame with this spiritual love—can accomplish such a superhuman task. The spirit of love must prevail not only in the home but also in the school. The power of example is more effective than
1 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Divine Art of Living.
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the power of words. It was the example, the contagion of the Spirit, that under the guidance of the apostles changed pagan hearts into hearts of sacrificial love. This task was supremely difficult when undertaken in the regeneration of adults, as the tutorial and expostulative letters of St. Paul indicate. It is much easier to train the innocence and viability of childhood into such spiritualization of character. And with each generation of such tutelage, the spiritual level will rise higher.
Thus, with each succeeding generation of Bahá’ís, education will exert itself the world over to produce ever more noble and more consecrated characters, dowered with both love and wisdom; and equipped technologically for the colossal tasks Which will face them in the achieving of a united and peaceful humanity.
VII.
Much as these spiritual motivations and powers are needed for the superhuman task of forging this planet into a peacefully functioning unity—a task which, as Shoghi Effendi points out, is epochal, and once achieved will never present itself againimportant as is this planetary task, the needs and values of man as an individual will not be neglected in the Bahá’í curriculum.
The present struggle to achieve world unity is an exigency which will not be always with us. When once this unity is achieved and world peace assured, whereto shall man direct his energies? In addition to his duties and responsibilities in the new world-citizenship, the individual has a quest of his own which is legitimate—the quest for career-success, for happiness, for spiritual and harmonious living.
Bahá’í education will strongly emphasize, therefore, the true nature of man, as an immortal soul which has both the opportunity and the obligation of spiritual development. In accordance with his dual nature, man’s selfhood or “ego” can become either degenerate or regenerate. Either we are constantly advancing on the spiritual path, or We are daily retrogressing. Even to remain inactive is to decay.
A wholly new science will evolve under
the Bahá’í aegis—a new type of psychology.
The present materialistic psychology, which
either denies or ignores the existence of a
soul, will yield ground to a more spiritual
science which will unfold to youth the essen
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tial nature of his being and his consequent spiritual potentialities.
In fact, the whole process of education, including the acquisition of knowledge and the acquirement of skills, will be reoriented around those spiritual potentialities which are basic not only to the development of moral character but also to the wholesome development of man’s emotional nature. Such a spiritual psychology will lift the human mind, expand its horizons, and develop powers higher than the materialistic scientist has been able to conceive.
VIII.
Bahá’u’lláh compared man to a mine of hidden wealth which can be made available only by education. But how can education develop these new and unseen powers? To achieve this unparalleled task the educator must realize man’s true nature to be spirit. In the intellectual training of the child, the pregnant truth must be recognized that man’s mind is but an instrument, and that his real creative powers flow from the soul.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has made the portentous statement that it is the Divine Creative Spirit fructifying the mind which enables human beings both to comprehend and to master the universe they live in. Therein lies the chief difference between man’s intelligence and that of the animal. Animals, too, have intelligence to a degree. They can thinkbut only concretely. They cannot generalize, form inductions and deductions, or think in those abstract terms which reveal the nature of existence and the means of controlling and dominating environment.
Abstract and creative thinking is a gift of the Creator to man alone, enabling him—as made in the image of God—to comprehend to a remarkable degree the creative patterns of the universe, and to create himself.
Bahá’í education, therefore, will emphasize the spiritual, intuitional and creative factors in the development of youth. Education will be less stereotyped and more creative, less formal and standardized, and more tolerant and sympathetic toward the individual’s development of those remarkable intuitional powers which are the basis of creativeness.
Bahá’u’lláh hints at the possibility of immediate or intuitive knowledge on the part of man. This is a dangerous field for the educator to operate in. But indubitably, all creations of man’s genius, all new departures
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from the routine past, are of such nature. Bahá’í education will, therefore, keep to a safe minimum the authority of tradition, while emphasizing and fostering the factors of progress, invention and creation.
This progressive attitude of Bahá’í education will have important repercussions in society itself, hastening the technologization of the planet and enhancing its prosperity and happiness.
IX.
We have been discussing education, up to this point, from the heights of progress already established by Western civilization. But in Asia and Africa and most of South America, reforms in education must be at first more fundamental. Before creative scholarship can be achieved, there lies before these backward countries the primary task of overcoming illiteracy itself. This is, for over half the world’s peoples, an enormously difficult obligation.
Bahá’ís, the world over, assume the full responsibilities of such a planetary task. For one of the fulcrum principles of Bahá’u’lláh’s new World Order was the achievement of universal education. This was declared to be a duty before God and a primary obligation of the Bahá’í State. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá declared that it was a grave lapse on the part of the parent or the state to allow children to grow up illiterate, ignorant, undeveloped, as regards the noble pattern of their true being.
Asia has up to the present failed to escape from the Vicious repetitive circle of medievalism. Only literacy and education and the contagion of new desires and aspirations can break up this hereditary stagnation.
In this epochal century of change, Asia has at last begun to catch the contagion of progress. Her peoples are everywhere alive, as never before, with the ferment of west‘ ern science and technology, with western .notions of human rights, and western ideas of progress.
To this pregnant situation the Bahá’í Faith brings a definite pattern for progress which will lift Asia out of the dilemma of favoring either retardation or technological materialism. For Bahá’í education and Bahá’í concepts of progress distinctly enlist the spiritual factors which the West has been gradually losing and denying.
Bahá’í education trains for a world civilization that will be dynamically spiritual at
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the same time that it will be technological and practical.
“Every youth must be trained to a profession or vocation,” declared Bahá’u’lláh—a desideration which the Occident as well as the Orient has need to consider. And of all vocations and professions, Bahá’u’lláh asserted that agriculture is the most important.
Here is an educational system perfect as to conception and practical as to application. The Bahá’ís in Asiatic countries, such as Persia, Egypt, ‘Iráq, and India, are, as might be expected, the most progress-minded citizens in their respective communities. They are already taking steps to inaugurate the humble beginnings of that educational system which will one day universally char
acterize the Bahá’í World State. x.
The Bahá’í system of education, as eventually established throughout the world, will have a universal curriculum, will operate in a universal language, and will inculcate a universal ethics—gradually forging the various races and peoples of the world into a cultural unity which will flower into a world civilization.
The need of an auxiliary universal language was emphasized by Bahá’u’lláh as one of the important principles of the new World Order. The purpose of such a universal language was not only to facilitate world travel, commerce and culture; but also to help create that sense of unity which is inherent in the use of a common tongue.
Great periods of civilization in the past have developed and utilized such a common language. In the Graeco-Roman civilization which dominated the Mediterranean for five hundred years, Latin became the official language, with Greek as a secondary language of culture.
In the Arabic—Islamic period of culture which dominated the Middle East and Northern Africa for over a thousand years, Arabic became both the official and cultural language. Scholars of various racial and linguistic origins did all their scientific research and writing in this language, and because of the universal sway of Arabic were able to travel at will from court to court, from university to university. This academic world freedom of movement and regional exchange of scholarship and learning proved a powerful stimulus to that great age of sci 877
ence which the Muslim world created and maintained from the eighth to the twelfth century.
When Europe awoke from her dark slumber to create the Renaissance under the stimulus and influence of Muslim civilization, Church Latin became the universal language. A professor could travel, as many did, from Paris to Oxford, or from Padua to Paris—and later, to more distant universities such as Prague or Vienna—using always the basic language of Latin for instruction and for literary expression. And here in Europe, as had been the case in the ArabicIslamic culture, this academic cross-fertilization proved a great aid in the flowering of science and culture.
Today, in spite of nationalistic rivalries and rancors and of the thousand petty obstacles which a multi-lingual humanity 1abors under, science and culture range the planet. The excellent custom of exchange professors and pupils is but a faint beginning of that cultural universality which will some day prevail throughout the world.
XI.
In the Bahá’í culture, science and technology will hold a high place, striving in friendly rivalry with spiritual potencies to build a better world. Bahá’u’lláh said that religion and science were the two wings by which humanity flies, and one of the leading pronouncements of the program for the new World Order is the necessity for complete harmony between science and religion. To accomplish this, both scientists and religionists must renounce dogmatism and tradition and dedicate themselves to Truth. With sincere effort such dedication will produce a working unity. For it is inconceivable that Truth should be disparate. As there is but one universe, so there can be but one truth about the universe. It matters not from what angle the approach is made, the apex of realization—if the search is sincere—will be unitary.
This does not mean that the universe will look the same to both scientist and religionist. In fact, the universe does not look the same to any two individuals. Factors of intelligence and of sensitivity enter in, with the result that the universe—highly complicated and mysterious as it is and must always be—is never seen with parallel vision by more than a single pair of eyes. _
The important point to note here is that
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the reconciliation of science and religion as invoked by Bahá’u’lláh does not imply the stereotyping of either one. It is an expanding world civilization that the Bahá’ís are creating; not a crystallization, but a vivification of human thought and culture. Standardization, scholasticism and obscurantism will, it is hoped, fail for ages to produce dry-rot in the noble world structure to which Bahá’ís the world over will for centuries devote an earnest and zealous consecration.
XII.
To sum up, Bahá’í education will be essentially progressive. It will inculcate the world’s need for progress and it will profoundly foster the development of futureminded youth dedicated to world citizenship. These specific and global aims of Bahá’í education will exert a profound influence on the future Bahá’í curriculum, designed to be world-wide in scope. Within and penetrating to the core of every subject taught will be the inculcation of the spiritual essentials which must dominate both man’s intellection and his efforts.
In a word, Bahá’í education will play an important part in building a new humanity which will be as far advanced over the materialistic intellectualism of today as this intellectualism is in advance of the cruel savagery of cannibals.
This new humanity will be a spiritualized humanity. The present age of intellectualism —with all its technological miracles—has witnessed the apotheosis of sheer intellect with a corresponding defeat of the spirit.
The coming age of humanity will see spiritual values gradually assume a higher place in man’s esteem than purely intellectual ones. Yet all that the powerful intellect of man has achieved so far will be valued and retained and built into the fabric of the new world culture. This very intelligence of man will be still further enhanced by the spiritual development which will go pari passu with all intellectual development.
The major motivations of the new humanity will be spiritual in nature, aiming at the spiritualizaton of the individual and the spiritualization of humanity—until unity
.‘ 1
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and love and fellowship so prevail upon the planet that this small sector of the universe can truly be called, as Bahá’u’lláh urged it to become, “one home.”
As St. Paul envisioned: “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things. . . . And now abideth faith, hope and love—these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
Since these noble words were uttered, Love in the midst of humanity has felt its way, has prevailed here and there infinitesimally, yet effectively enough to show how great a yeast love is. Now we hopefully await the dawn of that day when spiritual love will dominate the planet and rule all the affairs of man. Not intellect but love; not more technology but more humanology; not more miracles of science but more miracles of faith—this is what the world most needs. And this gospel of love and spiritual joyousness will form the nucleus of Bahá’í world education.
These goals of the new World Order were vividly expressed in a letter written to a Japanese girl in Tokyo in 1920 by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, son of the Founder of the Bahá’í World Faith. We conclude with a quotation from this epistle:
“
. religion must be the cause of concord; it should agree with science and reason; it must be a factor of progress to the world of humanity, it should be free from blind imitations. All prejudices are destructive to the foundation of the world of humanity.
“. . . . The equality of men and women; the universalization of knowledge (education); the creation of one universal language; justice and righteousness; economic facilities among mankind; the need of the world of humanity of the breaths Of the Holy Spirit; the establishment of universal peace; the institution of the Supreme Court of Arbitration; the freedom and equality of all mankind; the brotherhood of the world of humanity."
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879
4. THE PRISON CITY OF ‘AKKA
By WILLIAM B. SEARS
TODAY we were to visit all those precious places associated with Bahá’u’lláh and the Master in the prison city of ‘Akká.
We drove through the newer part of ‘Akká down to the great sweep of sandy beach where a stormy wind lashed the great breakers and drove them as far into the old city as possible. We turned left and wound our way over the hill down into the old city again. The wind blew everyone’s coat collar up around the neck. The day was still gray, misty and chill. The cold crashing of the surf punctuated the silent spots in our conversation as we stood, our backs to the sea wall, gazing across the way at the House of ‘Abbfid.
The sea, the wind, the swirling mist, none could cool down the ardor that stirred inside the pilgrim as he looked upon this gray shell of a house that once sheltered the Supreme Prophet of God. This was once the sanctuary of the Supreme Pen. Its walls had resounded to the words of the Most Great Book, the Mighty Aqdas. Here were formed the laws which would stand inviolate and unaltered for a thousand years. Here were fashioned the provisions which would lay the foundation for the greatest structure in the social history of mankind. Here, those ancient prophetic words had come true, “The Government shall be upon His shoulders.” Here, the Author of the Bahá’í Faith, protected by these blessed walls from the stinging winds of the sea, had poured out the fairest fruit of all His Revelation, the Aqdas—pre-eminent among all the writings which had streamed forth in a never-ending river from His holy pen.
What a plain, unimposing structure. Two stories in height with a small balcony around the second floor front, drab gray in color, bleak in appearance, beautiful to the believer.
We were all staring silently up at the balcony which surrounds the bedroom of Bahá’u’lláh. Many long hours He had paced this balcony, looking out over the sea and down upon the very earth where we were standing. This small balcony, which can be
crossed in less than ten paces, furnished almost the only outside exercise for Bahá’u’lláh in seven long years of imprisonment within the walls of this house.
Before entering the House, we walked to the small public square in the rear. Our gracious host, Leroy Ioas, holding his hat and coat-collar against a wind that whirled tiny cyclones of ‘Akká dust across the courtyard, showed us the exact spot where the Master had stood and distributed alms and food to the poor.
103*!!!
Salah led us back between the houses and into the side door of the House of ‘Abbfid. We crossed an inner court and started up a flight of stairs, turning to the right twice and continuing to climb until we reached the living quarters of the Holy Family. We saw the small room that held thirteen believers the first night spent in this house. We saw the upper shelf which one of the friends had slept upon that first night and, rolling over too far to one side, had toppled down upon the Master.
We removed our shoes and walked across another room of soft carpets, through a small hallway and then turned left into Bahá’u’lláh’s bedroom. Against the wall on the sea-side of the room was a long cushioned bench. Upon the south end, toward Haifa, rested the téj of Baha’u’llah, marking the place where He often would sit. A few feet away, along the south wall, was a rocking chair which He used. Upon the floor, a carpet brought with them all the way from Adrianople.
As I write this now in Johannesburg, I am back there again. I can feel my pulse accelerate and my heart beat stronger. The atmosphere of these holy places never leaves you. It comes rushing back whenever you turn to ‘Akká and Haifa. Hour after hour, month after month, year upon year, Bahá’u’lláh had moved back and forth in this room. At times He would turn left in the doorway and go out on the balcony which runs across the front of the house. After
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Salah chanted a prayer, we followed Bahá’u’lláh’s path to the balcony and looked out upon the turbulent sea. The wind, it seemed to us, was still whipping up the indifferent Mediterranean and driving it toward the shore, where in mighty rollers it bowed and prostrated itself before the throne of Majesty.
>I<>ktl<
The room of revelation (where Baha’u’llah revealed the Aqdas) is quite different from the others. This was also ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s bedroom. It is paneled in wood which is to be found in other places associated with Him. This bedroom is in the back corner of the House. We could look down into the back courtyard. . . . We saw many of the books of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His writing equipment, papers, the simple iron bed—many things that were much loved by Him and are revered by all who look upon them.
Above all else, the mind tries to take in the truth that here in this room, a room that is simplicity itself, was revealed the Book of Laws, the Most Great Book, the mightiest written testimony since the beginning of our recorded times. Its Author would cast His Shadow of guidance for five hundred thousand years!
It is too much to understand. The mind willingly surrenders and turns to examine the surroundings, the little things it can comprehend. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sat here, He walked here, He knelt here, He looked out this window. But irresistibly your thoughts keep coming back to that one inescapable fact—it was here that Bahá’u’lláh revealed the Aqdas.
Emptying yourself of every single thing to which the mind can cling, you ask Almighty God to pour into your heart a true appreciation of this experience you are undergoing. . . . The presence and significance of these holy places are like hammer-blows to those of us who have lived in a world so remote from the spirit.
Those veritably spiritual thunderboltsthe Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh, of the Báb, and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the room at Bahjí where Bahá’u’lláh passed away, the mansion of Mazra‘ih, the Garden of Riḍván—all had numbed the senses until the cup could not contain the flood.
Each of us said a prayer before departing from this cradle of future civilization. When
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we made our way downstairs, there was additional conversation, but none of it registers. The hearing was working, but the comprehension and recording instruments were unable to function. This was a mercy of God. The body must be much like an electrical system. It can successfully carry its normal “load” of power, but when subjected suddenly to an incredibly strong current, it “blows out” the fuse at its point of protection. A similar phenomenon happens to the pilgrim, several times, in fact. Something breaks the connection and permits no more impulses to register. The system cannot bear them. (Baha’u’llah has written of this spirit, saying of the wine of revelation that it is so inebriating to the Prophet, Himself, that the pen is stilled and can move no more.)
=l=**
The sun came out gaily for a brief moment, for the first time, as we strolled through the picturesque streets of “Old ‘Akká.” It splashed against the drab earthcolored walls and transformed them into a happy tan. We traced our way along many of the favorite walks of the Master.
We paused and took photographs in the doorway of the house of the former Mufti of ‘Akká. He had been a bitter enemy of Bahá’u’lláh. Salah, caretaker at Bahjí, told us the story of the two attempts on the life of Bahá’u’lláh made by this Mufti while Bahá’u’lláh was still in prison. Once with a hidden dagger, but Baha’u’llah before admitting him to His presence said, “Let him first cleanse his hands.” A second time, the Mufti planned to strangle the Blessed Beauty, and Bahá’u’lláh said before admitting him, “First let him cleanse his heart.” The Mufti became an ardent believer and collected all the “traditions” to be found in the Faith about ‘Akká.
What a delightful city “Old ‘Akká” is to visit. Salah, who was born within its walls, greeted almost everyone. He told us many intriguing stories about its non-Bahá’í history as well. We entered a small door built in one of the lower walls of the prison, walked to the center of a cellar-like cavern. Below us excavation had been started. How strange to know that beneath the prison lies this famous church built by Richard, the Lion-hearted. The packed earth on which
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we stood was high up toward the top of the Gothic arches. The pillars were buried many, many feet in the solid earth below us.
Salah pointed out the house to which Bahá’u’lláh had been taken in custody when some of His followers had disobeyed His commands, quarreled with three enemies of the Faith and slew them. Bahá’u’lláh was dictating Tablets to His secretary when troops surrounded His house. Crowds gathered quickly. They shouted at Bahá’u’lláh as the Governor, sword in hand, led Him away for questioning. His innocence was established and Bahá’u’lláh was freed; the Governor apologized for his own bad behavior.
- >;=s.<
We began our approach to the prison itself. The steps up which Bahá’u’lláh had walked to enter the fortress that first time have been taken down. They have left their scar across the body of the prison wall. We all stopped and gazed up at the marks of that old stairway. This was as far as we could retrace the steps of banishment. In order to enter the prison, we had to drive around the city to the front by the sea wall.
We parked by the gate, passed the guards, and walked about three hundred yards up to the prison entrance. As you cross the small bridge over the moat, you can see the cannon balls of Napoleon embedded in the walls. They are splashed with red paint to make them easily visible. Passing through a small arched entrance, we approached the courtyard.
The prison is now a hospital for the insane and feeble-minded. You can see them exercising in the very courtyard where the believers were herded together that first da . . . .
yThere was a sound of heavy keys rattling in a metal door, the door swung open, and you entered the prison barracks. Passing through an ante-room of poor, unfortunate sick ones, you enter the cell-block. In the far left-hand corner is a plaque which reads: Bahá’í Holy Place. . . . This is the cell of Baha’u’llah. The plaque is written in both English and Hebrew.
We removed our shoes outside the great door, and then entered the prison cell where for over two years Bahá’u’lláh had been shut away from the world. This was the heart of the “Most Great Prison.” Even that Black
881
Pit in Ṭihrán, the Siyéh-C_hél, a place foul beyond comparison, a dungeon wrapped in thick darkness, so dreadful that no tongue could describe its loathsome smell, had not been called by such a name.
The cell was barren and desolate in Bahá’u’lláh’s day. Now there is a Persian carpet in the corner where He used to sit. There are five straight-backed chairs upon which the pilgrims sit. One window looks out upon the old ‘Akká. The other two windows look out upon the sea. These are the windows shown in most of the photographs.
From here Bahá’u’lláh would look out toward that spot beyond the moat where His followers would stand hoping for a glimpse of His hand waving from the window. We all stood and peered out at that same spot and to the white-capped sea beyond it. Later we walked out to that place of bliss and sorrow and looked up at these two forlorn windows. The face of the prison is bruised and scarred from shell-fire.
- >k*
Inside the prison-cell itself, the heart is touched and saddened by the sight of that bleak, unfragrant room. True, it has been cleaned and restored, but here and there upon the floor were small fragments of paint and plaster which had fallen from the ceiling and walls. These are a grim reminder of the chilling dampness of this dismal place.
Here in this cell, where but a few paces carry you from end to end, Bahá’u’lláh spent over two years of His precious life. Here it was that Baha’u’llah, Himself, said that His sufferings had reached their culmination.
Our eyes bestowed loving prayers upon each of these places of anguish. After all these years, and even with the reformations, it is still unsanitary and foul in these barracks. The mind refuses to try to picture the misery and abomination that must have surrounded Bahá’u’lláh upon His arrival here. We know that they were herded together, deprived of food and drink, that malaria, dysentery, and the sickening heat added to their sorrows. All were ill but two.
It was here that the two brothers died the same night locked in each other’s arms. Bahá’u’lláh sold His carpet to provide for their winding sheets and burial, but the
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guards had kept the money and cast them into a pit unwashed and unshrouded.
This is where Bahá’u’lláh’s young son, Mina Mihdi, the Purest Branch, was killed. He was pacing the roof at twilight reciting his prayers. He fell through an unguarded skylight on a wooden crate below which pierced his ribs and took his life in less than a day. It was here that this sweet son pleaded with his Father, Bahá’u’lláh, that his life be not saved, but that it be offered as a ransom so that the pilgrims, who so longed for His healing Presence, might be permitted to attain their hearts’ desire. At his tomb in the Monument gardens, we repeated the words of Baha’u’llah written about him:
“Thou art the trust of God and His treasure in this land. Erelong will God reveal through thee that which He hath desired.”
From here Bahá’u’lláh wrote many of His tablets to the kings of the earth, proclaiming that the only remedy for the ills of the world was the union of all its peoples in one common faith, and that only a divine, inspired Physician could bring this to pass.
Many were the wholesome truths that flowed from that Supreme Pen within this prison cell. Each of these tablets and writings took on a new force since we had come to the scene of their origin.
The doors that did not open for Bahá’u’lláh for two years, swing wide for you, then grind closed upon their hinges. We put on our shoes, everyone silent, lost in the weight of thoughts which held words down, unformed.
This was the last stop in ‘Akká. We were grateful. We wanted no conversation; no invasion of that place the mind had set aside for reflecting upon this unequaled experience.
There was no receptiveness left to truly appreciate the stories told as we descended the stairs; the room below where the rest of the pilgrims had been quartered, the place where the Master had made broth for all—made broth with little more than air for ingredients. His words spoken in London sent
THE BAHA’I WORLD
another sliver of pain into the body. He had made so much broth in those days, He said, that He could make a very good broth with a very little. How the Master loved His wonderful Father. He told of this loathsome prison. How Bahá’u’lláh would call the pilgrims together, would make them laugh at their troubles, until they forgot their stone beds, the lack of food and water. He banished the pain of their illness and the ravages of their fever. He would tell them stories and lift their hearts. He would start them to laughing so loudly that they must be cautioned for fear the sentinels would believe they were mad if they could laugh and enjoy themselves in these conditions of utter dreadfulness.
What tenderness must have been in the Master’s eyes as He placed His graceful hand upon the luxurious furniture of the Western world and said, “We had no chairs such as this in the prison of ‘Akká; no soft beds to lie upon; no delicious food to nourish us. But I would not exchange all of these days for one moment of the sweetness of those hours in the presence of the Blessed Beauty.”
Seeing these poor, unfortunate inmates of the asylum for the last time, one thinks: How like the entire world is this prison barracks. These pitiful wretches, unbalanced, living in another dead world (like all humanity) are within but a few paces of the Holy Place of Bahá’u’lláh‘ Healer of all ills.
We crossed the moat and walked out into the open air. The clouds were gone. The sun was out ruling the blue sky all by itself. The sea, a deeper blue, was still charging up to the old sea wall and plunging against its rocks. There was a queer, mingled feeling in possession of me. It was half of joy and half of sadness, gladness and heavy-heartedness, happiness and sorrow. Perhaps it was the accumulation of the day’s emotions, unsettled and unabsorbed within me. Each experience taking charge of my being at alternate intervals, just as the sea sent alternate breakers against the wall.
I did not look back. It was all locked forever in my heart.
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5. A CENTURY OF SPIRITUAL REVIVAL*
By DR. W. KENNETH CHRISTIAN
V V E LIVE in a world aligned into opposing armed camps. We live in a world where hatred is manufactured, packaged and sold. We live in a world where mass thought can be and is molded for the purposes of special groups and parties. We live in a world which tries to make religious division, economic division, political division, and social division
the normal way of life. And this is another way of saying that it is quite all right for society to be divided against itself.
In the past fifty years a world revolution has been carried out. This is the revolution in the nature of time and space. The inner and outer life of men and women can never be the same as it has been in the centuries preceding our own.
When we recall that all the inhabitants of a great city can be fed and clothed and kept warm by airborne supplies alone, then we know that we are not living in the conditions of our grandparents. When the news of events in the Korean peninsula can immediately make clear to farmers in Maine, to taxi drivers in Chicago and oil-riggers in Texas, that they personally are concerned, then we know that we are living in a world whose bonds are being more closely knit every week and month.
If a severe snowstorm maroons a bus load of people in a farm house, problems arise at once. Each individual wants to maintain a particular way of life and cling to a set of personal attitudes. If it is clear that the group will be forcibly housed together only a few days, a working adjustment can generally be arrived at, but each individual will still be inconvenienced. But if these people had to live together permanently, they would have to make a revolutionary change in their attitude and habits.
By the revolution in time and space, the peoples of the world have been thrust together. This coming together of the world’s peoples is more literally true than many wish to admit. And it is not temporary. There is no going backward to any semblance of “the good old days.”
’ An address delivered at the Centenary Commemoration of the Martyrdom of the Báb held at the Bahá’í House of Worship, Wilmette, Illinois, July 9, 1950.
We live in one world whether we like it or not. And we may react to this condition in one of three general ways. First, we may concentrate on ourselves—trying to get healthier and healthier, or trying to get wealthier and wealthier, or trying to build ourselves up into some sort of superior being. Such efforts as these deny the social nature of man. And they overlook the simple fact that the gentleman with the scythe disposes alike of health, wealth, and self-delusion.
A second way of reacting to the one world we live in is to try to carry over the methods and institutions of the past and make them fit the new conditions. Until about the last one hundred years people had to be divided because they lived under isolated, agricultural conditions. Continents were separated by oceans instead of being united by air. Great masses of the people in different cultures were grossly ignorant of each other, and there was little chance then that the ignorance could be removed. Therefore national policy was based on the political and economic separation of peoples. Conflict was considered normal. The followers of the great religions each considered themselves unique and by far superior. Everything in life seemed to make disunity sacred.
Many people still try to follow this pattern. The nation state is still regarded as the highest political loyalty. Most religious people still think and act in terms of division at the same time that they talk of brotherhood. And there are those who think only in terms of economics, as if the Holy Grail were actually a silver cup. Some want a class dictatorship to dominate the world as if a world pacified would be a world at peace. Such men as these are the dividers of the human race.
The third way of reacting to one world is to build a new world society founded on the principle of unity. This would mean creating a world government and recasting the social, economic, political, and spiritual foundations of human life. Not many people as yet have the courage or vision to react in this manner. But among these people
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are to be found the followers of Bahá’u’lláh throughout the world.
Bahá’ís know where they are going. Their goal was set about a century ago, before the present world need became obvious. For a century they have been patiently building a grass roots world order. They have not waited for the statesmen or for the world crisis.
The goal of the Bahá’í Faith is to unite the world in one social order and one common faith. This goal came into being through the teachings of Baha’u’llah. And it was the Báb who prepared the way.
After the martyrdom of the Báb came a time of despair and disaster. The Báb had cut His followers lOOse from the laws and institutions of Islam. He had awakened love and hope in the hearts of a people whose national culture was bigoted and degenerate. His call had won the support of peasant and scholar alike. His own example of fearlessness and courage inflamed His followers to deeds of heroism and even reckless enthusiasm. His six—year public career affected all Persia and out like a knife down through every social level in the country. He taught His followers that One greater than Himself—“Him Whom God would make Manifest”—would publicly announce His mission in nineteen years.
The firing squads in the public square of the city of Tabríz ended the life of the Bab. But they did not destroy the Faith He had initiated.
Among those who had earlier responded to the Cause of the Báb was the man known to history as Baha’u’llah. Born into a wealthy and ancient family, Bahá’u’lláh had served the Cause of the Báb, ignoring the gibes and scorn of His caste. He had been a fearless champion. But He was humiliated, stoned, and cast into an underground dungeon where He lay chained by the neck and the feet for four months. His property and wealth were seized—poverty became His lot. And then in 1853 He was exiled from Persia to Baghdad.
BahZ’u’llah was the only outstanding leader of the Báb’s Faith who was not killed. An ambassador of a western power threatened the Persian government if it should slay a man of such majestic character. The martyrdom of the Báb and the blood bath of His followers had already attracted the attention of thinkers in Europe.
The forcible exile projected the Faith
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into the arena of the world. In Baghdad Bahá’u’lláh revived the hopes of the rernnant who had accepted the Báb. In that ancient city of ‘Iráq He began to unfold a system of religion which is unique in the world’s history.
There is not time here for us to follow the successive exiles of Bahá’u’lláh—from Bag_hdéd to Constantinople (now Istanbul), then to Adrianople (now Edirne), and finally in 1868 to ‘Akká, Israel, where He lived until His death in 1892. By each exile an envious and reactionary clergy and State hoped to wipe out His influence. What we are concerned with today is the chief teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and the effect they have had in the last century.
Baha’u’llah wrote: “A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth . . . Consider the peoples of the West. Witness how, in their pursuit of that which is vain and trivial, they have sacrificed, and are still sacrificing countless lives for the sake of its establishment and promotion.”1 “The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men . . . If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness . . ."2
And again: “The corresion of ungodliness is eating into the Vitals of human society . . 3’3 “. . the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed of sickness, sore-tried and dis'llusioned. They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their deVices.”4 And again: “If ye stay not the hand of the oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the downtrodden, what right have ye to vaunt yourselves among men?”5
These are just a few random selections from Bahá’u’lláh’s penetrating criticism of modern civilization.
We may well ask, To what standard of life does Bahá’u’lláh call His followers? The answer is clear. “Be anxiously concerned with
lGleaning: from the Writing: of Bahti'u’lláh, p. 196.
21bid., pp. 342-3.
31bid., p. 200.
41bid., p. 213.
5 Ibid., p. 252.
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the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations in its exigencies and requirements.”6 “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization.”7 “That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race.”8 “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”9
Bahá’u’lláh declared to the nations that the burden of armaments was too grievous a weight for the people. He urged the rulers to meet together and lay the foundations for a world government. He declared that the principle of collective security was a necessary means for the establishment of justice. None of the rulers to whom He appealed paid any heed. Is it not now time to listen? Is it not now time for the people to listen?
The principles, the laws, and the social institutions created by Bahá’u’lláh are for the purpose of building a united world which can provide justice for all its members. The key principle is the oneness of mankind which means the complete repudiation of racial superiority and the practice of race unity. “The best beloved of all things in My sight,” said Bahá’u’lláh, “is justice.”10
Bahá’u’lláh spoke with the authority which comes from God. Like Christ and Muhammad and the other founders of the world’s great faiths, Bahá’u’lláh was not a scholar or a pedant. He possessed an innate knowledge. He had the ability to awaken devotion and transform character. He has implanted a love of God in the hearts of countless men and women.
For Bahá’u’lláh is the Manifestation of God for our age. He has restated the essentials of religion, stripping away the layers of theology, and brushing aside such notions as that of inherited sin. He shows us how religion has been progressively revealed and unfolded in each age. Now it is possible for us to see that religion, too, evolves. In each age there has been a God-chosen individual, or Manifestation, Who has been the core of spiritual authority and vision for the forward movement of religion.
The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh do two principal things for our age. First, they provide a social structure through which world jus G Gleanings, p. 213. 7]hid., p. 215.
81bid., p. 250.
91bid., p. 250.
10 Hidden Words (Arabic).
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tice may function. Second, they provide a moral sanction for world order.
There will be no lasting peace for decent men and women without a world government. And no world government can function successfully unless millions of people give it an enthusiastic and lasting loyalty. While many religions speak of brotherhood, Bahá’u’lláh declares that “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” In the light of Baha’u’llah’s teachings, the man who believes in God will devote his energies to building a world commonwealth. This is the next step in human evolution. Bahá’ís recognize it as the will of God. Bahá’ís recognize it as the “coming of age” of the entire human race.
How strange and perverse is the human heart! The military leader, the conqueror whose boast is in battles won and in millions slaughtered—he receives the acclaim of the multitude, and his ears are deafened by their shouts of praise. But the Manifestation of God received scorn and abuse, torture and exile. The demagogue who promises bread and circuses, money without work and achievement without effort, he is fawned upon and praised, and in his own lifetime his likeness is produced in statues of bronze and of marble. But the Manifestation of God wins only the hearts of a few. And it is these few who give up their bread to serve Him and who give the breath of their lives and the blood of their bodies that the divine vision of a greater human good may come to pass upon the earth.
The Manifestation of God among men is a measure by which men and women can see their true height. The dividers of men and the haters cannot lift their eyes to His height. Like children, they are too selfabsorbed, too busy building little castles in the sand.
Despite ecclesiastical anger, despite reactionary scorn, and indifference, the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh has grown steadily and extended itself through the world. Though, even today, the Bahá’ís in Persia know the ruthless anger of the mobs directed against them.
But the response of the people to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh is also a story of sacrifice and heroism. Most of the people who have become Bahá’ís are obscure to fame. But heroism knows no pedigree or social rank. And so, steadily, the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh have been translated into various languages until now the total is over sixty.
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Bahá’ís have moved and settled in country after country until now the roots of the Faith have taken hold in more than one hundred sovereign countries and dependencies of the world. First it was Persia and ‘Iráq, and Turkey, Israel, and Egypt. Then it was India, and Burma, and the United States, England, and Canada, and France, and Germany. A few decades ago, an elderly couple in California, a Mr. and Mrs. Hyde Dunn, sold their little home and sailed for Australia. They earned their own living and traveled from city to city, and the Faith was established in Australia and New Zealand. They were but two of hundreds who have gone to strange lands to bring the words of Bahá’u’lláh to the people. Without a paid clergy, and with few material resources, this great movement to take Bahá’u’lláh’s message of unity and justice to the people goes steadily forward.
And within the last three decades the Bahá’ís have systematically applied the social teachings of Bahá’u’lláh to the conduct of their own affairs. A religious world order,
THE BAHA’I WORLD
on the grass roots level of society, is taking shape. Within the Bahá’í world community have come people from all walks of life and all kinds of religious and nationalistic and racial backgrounds. Here they find a practice of religion which is adult, just, and suited to the age we live in.
While some people may look back and read the record of the past one hundred years as a series of ever-deepening crises, I offer you another part of the record. A part of the record not as well known as the political intrigue and the warfare. I offer you the record of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh which moves steadily forward with its healing message of unity and justice.
And at the same time I ofler you a challenge. Have you the courage and the vision to take the outstretched hand of Bahá’u’lláh and join with those who are dedicated to building a divine world order of human society? Have you the courage and vision to realize that Bahá’u’lláh is the Father promised by Jesus Christ? Can you arise and respond to the call of God in our time?
6. THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH: IDEA AND REALITY
By MARION HOFMAN
I.
V- ii E OF the West have grown so used to the central prayer of our faith—Thy kingdom came. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven—that we are dull to its magic, and despite almost two millenniums of repetition, which must have worn a deep if hidden channel through our collective conscience, we seem no longer to perceive or accept Christ’s vision of earthly consummation.
To a Bahá’í this is the more strange, since in our view the twentieth century is the threshold of that Kingdom; and that simple but commanding idea, which in one form or other has compelled men’s highest thoughts throughout history, is in the cycle we now enter to attain reality. Indeed, the transformation from idea to reality has already begun, and the embryo of God’s Kingdom on earth, already brought into life, is even now acquiring structure and form, against the
day of its birth after yet-to—be-expected incubation in the womb of our universal affliction and travail.
If we are to look back through centuries upon the idea and forward through centuries to the reality, we should bear in mind the character of this Kingdom on earth. It has, I believe, certain essentials:
I. There will be one Ruler in the King dom: God.
2. There will be one humanity, one brotherhood of all the men on earth, who will be endowed with spiritual consciousness to know and obey their Divine King.
3. There will be a universal state, unified in government, harmonizing the rich diversity of human cultures.
4. There will be universal peace, resting in justice, the condition and mode of this Divine Kingdom.
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One other point should not be overlooked, as it is the test of the idea of the Kingdom in contrast to the reality of the Kingdom. The idea has had life only in men’s minds. As idea it has inspired and even in certain periods molded human societies and governments. But the Kingdom in reality has not, up to this age, had any being. For the Kingdom of God on earth, like all forms of life created by God, is essentially organic. It has conception, embryonic development, birth, and growth through life stages. It is a Divine creation, and only when, by the Will of its Creator, it does indeed appear on this earth, will it pass from the idea of the Kingdom, known to great minds and humble hearts for many ages, to the reality of the Kingdom which will be a shelter, a sanctuary, and a home for all the human race.
II.
Probably the most consistent View of the Kingdom of God on earth is to be found in the Old Testament. The “chosen people,” the astonishing Hebrew race, has for at least three thousand years been the repository of this concept, to which it has tenaciously clung through all glory, vicissitude, and human error. “God and His Kingdom on earth ——that was their two-fold revelation. Abraham [0. 1550 B.C.] stood at the head of the movement. . . . In the midst of idolatry and human sacrifice he seems to have known One God, Almighty and All-Comprehending
. and in obedience to the Divine Command led forth from Ur a band of kinsmen
. . on a religious crusade.”1
In the Old Testament is embodied the history of this people; its journey into Egypt and its captivity there; its deliverance by Moses; its rise to an eminence of dominion and culture in the Promised Land when its influence, according to Bahá’í teaching, awakened Greek philosophy to the existence of the one God and the immortal soul of man; its decline from virtue; its preparation for the coming of the Messiah. But here the story passes into other bands, as indeed was prophesied, and the “chosen people,” dispersed and despised, entered its long night of suffering until its final return to the Promised Land in our own time.
To one who studies the words of the Hebrew Prophets, it is evident that the consummation they foresaw is even now nn 1H. N. Spalding, Civilization in East and West, Oxford University Press, 1939, p. 150.
887
folding. The pattern of their prophecy was closely woven; one cannot separate the strands.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people . . . and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
This perfectly clear and now fulfilled statement is associated in the visions of the Hebrew Prophets with the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth.
In “the great and very terrible” day of the Lord, in “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time, ” “it shall come to pass . . . that the mountain of the Lord’s House shall be established in the top of the mountains . . . and all nations shall flow unto it.” “And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord and His name one ” “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. .” “ the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.”2
III.
The idea of the Kingdom of God on earth scintillates in Hebrew thought with the majesty and power of God as Supreme Ruler, and with the bright promise of the accomplished day of unity and peace. The ruling principles of the ideal state are less clear. Here there are two problems: (1) The nature of God’s rule on earth, that is, by what mediation, since God Himself is in all true religion and philosophy admitted to be Unknown and Unknowable; and (2) the nature of men’s relations to each other. Throughout history the idea of the Kingdom, whether confined to idea or embodied in a visible order, has held as its central point of authority and good the concept of some kind of Vicegerent of God—king, philosopher, priest, or a combination of all.
For the earliest known vision and practice of such a god-centered society, we must look to Egypt where, between about 4000 and 2400 B.C., took place “the first rise of a civilization of profound moral vision anywhere on the globe.” Here the “‘Sun of
righteousness’ rose over two thousand years
2Isaiah, 11; Joel, 2; Daniel, 12; Isaiah, 2; Zechariah, 14; Isaiah, 9 and 35.
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earlier than he did in Palestine."3 Fragments of ancient writings show a society formed in the beginning under the presiding influence of the Sun-god Re (“thou art he who overlooks all gods . . .”), whose character shone forth in the Pharaohs who succeeded him. “It is Command who is in thy mouth, it is Understanding who is in thy heart,” became a salutation to the Pharaoh, thus identifying him with qualities attributed (after 3000 B.C.) to the Sun-god himself. At a later date of moral decadence and misery in the state, after the dissolution of the Second Union about the 25th century 3.0, social prophets looking back on that long reign of “righteousness” or “truth” (Egyptian Maat) found in it their only hope for the future. The sage Ipuwer, mourning his country’s unhappy condition, recalled the divine sovereignty of Re:
“It is said he is the shepherd of all men. There is no evil in his heart . . . Where is he today? Doth he sleep perchance? Behold his might is not seen.”1
It is clear that in the Sun-god these early prophets found not only the divine center of authority in the state, but the source of morality as well. In documents dating some two thousand years before Christ such concepts as this appear:
“. . that good word which came out of the mouth of Re himself: ‘Speak truth, do truth, for it is great, it is mighty, it is enduring.’ ”5
And again:
“I have made every man like his brother, and I have forbidden that they do evil, [but] it was their hearts which undid that which I had said.”5
“It is very surprising,” writes Breasted of these sages, “that their social idealism took the form of Messianism, the belief in a righteous ruler yet to come, one who should usher in a golden age of justice for all mankind, a belief later inherited by the Hebrews.”6
Not long after this time and practically contemporaneous with the foundation of the Hebrew race, in then distant China, a golden age of Sage-Kings was also shaping a pattern which evoked in Chinese thought over many centuries an idea of government guided by kings dedicated to Heaven’s rule, supported
3James Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934, pp. 13, 15.
4 Ibid., p. 198.
5 Ibid., pp. 219, 221.
61bid., p. 21.
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by citizens imbued with the highest moral virtues, and guaranteeing to all the benefits of justice and peace.
“. . . The princes of Chou [12th century B.C.] were held up by later thinkers ‘as a mirror to flash great ideals down the ages.’ The worshippers of a ‘vast, somewhat impersonal overruling deity,’ termed T’len or ‘Heaven,’ they drew from its sovereign ‘Decree’ the prophet-like doctrine that ‘rulers are appointed by Heaven for the purpose of ruling the world so as to bring about the welfare of men.’ ”7
In a later period of disorder, Confucius (551-479 13.0.), looking back upon this golden age of the still-reigning Chou dynasty, and delineating the moral virtues essential to good men and good government, recognized the place of the Sage-King in holding all stable.
“A virtuous ruler is like the Pole-star, which keeps its place, while all the other stars do homage to it.”
Within the bounds of this essay it is impossible to develop the full argument that throughout history and in societies all over the world there have existed prototypes, as well as mature concepts, of divinely-inspired kings extending their beneficent rule over great dominions, organizing justice and peace, and reflecting upon mankind the power and majesty of God Himself. Not only have such kings reigned, both in vision and actuality, but their remembered examples have led to the projection of utopian kingdoms and commonwealths, wherein the whole of mankind would be gathered under one divine rule.
“The Divine Kingship is one of the earliest and one of the most persistent of institutions in human civilization. Sometimes, as with the high priests and the kings of Israel, the pontiffs and the consuls of Rome, the Popes and the kings of Europe, the priestly and royal offices divide [although seldom entirely]. But in China the Emperor has always been the Son of Heaven; in Persia the kings were god-descended and even today are inspired directly by Allah; in the Babylonian cities reigned the priest—kings; in Egypt Pharaoh was god; the rex in Rome and the basileus in Athens held priestly of TK. J. Spalding, Three Chinese Thinkers, p. 18 (Citing Smith and Creel, The Birth of China). This book contains fascinating material on early concepts of ideal human relations.
SLionel Giles, The Sayings of Confucius [1920], p. 39.
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fice; in Imperial Rome Caesar was god in death, divine Augustus; even the petty Gothic kings were descended from Odin; in Peru the Inca rulers were priests; to this day the Mikado is priest and god. These have been the symbols of community alone powerful and august enough to battle against . . . disruptive egoism.”9
Whether we think of Asoka, that great Emperor of India whom the Buddha inspired, “more famous than Charlemagne or Caesar”; or of Charlemagne himself, whose “aim was to make his Empire a moral community, one vast Christian city . . .”; or in an earlier day “of the immeasurable majesty of the Roman peace”; or of the kings of China and Egypt before-mentioned; or of Muhammad the Prophet, “founder of a State . . . sole Head of the civil administration, the supreme Judge, the Commander—inChief . . .”;1° or again if we recall some of the great concepts which have lifted men’s eyes to far horizons—Plato’s Republic; Augustine’s City of God and its “one Commonwealth of all Christian men”; Dante’s vision of true monarchy [De Monarchia] where “life should be lived in freedom and peace”; and that mother-idea of all Western culture, “Thy Kingdom come”—in all these examples of living kingdoms and living ideas, both precept and promise, we are reminded of the ancient theme:
“They shall come from the East and from the West and from the North and from the South and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God.”
IV.
“Mankind as a whole has always striven to organize a universal state. There have been many great nations with great histories; but the more highly they were developed the more unhappy they were, for they felt more acutely than other people the craving for world-wide union.”—Dostoevski.
Because the examples we give are from the past, we ought not to think they have lost potency for the present and future. Indeed, the idea of the Kingdom becomes in our time the more compelling because the conditions for its realization now exist. Past visions were, by the great minds who conme E. G. Catlin, A History of the Political Philosophers, Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1950, pp. 11-12.
10 Citations in this paragraph, in order, are from Koeppen, Professor Kleinclausz, The Elder Pliny, Sir
Thomas Arnold. The succeeding quotations in the paragraph are from the works mentioned.
889
ceived them, held valid for all the known world—but the known world was at no time all the world. Although the boundaries were being constantly pressed outward, not until the nineteenth century could men claim to have found most of their brothers, and not until the twentieth century were the means of knowing them really at hand. It follows that not until our own time could the Kingdom of God on earth, by definition and also by logical necessity a universal kingdom, become more than idea, become a possibility.
But is it not also a needed consummation? Is it by accident that the discovery of all the parts of humanity should have been paralleled by far—reaching efforts to unite them in some kind of orderly pattern, some universal state? Most of such projects for international law and government, from the Hague Tribunal to the United Nations, have been impelled by the threat of war: their goal has been universal peace.
“Of all things,” wrote Dante in De Monarchia, “that are ordered to secure blessings to men, peace is the best: by quiet the individual man gI'OWS perfect in wisdom; and society as a whole is best fitted in the tranquillity of peace for its proper work, which may be called divine.”
In a lecture delivered in Oxford in 1913, Sir W. M. Ramsay comments on this passage: “It is necessary to guard against a misapprehension of what is meant here by the word ‘peace.’ Dante thinks of peace, not as a negative but as a positive idea. Peace is not the mere absence of war: it is the power that maintains order and makes moral law efiective. It is the administrative force of Justice, and it is the necessary condition of freedom . . . It is the orderly balance of active and powerful forces.”11
The forces of the modern world—whether the products of man’s intellectual powers applied to nature; or the expression of his emotional loyalties to nation, race, and religion; or the driving power of his physical needs —all these forces are now loose in one arena. “A crisis has, for the first time in history, come upon the world at once. The nations are now like beasts herded together in a cage, and without a keeper.”12
We should not expect men’s powers and
forces to abate; they ought on the contrary
11 Sir W. M. Ramsay, The Imperial Peace—An Ideal in European History, Oxford University Press, 1913, pp. 7, 16. This essay is a powerful argument for true kingship at the heart of the modern world state.
12 H. N. Spalding, op. cit, p. 290.
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to be immensely fortified in a world of freedom and peace. The challenge is to lead mankind out of the cruel disorder of this age into the long-expected universal state.
But “how shall there be constructed a supreme order able to enforce that universal freedom and justice combined which constitute the active power of peace?”13 This, the central question of the twentieth century, surcharged with human need, giving voice to the impulse for self-preservation and life more abundant, is in truth the propelling force destined, in the Bahá’í view, to carry humanity from the idea of the Kingdom into its living actuality.
The desirability of the Kingdom of God on earth is today as widely accepted in theory as ever it was in the past—indeed, a great deal more so——-but we do not call our vision by this name. The reason is simple. Of the four essentials of the Kingdom, most thoughtful men acknowledge three:
There will be one humanity. There will be a universal state. There will be universal peace.
These they call World Commonwealth, or World Order, or the Federation of Mankind, or any other name except the Kingdom, because they do not realize that to exist and endure, it must be a kingdom, and a kingdom not of men but of God.
V.
“Universal peace will not be brought about through human power, and shall not shine in full splendor unless this weighty and important matter shall be realized through the Word of God, and be made to shine forth through the influence of the Kingdom of God.”——‘Abdu’l-Bahá.“
The achievement of the “organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of nations” is the “supreme mission” of the Bahá’í Faith.15 The approximately thousand-year span of the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of that Faith, is understood by His followers to be the precise millennium during which the long process of evolution will carry humanity from isolation and separateness to whole I"
ness and unity on a planetary scale. Baha is
13 Sir W. M. Ramsay, op. cit.
14 Tablet to David Buchanan, classmate of President Wilson, written in 1919.
15 Shoghi Effendi, World Order a] Bahd'u’lláh, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, Wilmette, Illinois, 1938, p. 163.
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associate this outcome with the coming of age of the human race.
The Declaration of the Báb, the Forerunner, in 1844, inaugurated this millennium, disclosed its hidden meaning, and imbued mankind with an energy both turbulent and irresistible. The appearance of the Báb signalized humanity’s potential coming of age. He released “the creative energies which, reinforced by the effusions of a swiftly succeeding and infinitely mightier Revelation, were to instill into the entire human race the capacity to achieve its organic unification, attain maturity and thereby reach the final stage in its age-long evolution?“6
From that date revolutionary changes began to appear in the world. Every race and nation experienced transformation in its traditional life and culture. No people escaped the impact of the new forces which found their expression in radical developments of science and technology, in new and universal aspirations for human welfare, in arts escaping their conventional forms, and in the gradual assemblage of political leadership for the building of a world-embracing order.
“A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth . . . Soon will the present-day Order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead. . . . Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System, the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed ”17 Such are the plain words spoken by Bahá’u’lláh for the guidance of all who have eyes to see and hearts to understand the world—shaking events of our time.
Now more than a century of this millennium has passed and it is possible to realize the direction of social change; indeed, it is impossible to escape it. What was potential with the appearance of the Báb is day by day seeking its form. Unity in the political realm, named by Bahá’u’lláh the Lesser Peace, is fast crystallizing and is the next stage in world affairs. Bahá’u’lláh, anticipating the struggles which would seize and convulse all peoples in the twentieth century, foresaw as their outcome a transitional period in which the world, realizing at last and only too well “the anarchy inherent in state sovereignty,” would “abandon this fetish, rec 16 Shoghi Effendi, Gad Passes By, p
. 5.7 17 Cited in The World Order a! Bahd’u 'lltih, pp. 161162.
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ognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.”18 “Hold ye fast unto this the Lesser Peace,” Baha’u’llah cautioned the leaders of mankind, “that haply ye may in some degree better your own condition and that of your dependents . . . Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice."19
Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, has described the Lesser Peace in these terms: “Some form of a world SuperState must needs be evolved, in whose favor all the nations of the world will have willingly ceded every claim to make war, certain rights to impose taxation and all rights to maintain armaments, except for purposes of maintaining internal order within their respective dominions. Such a state will have to include within its orbit an International Executive adequate to enforce supreme and unchallengeable authority on every recalcitrant member of the commonwealth; a World Parliament whose members shall be elected by the people in their respective countries and whose election shall be confirmed by their respective governments; and a Supreme Tribunal whose judgment will have a binding effect even in such cases where the parties concerned did not voluntarily agree to submit their case to its consideration?”
It will be seen how much stronger is the union of states contemplated by Bahá’ís than any league or organization so far devised. That it will be achieved in a relatively short time, that its birth will mark the coming of age of human society, and that it will lay the basis for the gradual unfoldment of world unity in all its aspects, are Bahá’í teachings which logic reinforces and events must confirm. “This is the stage which the world is now approaching, the stage of world unity, which . . . will, in this century, be securely established.”21
VI.
Great as is the achievement promised to this “radiant century”—a century overshadowed by calamity, yet that calamity itself a stimulus and providence—it must be made
18 Shoghi Effendi, ma, p. 202.
19 Ibid.. p. 162.
201bid., pp. 4041.
218hoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come, p. 126.
891
clear that Bahá’ís View the Lesser Peace as a time of transition. It will “in some degree” better the condition of mankind. It will not deliver men into the full life of the Kingdom on earth. It will, by ensuring and enforcing world peace, give opportunity for reconstruction, and for the development of civilization on a vast new scale. The human race, having come of age, having attained the equivalent of age twenty-one in the life of the individual, will rapidly progress and show forth its ampler powers. But the life of the spirit, which is man’s unique capacity and the only source of his contentment and joy, cannot be so quickly renewed. The way of faith in God has been long obscured, and the world has yet a downward path to follow before the Light of Divine Guidance breaks from the mountain tops to illumine the gloomy plain. While politically maturing, mankind will continue to decline spiritually until the Voice of the Promised One reaches and rejoices all ears.
Men must not think, therefore, as they cross the long plateau of the Lesser Peace, that the Divine process has been subdued or human destiny fulfilled. The laws of growth, ever the same in organic creation, pursue a gradual course; and so the vast organism of collective society will gradually unfold throughout the Dispensation of Baha’u’llah. In this unfoldment Bahá’ís believe there are two processes at work. The one has been described; the other is yet obscure. The one is outward, in some measure mechanical; the other is the hidden birth and growth of what has been called the embryo and nucleus of the Kingdom of God on earth. It grows from the seed planted by the Hand of Bahá’u’lláh in the womb of the planet. It is a Divine Order, heralded by the Báb, conceived by Bahá’u’lláh, delineated by the mind of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. (son of Bahá’u’lláh and Center of His Covenant), and now silently, almost imperceptibly passing through its embryo condition in the rise of the administrative institutions of the Bahá’í Faith. From embryo to child to man’s estate, this Order is destined to unfold in a process absolutely distinct from, yet parallel to, the evolution of world society in the Lesser Peace.
Ultimately the two processes are destined to meet and, after a time of gradual fusion, they will culminate in the goal which is common to them both: World Commonwealth, the object of humanity’s evolution.
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the promise foretold by prophets and seers for well—nigh six thousand years. This culmination of the Bahá’í Dispensation was described by Bahá’u’lláh as the Most Great Peace, the purpose and glorious outcome of His distinctive mission to mankind. It “must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes, and nations . . 3’22
What else can these words signify but the inception of that vast, universal, all-embracing, spiritual Kingdom which we know as the Kingdom of God on earth? How shall we view this “end of the age,” this millennium of transition and fulfillment, save as the Promised Day foretold in all Holy Books? How shall we understand the One chosen by God to inaugurate such a millennium, and to infuse into the body of mankind the vitality, faith, and vision to unfold its potentiality, save as the Promised One, the Vicegerent of God, He who “hath been sent down to regenerate and unify mankind”?23
“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.” “And the Lord
22 Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahd'u’lláh,
p. 162. ’ ’ 23 Baha’u’llah, ibid., p. 163.
THE BAHA’I WORLD
shall be King over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord and His Name One.”
Such is the expectation held by the followers of Bahá’u’lláh. Such is the hope which they, and they alone, can offer to the whole of mankind in this hour of world affliction and despair.
“Now in the world of being the Hand of divine power hath firmly laid the foundations of this all—highest bounty and this wondrous gift. Whatsoever is latent in the innermost of this holy cycle shall gradually appear and be made manifest, for now is but the beginning of its growth and the dayspring of the revelation of its signs. Ere the close of this century and of this age, it shall be made clear and evident how wondrous was that springtide and how heavenly was that gift!”24
24‘Abdu’l-Bahá, ibid., p. 111.
Author's Note: The student who wishes to understand the pattern and functioning of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, and its relation to the future World Commonwealth and the Kingdom of God on earth, should make a close study of the published writings of Shoghi Effendi, first Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith. Sections V and VI of this article are based on these writings, and in a few points on the Guardian’s discourses at table in Haifa, February, 1954.
7. THE CALL OF THE MARTYRS
By GEORGE TOWNSHEND
NOW in this crisis of our fortunes time brings round to us the centennial of the great martyrdoms in Persia.
The siege of Tabarsi closed in the spring of 1849 with the death of almost all its defenders including one half of the “Letters of the Living”—Mullá Husayn and Quddfis among them. In March, 1850, the Seven Martyrs were beheaded in the great square of Ṭihrán. In May of that year the investment of the Babis in Zanjén opened. In June Vahid, the “unique and peerless figure of his A ge,” was martyred, and most of his companions at Nayriz after him. On July 9 the Báb was shot to death in Tabríz. Early in 1851 Hujjat was killed, and some 1,800 fellow believers perished with him. Then in 1852 came the universal holocaust of torture and massacre which involved Táhirih
and thousands of others and did not cease till every discoverable Bábi was slain or cowed or driven into exile. The authorities then were assured the movement was at an end and its fires quenched forever.
Little did those blind and wicked men know the power hidden in this Cause or the profound effects of self-sacrificing faith.
With unflinching firmness the martyrs went to the doom for which they had longed and prayed, counting such a death a boon and a reward. They endured their sufferings with superhuman patience, breaking their stubborn silence, if at all, only to utter words of forgiveness to their executioners or to chant a hymn of thanksgiving to the Beloved into whose presence they were passing.
So unexampled was their resolution and
their fortitude that it astonished and bewil
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dered beholders, attracted hearts, made converts (secret or open) to the Báb, spread His fame and that of His followers beyond the borders of Persia and inspired many a revering tribute from western scholars or diplomats and others who told in glowing phrases of the “rare and beautiful spirit of self-sacrifice” which distinguished the Bábis and of “the sublime and unmurmuring devotion” with which they defied their torture—mongers.
To an American correspondent who in after years wrote of these dreadful scenes, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá replied in a Tablet which has since found its way into print that these martyrdoms fanned the fire of the love of God, spread the Word of God, uplifted the standard of God and drew from the Tree of Life fragrances of holiness that were diffused through the world. We of the West have seen the proof of the enduring efiects of this heroic devotion to God in the deep, strong, steadfast faith that distinguishes today the Bahá’ís of the Land of the Martyrs. Bahá’u’lláh in a great prayer for forgiveness of sins has permitted us to plead “the blood of Thy lovers who were so attracted by Thy sweet utterance that they betook themselves to the lofty summit of the Mount of Great Martyrdom.” His Pen has written, “O Son of Being! Seek a martyr’s death in My Path . . . O Son of Man! By My beauty! To tinge thy hair with thy blood is greater in My sight than the creation of the universe and the light of both worlds. Strive then to attain this, 0 servant!”
They gave their lives simply for love of God, that they might be true to Him, be close to Him, be united with Him. Love and longing for God uplifted, transformed them, gave them a strange new strength and held them firm through every trial.
Nothing less than this divinely given rapture could have animated such utter selfabandonment as was theirs. It was not firmness of character, not love for the principles of the Faith, not love for its ideals, nor for its reforms, nor even love for virtue and for the attributes of God, which inspired their heroism: but rather an unreserved, all-absorbing, all-forgetting devotion for one in Whom they saw God Manifest.
Before they knew Him, they had, one and all (even the valiant Husayn, even Táhirih) been ordinary men and women, with their selfishnesses and their doubts; till love came upon them and transmuted their whole be 893
ing, changed the gnat into an eagle, the hare into a lion, gave them the mastery of life and ushered them into new ranges of ecstasy and power.
That Heroic Age is past. The martyrs stand to us as an example and a challenge. They show us what an appeal, a charm lies in this Faith for hearts that are sensitive to its influence.
But the battle which they fought is still unwon, the Faith for which they died has not as yet prevailed. In a world, perverse, preoccupied, obfuscated with doubt and pride, a new opposition has taken form, a new foe has reared his gloomy ramparts against the advancing Truth. From their bloodstained graves the voice of the martyrs calls on us believers of a later day, for a love, a courage as deeply based as theirs that shall now achieve that ultimate victory which their Lord promised them and which their hearts foresaw.
Their courage was infinite. None can measure it. Tried to the uttermost it showed no tremor but only triumphant strength. Earth’s bitterest cruelty tried to break it but only made it burn higher and with an intenser flame.
Bahá’u’lláh in a Word of Wisdom reveals the secret of their power.
“T he essence of courage,” He tells us, “is the promotion of the Word of God and steadfastness in His love.”
The Qur’án writes, “T he truly brave are those who stand firm and behave patiently under ills and hardships; their patience is only for God and not to display bravery.”
It is the Cause that matters. It is the Cause that distinguishes from all lesser kinds of courage the courage that rises in the soul, that lasts on into the hereafter, that is a permanent possession. It is the Cause that opens these hidden reserves of strength and rapture; and this aIl-hallowing Cause is none other than the selfless service of God and of His Beloved.
The story of the martyrs as handed down
to us shows on every page, in every word
that the ground of their heroism was the
ardor of their faith. In Nabil’s record and in
the testimony of Babis (@oted in it, doctrine
fills but little place; faith is all in all. The
Bab’s imprisonment separated Him from
His disciples and they had few opportunities
of receiving His instructions; but through
their deep, strong, ardent faith they reached
the end of all learning and exhausted knowl
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edge—they became one with God. To us in this Formative Age doctrine is much, teaching problems are urgent, constructive work is vital; yet no service can take the place of Faith. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave us a command and imposed on us a Covenant: “As your faith is, so shall your blessings and your powers be. That is the standard. T hat is the standard. T hat is the standard.”
Unquestioning belief in the Manifestation; an unshadowed vision of God in Him; impassioned love for Him; this is the hamdle of every weapon in the armor of the soldiers of Light.
It is not enough that we should believe; we are required to deepen our faith continually. It is not enough to acknowledge Bahá’u’lláh and love Him; we must love Him more and more. Faith and love are living, growing, expanding things, as seed, as leaven. A believer once started on his way, cannot stand still without incurring grievous loss. If he does not grow forward, he slips back.
“Let your morning be better than your evening, and your day an improvement on the morning,” was the command of Bahá’u’lláh.
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“It is not permissible for two days to resemble each other,” said Muhammad.
The Bábis were forever eager and active in the Cause of God, forever facing danger. They associated with one another. They called on the Sacred Name, they chanted their prayers together. The joy of their love so radiated from them that it was commonly said one could not have tea with them without wishing to join their society. Their enemies charged them with magic, with casting spells of love on those who came to them. And when the summons came to dare and to die for their Beloved, they were ready.
The Source on which they drew for their strength is within the reach of all of us . . . ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has expressed it in these words: “Our Strength is the Strength of the Blessed
Perfection!
T hough all mankind unite against us,
Yet shall His Strength be ours;
N or can all the world despoil us of it.
His Strength is our weapon to wield for evermore,
With it we shall conquer all things.
His Strength is a sword that rusteth not,
A treasure that knows no bounds.”
8. THE PATH TO GOD
By DOROTHY BAKER
REVELATION, the Path to God, has been progressive. Early man could understand a little truth; later he could assimilate great truth. Fundamentally the truth was one. With each appearance of truth, a rebirth of powers has attended it; man has been imbued with divine ideals, and an everadvancing civilization has taken new steps forward. The miracle of new social power is accompanied by the appearance of a Master Teacher. The lettered Jews sprang from the spiritual genius of Moses; the glory of ancient Persia reflected the fire of Zoroaster; unfolding Europe lifts her spires to the glorious Nazarene; the architecture, astronomy, and poetic genius of the Muslim world in the middle centuries bespeak the gift of Muhammad. “He hath ordained,” writes Bahá’u’lláh, “that in every age and dispensation, a pure and stainless Soul be made manifest in the kingdoms of earth and heaven.”
To the individual, this is always an invitation to sit at the feet of the Master Teacher and renew his own powers. Laying aside the fears imposed today by tradition, the seeker of the Path fearlessly looks for the stainless mirror of his age. The Jew who knows the majesty of Moses, the Christian who longs to touch the garment hem of Jesus; these are the souls schooled in adoration. The illumined Writings of Bahá’u’lláh will bring to these, and to the untutored millions, the light of renewed faith and the means of traveling with sovereign power the immeasurable distances of the Path to God.
The Words of Bahá’u’lláh, coming as a part of the unending outpouring of the Word of God through the ages, act as the water of life upon the thirsty soul, refreshing, cheering, and bringing forth the powers of the seeker. Every life needs the emphasis
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of the love of God, but some cast about for a lifetime, failing to find this Holy Grail of spiritual health and joy. Just as bodies are sometimes lacking in the food elements that produce health, the soul sometimes stands in need of a divine physician who can prescribe the missing elements for spiritual success. The few thoughts given here are chosen from the unlimited mine of wisdom and explanation offered in the Bahá’í Writings. Space permits mention of only a few.
POWER THROUGH PRAYER
Faculties long allowed to rust must be called into activity. Man becomes like a stone unless he continually supplicates to God. Prayer is the great quickener. There is no human being who is not in need of prayer. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, “O thou spiritual friend! Thou hast asked the wisdom of prayer. Know thou that prayer is indispensable and obligatory, and man under no pretext whatsoever is excused from performing the prayer unless he be mentally unsound, or an insurmountable obstacle prevent him.” The sincere seeker, however, often asks, “Why pray, since God knows our needs?” In response, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá mention many of the benefits of prayer.
1. Connection with God
“The wisdom of prayer is this: That it causeth a connection between the servant and the True One, because in that state man with all heart and soul turneth his face towards His Highness the Almighty, seeking His association and desiring His love and compassxon.”
2. Divine Companionship
“Verily He responds unto those who invoke Him, is near unto those who pray unto Him. And He is thy Companion in every loneliness, and befriends every exile."
3. Joy
“Know thou that supplication and prayer is the Water of Life. It is the cause of the vivification of existence and brings glad tidings and joy to the soul.”
“Know that in every home where God is praised and prayed to, and His Kingdom proclaimed, that home is a garden of God and a paradise of His happiness.”
895 4. Healing
“There are tw0 ways of healing sickness, material means and spiritual means. The first is by the use of remedies, of medicines; the second consists in praying to God and in turning to Him. Both means should be used and practiced . . . Moreover, they are not contradictory, and thou shouldst accept the physical remedies as coming from the mercy and favor of God. . . .”
“O thou pure and spiritual one! Turn thou toward God with thy heart beating with His love, devoted to His praise, gazing toward His Kingdom and seeking help from His Holy Spirit in a state of ecstasy, rapture, love, yearning, joy and fragrance. God will assist thee, through a Spirit from His Presence, to heal sickness and disease.”
“Continue in healing hearts and bodies and seek healing for sick persons by turning unto the Supreme Kingdom and by setting the heart upon obtaining healing through the power of the Greatest Name and by the spirit of the love of God.”
5. Protection
“Besides all this, prayer and fasting is the cause of awakening and mindfulness and conducive to protection and preservation from tests.”
6. Removal of Difficulties
“Is there any remover of difficulties save God! Say, Praise be to God! He is God! All are His servants and all abide by His bidding.”
“Say, God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God sufficeth. Verily, He is in Himself, the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent.”
(Prayers of the Báb, the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, to be used in times of difficulty.)
7. I ncreased capacity
“By these attractions one’s ability and capacity increase. When the vessel is widened the water increaseth and when the thirst grows, the bounty of the cloud becomes agreeable to the taste of man. This is the mystery of supplication and the wisdom of stating one’s wants.”
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8. Effect upon the World
“Intone, 0 My servant, the verses of God that have been received by thee, as intoned by them who have drawn nigh unto Him, that the sweetness of thy melody may kindle thine own soul, and attract the hearts of all men. Whoso reciteth, in the privacy of his chamber, the verses revealed by God, the scattering angels of the Almighty shall scatter abroad the fragrance of the words uttered by his mouth, and shall cause the heart of every righteous man to throb.”
9. I ntercession
“Those who have ascended have different attributes from those Who are still on earth, yet there is no real separation. In prayer there is a mingling of station, a mingling of condition. Pray for them as they pray for
ou.”
y Asked whether it was possible through faith and love to bring the New Revelation t0 the knowledge of those who have departed from this life without having heard of it, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá replied, “Yes, surely! since sincere prayer always has its effect, and it has a great influence in the other world. We are never out off from those who are there. The real and genuine influence is not in this world but in that other."
“He who lives according to what was ordained for him——the Celestial Concourse, and the people of the Supreme Paradise, and those who are dwelling in the Dome of Greatness will pray for him, by a Command from God, the Dearest and the praiseworthy.”
“O Thou Omnipotent Lord! In this great dispensation Thou dost accept the intercession of the sons and daughters in behalf of their parents. This is one of the special, infinite bestowals of this cycle. Therefore, 0 Thou kind Almighty, accept the request of this Thy servant at the threshold of Thy singleness and submerge my mother in the ocean of Thy Graces.”
The science of going about prayer is so little understood that we find ourselves, in the words of Tennyson:
“A child crying in the night, A child crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá suggested that there were four wonderful qualities that could help us to
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pray. The first is a detached spirit. It is a little like closing a window to the noises of the street, that the strains of the violin within the room may not be lost. The second is unconditional surrender of our own wills to the Will of God. This is very subtle and very difficult, for the self is inclined to argue with God and to rationalize its own desires, putting them always first. How few have the singular purity of the child who wanted a horse more than anything else in the world, and decided to pray for it. After a time her father said, “God did not answer your prayer, did He?” “But of course He did,” she said simply, “He said no!” Concentrated attention is the third quality, and the fourth, true spiritual passion, that ardor and devotion which distinguishes the apostle from the multitude. Surely God will raise to His very Presence the least peasant who whole-heartedly casts himself at His feet, in preference to the kings of the earth who are complacent. In the highest prayer, man prays only for the love of God.
The actual words help concentration. It is good to repeat the words so that the tongue and heart act together and the mind is better able to concentrate. Then the whole man is surrounded by the spirit of prayer. The communes of Bahá’u’lláh are like invigorating breezes; there is great power in using them aloud, for the exalted pen of a Manifestation of God is a source of power in the world. Prayer may be likened to a song; both words and music make the song.
If prayer is to become a guiding force, a protection, a joy, and the source of divine companionship, it must become a habit. How often a human being waits for the vicissitudes of life to drive him Godward when in reality the harmony, health, and full victory lie in continual praise and supplication. One needs to be in a perennial state of prayer. “The greatest happiness for a lover is to converse with his beloved . . .”
VICTORIOUS LIVING
A man’s goal is God. He is born to tread the Path to God. In the words of Bahá’u’lláh, “The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence.”
Success depends upon surrender to God at every turn. “O thou who hast surrendered thy will to God!” wrote Bahá’u’lláh, “By
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self—surrender and perpetual union with God is meant that men should merge their will wholly in the Will of God, and regard their desires as utter nothingness beside His Purpose.” This is the secret of happiness. “The liberty that profiteth you is to be found nowhere except in complete servitude unto God, the Eternal Truth. Whoso hath tasted of its sweetness will refuse to barter it for all the dominion of earth and heaven.”
Those on the Path are conscious of this joy. They have a sense of victory that no circumstance, however ruthless, is able to destroy. When the earliest Bahá’í pilgrims found their way to the prison city at ‘Akká, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would often call in such radiant souls as the aged Haydar—‘Ali, who, because of his great suffering and saintly character, was called the angel of ‘Akká. When the American visitors seemed discontented with their lot, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would say that Haydar-‘Ali had also suffered; that he had been dragged across a desert with his head in a sack! But Haydar-‘Ali made always the same reply, “I have known only the joy of serving my Lord.”
Lady Blomfield, foremost early Bahá’í of England, records the tender moments when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made His journey through the West, and interviewed, under her own roof, so many of the thoughtful of that land. When the people said, “We are glad, oh! so glad that you are free,” He replied:
“To me prison was freedom.
“Troubles are a rest to me.
“Death is life.
“To be despised is honor.
“Therefore I was full of happiness all through that prison time.
“When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed freedom! For self is the greatest prison.
“When this release takes place, one can never be imprisoned. Unless one accepts dire vicissitudes, not with dull resignation, but with radiant acquiesence, one cannot'attain this freedom.”
Martha Root, greatest of the first century Bahá’í teachers, knew the secret. On her last historic journey through the West, she was asked the secret of her success and happiness. This plain little woman who had stood before queens and emperors with such undeniable power, replied thoughtfully, “It is important to find out God’s first choice about everything. Then the bounties flow,
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the hearts are made happy, and the spirit of attraction is at work.”
Such a soul has nothing to fear. There is no circumstance that cannot be used for progress on the Path to God. “Nothing save that which profiteth them can befall My loved ones,” testified Bahá’u’lláh. “The sea of joy yeameth to attain your presence, for every good thing hath been created for you, and will, according to the needs of the times, be revealed unto you.”
Radiant acquiesence to the Will of God means obedience to His Commands and contentment in all that befalls, but it never means inertia, laziness, and slothful living. Activity in God’s Will is the law of victory. God can no more guide an inactive soul than a man can guide a car while it stands by the side of the road, inert. “Pray and act,” Martha would say. Action attracts the answer to the prayer. That is the reason for the importance of deeds in victorious living. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote, “By faith is meant, first, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds.” These deeds are the wealth of the friends of God.
Those who have arisen to teach these truths have all experienced the confirming power of assistance which Bahá’u’lláh promised to His sincere servants. “A company of Our chosen angels shall go forth with them, as hidden by Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Wise . . . If he be kindled with the fire of His love, . . the words he uttereth shall set on fire them that hear him. Verily thy Lord is the Omniscient, the All-Informed. Happy is the man that hath heard Our voice and answered Our call. He, in truth, is of them that shall be brought nigh unto us.”
Even daily work done in the spirit of service is an important part of victorious living, for it is accounted by Bahá’u’lláh as worship. He writes, “We have made this, your occupation, identical with the worship of God, the True One.” Living apart for pious worship is therefore discouraged. As Jesus gave His life to men in the market places, so must our spirituality find practical expression among the people.
No life is victorious that cannot live with its fellows. “Blessed is he who mingleth with all men in a spirit of utmost kindliness and love.” A Bahá’í drops away all forms of arrogance. His door is open to black and white, rich and poor, fellow countryman and foreign born. “Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. Deal ye one
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with another with the utmost love and harmony . . . So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.” The practice of social unity by a mere handful of the champions of God must slowly give rise to the harmony of the race.
IMMORTALITY
The Path to God is a stream of upward consciousness; it does not end with this small world. Our existence here may be likened to an acorn which, if quickened with life, becomes an oak. Or it may be likened to a child in the matrix of the mother as it develops its faculties of sight, hearing, and the like, for use in this world. So does the soul treat this world as a place of beginning in which it develops its spiritual faculties for use in all the worlds of God. The Word of God quickens the soul as the spring sunshine quickens the acorn, and from a single Word of even one of the Prophets or Manifestations of God, a soul may attain to the stream of consciousness. Many are the assurances of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá concerning this journey for the soul who faithfully sets out on the path to God.
First we must know that there is continuance. The true believer will “eternally live and endure. His spirit will everlastingly circle round the Will of God. He will last as long as God, Himself, will last . . . It is evident that the loftiest mansions in the Realm of Immortality have been ordained as the habitation of them that have truly believed in God and in His signs. Death can never invade that holy seat.”
The other world is a world of knowledge and memory. “Undoubtedly the holy souls who find a pure eye and are favored with insight will in the kingdom of lights be acquainted with all mysteries, and will seek the bounty of witnessing the reality of every great soul. Even they will manifestly behold the Beauty of God in that world.” “The mysteries of which man is heedless in this earthly world, those will he discover in the heavenly world, and there will he be informed of the secret of truth; how much more will he recognize or discover persons with whom he hath been associated.”
Not a static heaven, but a busy, active condition, bright with growth and progress, is visualized for us by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Those who have passed on through death have a sphere of their own. It is not removed from
THE BAHA’I WORLD
ours. Their work, the work of the Kingdom is like ours but it is sanctified from time and place. “It is as if a kind gardener transfers a fresh and tender shrub from a narrow place to a vast region. This transference is not the cause of the withering, the waning or the destruction of that shrub, nay rather it makes it grow and thrive, acquire freshness and delicacy and attain verdure and fruition.”
Bahá’u’lláh speaks of the power bestowed upon the faithful in the world of continuance. “The soul that hath remained faithful to the Cause of God, and stood unwaveringly firm in His Path shall, after his ascension, be possessed of such power that all the worlds which the Almighty hath created can benefit through him. Such a soul provideth, at the bidding Of the Ideal King and Divine Educator, the pure leaven that leaveneth the world of being, and furnisheth the pOWer through which the arts and wonders of the world are made manifest. Consider how meal needeth leaven to be leavened with. Those souls that are the symbols of detachment are the leaven of the world. Meditate on this, and be of the thankful.”
And again, joy is the keynote! “O Son of the Supreme! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?”
“Death proffereth unto every confident believer the cup that is life indeed. It bestoweth joy and is the bearer of gladness. It conferreth the gift of everlasting life. As to those who have tasted of the fruit of man’s earthly existence, which is the recognition of the one true God, exalted be His glory, their life hereafter is such as We are unable to describe. The knowledge thereof is with God alone, the Lord of all the worlds.”
“O my servants! Sorrow not if, in these days and on this earthly plane, things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes.”
The greatest gift of all, bestowed in the
worlds of light, must be the gift of companionship with the holy souls of every age.
The heart is immediately stirred by such a
possibility. The grandeur of Moses comes
close to us; we sit again at the feet of Jesus
the Christ! In short, we come to the conclu
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sion that the true believer of this illumined time is the associate and intimate of the apostles of former times. “Likewise will they find all the friends of God, both those of the former and recent times, present in the heavenly assemblage.” “Blessed is the soul which, at the hour of its separation from the body, is sanctified from the vain imaginings of the peoples of the world. Such a soul Iiveth and moveth in accordance with the Will of its Creator, and entereth the all-highest Paradise. The maids of Heaven, inmates of the loftiest mansions, will circle around it, and the Prophets of God and His chosen ones will seek its companionship. With them that soul will freely converse, and will recount unto them that which it hath been made to endure in the path of God, the Lord of all worlds. If any man be told that which hath been ordained for such a soul in the worlds of God, the Lord of the throne on high and of earth below, his whole being will instantly blaze out in his great longing to attain that most exalted, that sanctified and resplendent station.”
An American friend who had enjoyed the privilege of more than one visit to ‘Akká during the days of the exile of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, related an incident that took place at His table. With her sat persons of varied races, some of them traditional enemies who had now grown so to love one another that life and fortune would not have been too much to give if called upon to do so. As the reality of their love gradually became plain to her, there was born a ray of the knowledge of the intimacy of the near ones in the world beyond. When the meal drew to a close, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke of the immortal worlds. As nearly as she could remember, the words he spoke were these: “We have sat together many times before, and we shall sit together many times again in the Kingdom. We shall laugh together very much in thOSe times, and we shall tell of the things that befell us in the Path of God. In every world of God a new Lord’s Supper is set for the faithful!”
The secret of so great a fulfillment is inti 899
macy with God through His Messenger. Revelation, the open door to God, is forever linked with the Revelator. With one gracious gesture God bestows upon the world a divine physician, a lawgiver, a perfect pattern, and a point of union with its God. Happy is the heart that experiences fusion with the Manifestation of God’s Perfection. Paul would be made alive in Christ Jesus. Stephen, radiant even as the excited mob hurled him from the cliff, cries, “Behold, I see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of God the Father.” ‘Ali, youthful disciple of this day, proclaims as he offers his life, “If I recant, whither shall I go? In Him, I have found my paradise.” The Word of God is the Water of Life, one Word throughout cycles and ages. The soul, refreshed by new waters, finds itself yet on the old Path, the ancient, eternal Path. To tread that Path with dignity and joy, through this world and hereafter, is every man’s birthright. Therefore, once in about a thousand years, God, in His great compassion, clears the Path of superstition and division, that the Way may be made plain once more for the sincere seeker. And so Bahá’u’lláh has come.
Today the stage is set for the greatest spiritual drama. of history, for the rebirth of the powers of the human race will be for the first time world wide and in proportion to infinitely higher development. The coming of Bahá’u’lláh marks the close of a great cycle, the beginning of one infinitely greater. Man has come of age; a world-wide unity will appear, enjoyed by a new race. Baha’u’llah is the Father promised by Isaiah, the Michael spoken of by Daniel, the Spirit of Truth prophesied by Jesus, the Mihdi foretold by Muhammad, the Friend promised by Gautama, the Sháh Bahrain of Zoroaster. His coming is the bow of promise in the sky. “The universe is wrapped in an ecstasy of joy and gladness.” “Peerless is this Day, for it is as the eye to past ages and centuries, and as a light unto the darkness of the times.”
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THE BAHA’I WORLD
9. AN ITALIAN SCIENTIST EXTOLS THE BAB
By UGO R. GIACHERY
AMONG the apostles of modern science and liberty of thought, a prominent place belongs to Michele Lessona, an Italian, whose sincere and courageous words inspired and helped mold the character of at least two generations of Italians.
A scientist, a writer, a philosopher, an explorer and an educator, Professor Lessona stands out—with a stature that towers above that of many a well-known scientist—as one of the foremost thinkers of the nineteenth century.
He was born September 20, 1823, in Venaria Reale, a suburb of Turin. His father,
“MM“ .Ai'I/f" r e. "1 ‘ COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF TURIN
Professor Michele Lessona.
Dr. Carlo Lessona, was at the time the director of the well-known veterinary school of Venaria, and this fact might explain the boy’s early interest in scientific study. In 1846 Michele Lessona obtained a degree of medicine and surgery from the Royal University of Turin. Immediately after graduation he went to Egypt and, although rather young, was appointed Chief of the Igian Kah Hospital in Cairo.
In 1849 he returned to Italy and became an instructor in Natural History, first in Asti and then in Turin. In 1854, at the age of 31, he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy and Zoology at the Royal University of Genoa. In 1864, after his return from Persia, he taught first at the University of Bologna and then at the University of Turin. Here he occupied in 1865 the Chairs of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, becoming in 1877 the Rector of that University.
During his life Michele Lessona produced a variety of scientific and literary works. Among his classical publications are to be remembered an illustrated treatise on natural history, in seveial volumes; his masterpiece on ethics, Power and Will; Confessions of a Rector; Memoirs of an Old Professor; and the translation into Italian of the best known works of Darwin, Samuel Smiles, John Lubbock, and many others.
In 1892 King Humbert of Italy made him a Senator for life, a well-deserved recompense for his patriotism, leadership and learning. He passed away, amidst universal sorrow, on July 20, 1894, in his beloved Turin.
In 1862 Professor Lessona had been appointed physician to the diplomatic delegation that went to Persia at that time to establish relations between the newly created Kingdom of Italy and the government of Nasiri’d-Din Shéh.
Immediately on his arrival in Tabríz, he met a Persian of high lineage, Dafld 195m, who, having lived for many years in Italy, spoke Italian perfectly. From this gentleman Lessona learned of the Bábi movement, and he became fascinated with the life of the
[Page 901]ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
Bab and His heroic ministry. When opportunity permitted, he tried to visit places connected with the history of the Báb, and he had the opportunity to converse, many times and at length, with Count de Gobineau, the French ambassador to the court of the shéh When he returned to Italy Professor Lessona wrote a book Hunting in Persia and a precious little monograph of sixty—six pages entitled I Babi
Fernando Morosi, a Bahá’í of Rome and a book dealer by profession, recently found a copy of this book, which was immediately dispatched to Haifa and is now in the custody of Shoghi Effendi. It represents one of the very first documentations, made by an European, of the episode of the Báb.
The little book was printed 1n 1881 by the Royal Typographer Vincenzo Bona of Turin and contains a good narrative of the life of. the Báb and other personal considerations of the author concerning the Bábi movement.
Some of the episodes he relates difier slightly from the accounts in the well-known histories by Browne, de Gobineau, and Nabil-i-Zarandi.1 There are, however, other parts of the book which I would like to bring to the attention of the reader.
After presenting his informant, Daud Igian, the author comments: “Religious discussions are of comfort to the misfortunate who are oppressed by tyranny and always stripped, or about to be stripped, of everything they own.”
Presenting the figure of the Báb, he says:
“Forty years ago, in the city of Shiréz, there left childhood and entered puberty a youth that for his singular potency of intellect, for his extraordinary application to study, his profound religious tendencies, his loving nature, for his energy of character, grace of body and beauty of countenance, awakened admiration and affection in everyone who had occasion to deal with him, and captivated all the love of his teachers and relatives. The name of this youth was Mirza ‘Ali-Muhammad. It was said later that his family was of the high nobility, one of those descending from the Prophet by way of the Imam Husayn . . . It is certain that his family was wealthy and that he was encouraged in every manner in his most ardent
1Edward G. Browne, translator and editor of A Traveller's Narrative; M. 1e Comte de Gobineau, author of Les Religions et [23 Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale; and Muhammad-ilarandi, surnamed Nabil-iA’zam, author of The Dawn-Breakers.
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Title Page of Lessona’s History of the Bábi Movement, written in 1862 and published in 1881 in Turin, Italyone of the earliest European accounts of the life and martyrdom of the Báb.
desire to learn. Mirza ‘Ali-Muhammad showed ardor similarly in religious practices . . .” “He would converse with the Rabbis of Shiréz. He would investigate the doctrine of the Gabras2 . . . It is also certain that he studied the Gospels, a rather easy matter, thanks to the volumes of the Bible and the Gospel translated into the Persian language which the British disseminated 1n all of Persia .A bad translation in poor style, without the imagination and the floweriness of these sacred books.”
“The present Shah, Nésiri’d-Din, sometimes during his luncheon requests the reading of the Bible in Persian and sometimes he laughs, and then the courtiers burst into a clamorous laughter and for a few days they speak only of that verse, or word, which has provoked the hilarity of the sovereign.”
Speaking of the clergy, Lessona observes:
“The clergy of Persia is extremely corrupt; at the same time it administers religion and justice—the first badly, the second worse; it falsifies wills, defrauds of possessions, sells justice, practices usury and indulges in debauchery . . . The powerful
2 Gabr (or guebre), a term used contemptuously to designate the Zoroastrian priesthood (see A Traveller’s Narrative, page 34, footnote 1).
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ones are in fear of it, the lowly scoff at it, the masses despise and exploit it, ready to deride and ridicule it or to rise up at its call to revolt. Every mosque has a larger or smaller number of beggars who live off scant charity and become instruments of violence, plunder and death in the hands of the priests."
Professor Lessona then speaks of Dr. Polalt3 who, at the time, was physician to the Sháh and who wrote books of medicine in Persian. Relating in detail the history of the Bábis, he mentions the eighteen Letters of the Living“ of one of whom, Mullá Husayn, he writes: “He was a very learned man, both in religion and jurisprudence: daring, austere and fiery.”
Returning to the beginning of the ministry of the Báb, he says:
“. . . His style was imaginative and sublime, not like anything human; thus to his quality of a most eloquent orator he added that of an inimitable writer. And while he preached, discussed and taught in the mosques, in the colleges, in the streets, in his house, everywhere they were reading aloud his verses, often interrupting with cries of the most ardent admiration. In all of Shiraz they did not speak of anything else but the Báb, everyone was filled with enthusiasm for him . . . The house of the Bab was crowded, night and day, with new converts to his faith; to him came men rich in possessions, men of intellect and energy, and among the very first many mullés enrolled under his banner.”
The author speaks of Qurratu’I-‘Ayn5 and the siege of Tabarsi,6 and, having visited Zanjén,7 he states: “I visited that city ten years after the happenings I have related,
3 Dr. J. E. Polak, author of Persien. Das Land und seine Bewahner (1865), was also professor at the Medical College of Tihran (A Traveller's Narrative, Note A, p. 203).
4 “The Báb’s chosen disciples” (God Passes By, by Shoghi Effendi, p. 5); their names are listed in The Dawn-Breakers, pp. 80-81.
5Qurratu’l—‘Ayn, “the only woman enrolled by the Bab as one of the Letters of the Living" (God Passes By, p. 73), given the title Táhirih (the Pure One) by Bahá’u’lláh, “the lovely but ill-fated poetess of Qasvin” (Curzon) became well known throughout Europe for her efforts in behalf of the education of the women of Persia.
6 For an account of the eleven-months’ siege of 313 followers of the Báb at the shrine of s_liaylgi Tabarsi, a few miles south of Bérfun’ish, by the army of the Shah, see God Purses By, pp. 38-42, and Dawn Breakers, pp. 343—429. It was during this siege that Mullá Husayn and Quddfis were killed.
7The uprising against the followers of the Báb at Zanjén is described in God Passes By, pp. 44-46, and in chapter 24 of The Dawn-Breakers.
THE BAHA’I WORLD
and I still found frightening traces of the devastation which had taken place.”
Referring to the difficulty of securing more information on the Bábi movement, he adds:
“. . . In Persia it is impossible to speak of the Bábis or to learn something about their affairs. The terror which this name awakens is such that no one dares to speak, or even think, of it. The Italians whom I found in Ṭihrán, and who proved extremely kind in every way, wanted to tell me little or nothing about the Babis, or were unable to do so; the same was true of Europeans of other nationality in Tihran, Tabríz or Rasht. Nicolas,” with whom I made the long journey from Ṭihrán to St. Petersburg, started to speak to me about them only after we passed the Persian frontier . . . Count de Gobineau, in the village of Gezer near Ṭihrán, would narrate to me episodes about this sect, making the hours of the evening pass as lightning while he wrote its history and read to me some chapters . . . Gathering material for the history of the Báb, which he was doing at the time, was fraught with danger in the heart of Persia, even for a Minister of the French Emperor . . .”
Referring to Vambéry’s critical comments on the episode of Shaykh Tabarsi,9 Lessona states: “. . . this judgment is entirely unjust and a thousand miles from the truth, if we want to apply it to the precepts of the Báb . . . These precepts are in a symbolical language and, amidst mystic formulas, we found the sweet doctrines of the Báb, respectful of the past but made to contrast with formalism and to make the spirit of goodness prevail . . . The Báb and Qurratu’l-‘Ayn were purified from any thought of violence and their lives were filled with love for their fellow men and with enthusiasm for the Faith . . .”
In relating the atrocious tortures inflicted on the Bábis, Lessona relates:
“. . . The Shah and the Sadr-i-A’zam (Prime Minister) feared a revolution, seeing conspirators all around them; they thought therefore to devise some scheme that would involve the largest number of persons. The
8Monsieur J. B. Nicolas, Interpreter of the Imperial French Embassy in Tihran and father of A. L. M. Nicolas, author of Siyyid 'AIi-Mulmmmad dit Ie Bdb, Paris, Dujaraic & Co., 1905.
9Hermann Vémbéry, author of Meine Wanderungen and Erlebnisse in Persien (1867), writes concerning the siege of shaylm Tabarsi pp. 286~303), according to Browne, in A Traveller’s Narrative, Note A, p. 206; see also pp. 37—39.
[Page 903]ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
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shéh then schemed to deliver the Bábis to the various civil and military employees, charging them to put said Bábis to death. From the type of torture inflicted on the victims, from the most heinous manner in which they would be put to death, he could judge their zeal . . . Those who had not enough imagination to find new tortures went to the Kalantar who knew how to suggest others . . . That Kalantar then acquired many titles to the Shéh’s benevolence
. . 3’” “From that day,” the author continues, “eighteen years have passed and in Persia the same sovereign, Nésiri’d-Din Shéh, reigns, always diffident, always suspecting, always in fear of the Bábis. From time to time they arrest some one, condemn him very often to despoliation for the reason
that he is a Bábi but more often using this as
10 This system of persecution is attested also by Nabil, op. cit., p. 612, footnote 2, and by Browne, op. cit., Note '1‘, p. 328.
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an excuse. The governors of the provinces thus have an easy method of taking all the possessions of a poor victim who has put something aside. The government says that Babism is extinguished, but it operates as if it were alive . . .”
“A new Bab, successor to the first, lives in Baghdad, outside the government of the Shéh._From there he is in touch with all Persia and has disseminated Babism in all those provinces and even in the Indies of the Orient.”
This correspondent was thrilled in reading these words, because of all the early European historians of the Faith Michele Lessona makes a direct and unmistakable reference to Bahá’u’lláh, Who the following year in Bag_hdéd made His Declaration in the Riḍván.
The author ends his monograph by putting before the reader the question whether the Bábi doctrine would survive and propa THE BAHA’I WORLD
gate. Wisely he answers it himself by quoting one of Manzoni’s verses:
“To posterity the arduous judgment!”
The great friendship born in Persia between Lessona and Count de Gobineau had its strange epilogue in Turin. After the fall of the French Empire, de Gobineau, exiled from his native France, spent part of the year in Italy and part in Germany.
On the evening of October 12, 1882, a distinguished looking and elegantly dressed gentleman, on his way to Pisa, became ill in a hotel bus in Turin. He was taken to the Hotel Liguria and there this traveler died, the early morning of October 13, attended by the hotel owner and some of the servants. The hand of fate had made it possible for Count Arthur Joseph de Gobineau to sleep forever in Italian soil and in the same town where Michele Lessona lived and where Lessona, himself, twelve years later was laid to rest.
10. THE BAHA’T FAITH AND WORLD GOVERNMENT*
By DAVID M. EARL
AS INEVITABLY as the upward swing of the pendulum is followed by a downward stroke, or as synthesis emerges from the interaction of thesis and antithesis, modern thinkers are countering the coldly rational materialistic bent of the late nineteenth century with a new appreciation of the basic need for humans to believe in something beyond the laboratories of physical science. A historian, Toynbee, has pointed out that the practical extinction of faith in Western society is “the supreme danger to the spiritual health and even to the material existence of the Western body social—a deadlier danger, by far, than any of our hotly canvassed and loudly advertised political and economic maladies.”1 A biophysicist, du Noiiy, has emphasized the necessity for basing a new moral development “on a unification, a reconciliation of the rational—science—with mrticle appeared in Common Cause, 4:92, September, 1950, and is reprinted here by permission of the author and the publishers, The University of Chicago Press.
1Amold J. Toynbee, A Study of History. London, Oxford University Press, 1939, vol. V. p. 671.
the universal—faith; . . . on an explanation of the relation between matter and spirit.”2
In response to this almost unconscious but apparently fundamental need, and possibly because older religious forms have all too conspicuously failed to bring to the masses either individual or international peace, new religious movements are beginning to receive the attention of mankind. It should be a matter of some encouragement that one new religious approach which has been preeminently successful in gaining active and loyal adherents in every continent of the globe, and in every country where freedom of religious discussion is permitted, is a faith which places among its most basic purposes the establishment of a world commonwealth. Despite suppression and persecution from civil and from ecclesiastical authorities both in Persia, the land of its birth, and in the Turkish Empire, to which it was carried in
2Lecomte du Noijy, Human Destiny. New York, Longmans, Green & Co., 1947, p. 256.
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its very earliest days, after barely one hundred years the Bahá’í faith, flourishing in some sixty countries, developed an international nongovernmental organization recognized by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and was sending its representatives, including American citizens, to participate in a conference on human rights at Geneva.3
Further interest is lent to the story of the Bahá’í faith when it is realized that this progress has been accomplished by a group without clergy or priesthood; thus it can hardly be argued that an ecclesiastical hierarchy has advanced the Bahá’í teachings in order to preserve and extend its own vested interest. Knowledge of the Bahá’í teachings, on the contrary, has been spread from continent to continent and from country to country by individual lay members who have been so inspired with enthusiasm and so convinced that these teachings answered the fundamental needs of modern society that they have taken it on themselves to give their time, means, and energy to traveling, and even to living for extended periods of time, in communities and countries other than their own, for the sole purpose of sharing their new faith with others.4 When it is realized that every adherent of this belief, in whatever country he may be found, has wholeheartedly accepted the principles of world government and world citizenship, it seems not inappropriate to inquire in some detail into the history and philosophy of the Bahá’í faith.
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE Bahá’í FAITH5
At Shíráz on May 23, 1844, Siyyid ‘AliMuhammad, who afterward became known
3United Nations. Economic and Social Council. Committee on Arrangements for Consultation with Non-Governmental Organizations. Report of the Conferences Called by the Ad Hoc Committee of Consultative Non-Governmental Organizations. E/C.2/98 (June 2, 1948), p. 6. (For additional material concerning official Bahá’í contacts with the United Nations, see pages 597-615. Editors.)
4 One such example out of many was recently mentioned by Martha Gellhorn in her article on Luxembourg, “Party Girl in Paradise,” Saturday Evening Post, January 7, 1950, vol. 222, No. 28, p. 25.
5An excellent book on Bahá’í history from the Bahá’í viewpoint is Shoghi Effendi, Gad Passes By, Wilmette, 111., Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1944. An adequate summary of the Bahá’í teachings as well as a historical account will be found in Emeric Sala, This Earth One Country, Boston, Bruce Humphries, Inc., 1945, pp. 102—81. For the viewpoint of a well-known historian, see Arnold J. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. 5, pp. 174-176, 665.
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as the Báb (i.e., Gate), made the announcement that he was the promised one whose coming was to fulfill messianic prophecy. His specific mission, he stated, was to prepare Persia and the world for the advent of a second prophet who would bring a message even more significant than his own. His writings eventually included prayers, commentaries on passages in the Qur’án, and moral exhortations calling on his followers to sever themselves from worldly things, rely on God, and maintain themselves completely ready to accept the prophet who was to follow. As to his relation with the later Manifestation, the Báb wrote:
“I am a letter out of that most mighty book and a dewdrop from that limitless ocean, and when He shall appear, my true nature . . . Will become evident, and the embryo of this religion shall develop . . . and attain to the station of ‘the most comely of forms.’ ”6
The new code of religious law, the new example of moral and spiritual reform set by the Báb, were in such marked contrast to the standards of the day that they were considered by corrupt civil and religious leaders as involving a mortal threat to established interests. Like every social reformer, the Báb was vilified bitterly by those who were the most guilty of excesses, and it was soon found possible to imprison him in the name of religious orthodoxy. His followers by the thousand were tortured and slain by fiendish methods paling even Fox’s Book of Martyrs; and after six years of confinement, the Báb himself was publicly executed by an army firing squad at Tabríz on July 9, 1850.
Yet here the typical pattern of religious history was repeated: the new religion grew under persecution, beginning to make headway even among the elite and ruling class. It was from a family of this sort, his father being a minister of state, that there came Mirza Husayn ‘Ali, who later was known as Bahá’u’lláh (i.e., Glory of God). During the lifetime of the Báb this individual accepted his message; and after the Báb’s martyrdom, Baha’u’llah became one of his best-known followers. His noble birth did not prevent his paying a price for his faith: stripped of his wealth and possessions, He was imprisoned, tortured, and finally, with his family, exiled to Bag_hdéd, then a part of the Turkish Empire.
6Quoted in Edward G. Browne, A Traveller’s Narrative. Cambridge, The University Press, 1891, p. 54.
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As the years passed, Bahá’u’lláh’s spiritual station became so evident as to attract large numbers of visitors from various parts of Persia. Once again the religious leaders felt the established order to be in jeopardy; the Turkish government was prevailed upon to cooperate; Baha’u’llah and his family were summoned to appear in Constantinople. While preparing to leave, on April 21, 1863, Bahá’u’lláh announced to a group of sincere well-wishers that he was the promised one whom the Báb had foretold.
Almost a hundred persons insisted on accompanying Bahá’u’lláh and sharing His hardships; after a few months in Constantinople, the entire group was moved in the dead of winter, without adequate clothing or food, to Adrianople. It was in this city that Bahá’u’lláh publicly announced His mission, and from this time, His followers were called Bahá’ís.
A few years later, the group was moved again, this time to the ancient fortressprison of ‘Akká (Acre) in Palestine [now Israel]. Here the most rigid conditions were imposed: Some eighty persons, including women and children, were crowded into a few dirty rooms. Malaria and dysentery were prevalent; food and water foul. After a few years of such confinement, restrictions were again relaxed, and Baha’u’llah with His family was permitted to occupy a small house and move about within the city walls. Still later, He was permitted to move to a nearby rural location.
Although pilgrims visited Him during the latter years of His life, His long imprisonment and exile prevented Baha’u’llah from personally teaching large numbers of people. Instead, He put His message in writing, and these writings today form the basis of the Bahá’í faith. In them, Bahá’u’lláh sounded the great call to spiritual excellence and moral perfection which the world has come to associate with its most highly developed religious thought; but in addition, He placed a new emphasis on the social aspects of human relationship, and in outlining the obligation of the individual to society, in effect He laid the foundation for a future world commonwealth.
After the passing of Bahá’u’lláh from this life on May 28, 1892, spiritual leadership of the nascent Bahá’í community fell upon the shoulders of His oldest son, ‘Abbas Effendi, who became better known as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
THE BAHA’I WORLD
(i.e., Servant of Baha). Early in his childhood ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had understood His father’s peculiar station; although only in His twenties when the incarceration at ‘Akká began, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had developed into His father’s most trusted lieutenant, gradually taking on Himself more and more of the administrative detail involved in Bahá’u’lláh’s relationships with officials and visitors and so freeing His father for meditation and the recording of His message. As the first person to believe in Bahá’u’lláh’s mission, and the foremost exemplar in His personal life of Baha’u’llah’s teachings, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was preeminently qualified to hold together and encourage the Bahá’ís. During His lifetime the number of believers continued to increase, and the new faith began to receive the serious attention of Westerners.
Pilgrims from the United States arrived as early as 1894; others came from England and the continent. In many cities of Europe and America, Bahá’í groups were formed. After changing political conditions in Turkey resulted in freeing all political and religious prisoners, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at the age of sixty-seven visited Europe. The year was 1911; to a world standing on the brink of catastrophe, He brought a message of peace and unity. During the following year, He spent nine months in the United States and Canada, speaking in cities from coast to coast. Many persons active in Bahá’í affairs in the United States today still have vivid memories of their conversations with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
Just as Bahá’u’lláh had provided in writing that, after His departure, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was to be the recognized center of the movement and interpreter of the writings, so ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in turn provided for an unbroken succession of the central responsibility. After His death on November 28, 1921, it was found that His will and testament established a new institution: that of the Guardianship. By explaining the duties of the Guardian and outlining the manner in which future Guardians were to be selected, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was able to forestall those ruinous schisms with which the question of authorized succession has plagued other established religions.7
As first Guardian, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá chose His grandson, Shoghi Effendi, who is still discharging the function. Under Shoghi Effen 7W1]! and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Wilmette, 111., National Bahá’í Office, 1944.
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di’s leadership, the world center of the Bahá’í Faith has been established at Haifa, local Bahá’í institutions have been consolidated in hundreds of cities throughout the world, and national institutions set up in nine countries where the number of believers necessitates such an organization. Of parallel importance with the forming of the administrative framework has been the progressive elucidation of Baha’u’llah’s program arising from the Guardian’s accurate translations of Baha’u’llah’s writings, together with his own original works, in which he has applied the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh to current and future world problems.
/,i
TEACHINGS RELATED TO WORLD GOVERNMENT
BAHA
In His North American talks, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá emphasized over and over that the purpose of religion must be to promote unity and concord, and that in this day, no unity less than that of the entire human race could be considered as an adequate goal.8 This unity, He pointed out, must have a spiritual basis in order to overcome the innate selfseeking tendencies so much in evidence today; but it must be expressed in concrete social institutions and not confined to mere sentimentality. For example, He insisted that equal opportunities and rights must be granted to women, at a time when this was generally considered an idealistic dream; He showed that capital and labor must cooperate in harmony, as each was essential to the other: a viewpoint which even yet can hardly be called popular. Universal education and an unfettered individual investigation of truth were also part of the program; this would result in immeasurably raising both cultural and scientific standards. A world auxiliary language must be agreed upon and taught in every school throughout the world: thus every person could communicate directly with any other without fear of misunderstanding or embarrassment. But above all, He pointed out, the Bahá’í teachings furnished a definite foundation on which to construct a world commonwealth. Just as previous religious teachings have dealt with individual discipline, He showed that Bahá’u’lláh offers a formula for social discipline. Like great religions of the past, the Bahá’í Faith upholds a belief in God and
8‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations 0/ World Unity, New York, World Unity Publishing Corp., 1927, passlm.
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stresses the necessity of ethical and moral personal conduct; but, unlike them, it goes beyond this to make its chief immediate concern the creation of a world government and a world culture based on justice. Rather than insisting that one religion is true and others erroneous, Bahá’u’lláh demonstrates that all established religions are divine in origin, and have marked important stages in social evolution; adherents of all may therefore with complete consistency join hands in a world faith embodying their highest ideals. Union of all peoples in a world faith with mutual respect for all previous prophets He considers essential to the formation of an integrated world community.
How completely the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are intended to affect society is shown in the words of Shoghi Effendi:
“The principle of the Oneness of Mankind —the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve—is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening Of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the festering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family. It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal, but stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence. It implies an organic change in the structure of present—day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced.
. It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world—a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.”9
It is implicit in the Bahá’í teachings that world unity will not come about suddenly, by revolutionary means. Rather, the people
of the world, through experience in trial and
9 Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahd’-u’lláh, New York, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1938, p. 42.
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error, through making faltering steps with leagues and confederations, will evolve a progressively more perfect union. The principles laid down by Baha’u’llah, accordingly, are not so much concerned with the techniques of accomplishing world unity as with those of operating a world commonwealth. Viewed in this way, they may serve as a useful criterion for evaluating progress toward world government, as well as furnishing a fruitful source of ideas for inclusion in a world constitution.
One of the greatest Bahá’í principles is that emphasizing the oneness of mankind:
“The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch. . . . There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God. . . . The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. . . . All men have been created to carry forward an everadvan'cing civilization. . . . That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race. . . . It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”10
In this connection, the Bahá’í writings strike boldly at an attitude which is still one of the most potentially dangerous sources of disharmony: that of race prejudice:
“Concerning the prejudice of race, it is an illusion, a superstition pure and simple, for God created us all of one race. . . . In the sight of God there is no difference between the various races. Why should man invent such a prejudice? . . . A11 races, tribes, sects, and classes share equally in the bounty of their Heavenly Father. . . . The lovers of mankind, these are the superior men, of whatever nation, creed, or color they may be.”11
The writings of Baha’u’llah are permeated with a sense of the vital importance of justice in establishing world order:
10 Shoghi Effendi, tr., Gleanings from the Writings of Bahd’u'lláh, New York, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1939, pp. 215, 217—18, 250.
11 The Wisdom of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, New York, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1924, p. 137.
THE BAHA’I WORLD
“The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice. . . . We cherish the hope that the light of justice may shine upon the world and sanctify it from tyranny. . . . The structure of world stability and order hath been reared upon, and will continue to be sustained by, the twin pillars of reward and punishment. . . . There is no force on earth that can equal in its conquering power the force of justice and wisdom.”12
Even during the transitional period into which the world is giving signs of moving at the present moment, before the actual accomplishment of world unity, Baha’u’llah indicates the cardinal importance of justice:
“0 rulers of the earth! Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may need no more armaments save in a measure to safeguard your territories and dominions. . . . Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.”13
A world community with a world consciousness, enforcing world justice in accordance with a world faith: this is the significant scheme of Bahá’u’lláh. Clearly, even when speaking of “mundane” affairs such as politics and labor relations, the Bahá’í approach is basically spiritual; far from being something to engage in once a week, religion in the Bahá’í sense becomes the mainspring of human activity:
“The whole duty of man in this Day is to attain that share of the flood of grace which God poureth forth for him. . . . Every eye, in this Day, should seek what will best promote the Cause of God. . . . Beseech ye the one true God to grant that ye may taste the savor of such deeds as are performed in His path. . . . Forget your own selves, and turn your eyes toward your neighbor. Bend your energies to whatever may foster the education of men.”14
Acceptance of these principles and their application to personal life has wrought revolutionary changes in countless individuals; but social revolution, with its concomitant use of force rather than reason as the deciding factor, is completely contrary to the Bahá’í attitude. It may very reasonably be asked how the Bahá’ís of the world, despite
12 Shoghi Effendi, tr., The Hidden Words of Baird‘u’IIdh, New York, Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1939, . 3. p —. Cleaning: from the Writing: of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 218-19.
13 Ibid., p. 254.
14117121., pp. 8, 9.
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their unquestionably high principles, can hope to effect any real change in social or political conditions, if they are committed to waiting for evolution to take its course. The answer to such a question reveals what may possibly be of significance to the world even within our own lifetimes: the already established and functioning “Bahá’í Administration.”15 The organizational and operational framework by which the affairs of the Bahá’í faith are currently being handled throughout the world has been purposely designed to apply in daily use the principles enjoined upon mankind by Bahá’u’lláh. Actually, social evolution may be visualized as proceeding along two distinct lines: one, the political, through the establishment by the nations of the world of such agencies as the League of Nations and the United Nations, from which line the foundation of a world state may eventually emerge; the other, the nonpolitical, where in institutions such as those of the Bahá’ís the new principles of world consciousness and administration without partisanship are being developed. Thus, the Bahá’ís may feel that they are contributing day by day in deeds, not merely in words, to forming the concrete institutions of a new world order.
Perhaps the fundamental inspiration which Bahá’í administration can give to world administration is the abolition of the conflict between interests. Diversity of interests, and the consequent necessity for their accurate representation, is so basic a feature of modern democratic—parliamentary systems, that a proposal to disregard this conflict may sound radical to the point of negating democracy. Yet Bahá’u’lláh points out, and Bahá’í administration applies it in practice, that the interest of the whole human race is the only interest worthy of consideration; anything lesser is intrinsically selfish. On such a basis, there can be no conflict of interest; there may be a difference of opinion as to the proper mode of operation, but the basic purpose of any de 15 The following are the most useful references on this subject:
The Bahá’í Community, Wilmette, 111., Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1947.
Bahá’í Procedure, Wilmette, 111., Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1942.
David Hofman, A Commentary on the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, London, Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1943.
Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í Administration, Wilmette, 111.,
Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1941. . The World Order 0/ Bahd’u'llzih.
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cision will always proceed from agreement, not disagreement.
From this principle, revolutionary as it seems, proceeds another equally surprising to adherents of the Western democratic system: with no divergent interests to represent, there is no need for political parties. Not a one-party system, but a no-party system, is envisaged by Baha’u’llah. To insure that this will be so in actuality and not merely in theory, present-day Bahá’í elections are conducted entirely by secret ballot, and without nominations. No one announces himself as a candidate, and there are no campaign speeches or promises. In a local election, every adult Bahá’í resident in the local area is eligible to be voted for; and similarly in a national election. Those who are elected, since they made no campaign promises, and have no idea who voted for them, are entirely free of obligation to a constituency, and can accordingly devote themselves completely to the welfare of the whole group. It will undoubtedly be necessary to introduce changes in this electoral technique when voters are counted in the millions; but the principle of completely nonpartisan elections is a challenging one.
.Another essential element in Bahá’í administration is the elimination of the fundamental separation of powers to which Americans are so well accustomed. This, too, is felt to be a relic of the conflict-of-interest era, so that the highest administrative authority is vested on any level (local, national, or international) in a board which unites in itself the legislative, executive, and judicial responsibilities.16 It is these boards, at present consisting of nine members each, which are elected in the nonpartisan manner described above; since elections are not for single-position offices, and the nine receiving the highest number of votes are all declared elected, the system works more smoothly than might otherwise be supposed.
Implicit in the placing of the highest responsibility for administration in the hands of a board is the elimination of opportunity for any one individual to make a decision on his own motion. Social responsibility is so ingrained a part of the political philosophy of Bahá’u’lláh that there is no place for the individual executive or judge; action affecting human beings can rightfully be taken only by the group.
18 Such an agency has not yet been organized 0n the international level.
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Concerning the method by which the group comes to its decisions, Bahá’í administration again uses a technique which is untried in the arena of politics: that of “consultation.” In distinction to the parliamentary procedure, whereby a motion must be made before it can be discussed, and which results in debate rather than sincere cooperative effort, the Bahá’í method is to explore the question completely and unemotionally, encouraging each person to state his opinions freely, and so far as possible coming to a mutual agreement before the motion is put. Thus, an attempt is made to have the motion sum up the feelings of the group in the aggregate rather than reflecting the wishes of a faction. If, in spite of this attempt to achieve unity, irreconcilable differences remain, the majority view must be accepted, since, as explained above, the difference is considered to be one of opinion only and not of fundamental interest.
Bahá’ís hope that ultimately the spiritual and political lines of administrative evolution will come together, allowing the world government to claim the loyalty of a citizenry united in a world faith; but that the
11. THE BIRTH OF
THE BAHA’I WORLD
principle of collective responsibility is still to be observed at that distant stage of development is shown by the provision that the chairman of even the universal authority should have no veto power.
Through such techniques as these, Bahá’u’lláh has projected morality from an individual concern to the plane of group responsibility. It is precisely this application of the individual conscience to group activity which is lacking in the world today, and is essential if there is to be a world tomorrow. Whether or not one agrees with the strictly religious side of the Bahá’í teachings, it would be hard indeed to disregard the effects which organized religion has had on the world in the past. That a religion now receiving an ever—widening circle of acceptance is so completely interwoven with the ideal of world government, and that it is consciously attempting to develop patterns for future society, can hardly fail to be significant to those who are aware of the direction in which civilization is moving.
WORLD RELIGION
By REGINALD KING
ii VINTER is that season of the year when, to all outward seeming, the world of trees and flowers and grasses lies dead—yet all of us know that this is not true. In reality the seeds simply lie dormant and asleep, awaiting the proper combination of warmth and moisture to stir them to life. Indeed a few seeds anticipate the season and, braving the blasts of winter, push themselves to flowersoft riots of color in a dreary landscape. These are the harbingers of what is to come. Later the whole vegetable kingdom stirs itself. Up through the muck and mire and darkness, the fragile shoots work their slender fingers upward. Moving all obstacles aside they struggle far beyond their seeming strength that one day they may emerge from darkness into the light of the sun that called them forth. In the physical world we call this season Spring. One can almost feel a difference in the very air when Spring touches the earth with the key that unlocks the fetters of winter.
A11 life takes on a new aspect at this time of year. Musicians and poets, through the ages, have sung of the spring season more often than of any other subject except 10ve. Some poets have claimed that for men childhood is the springtime of life; others have written that man’s springtime comes when he falls in love. Perhaps each man knows his own spring season best. This much we do know—all of us: Spring is a time of rebirth; the moments, year on year, when earth cloaks herself with fresh new garments to gladden the eye of man. These yearly cycles are so frequent and regular in a life time that man knows of a certainty that; after the winter season is over, the spring will come and that nothing deters its coming. Yet with this example of the bounty of God ever before him, man does not yet seem aware of the lesson it teaches. Man does not seem to realize that whenever he allows a winter season to lay hold of his spiritual heritage, God never fails to send a spiritual springtime to
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awaken him to new life and glory. In his perversity, man has from time immemorial turned from religion to irreligion—from the light of truth to the darkness of error. His spirit, like the seed, lies dormant and asleep. Yet whenever the light of God is extinguished in human hearts——whenever man has raised veils of dogma and superstition between himself and his Creator—God sends a divine springtime. At such a time, there are always a few waiting soulsdawn-breakers—who, like the crocus, arise to herald the new day of God. Alas how few heed—how few listen to them!
Almost two thousand years have passed over the earth since one such springtime came and went in the environs of the ancient city of Jerusalem. Today five hundred million Christians can, from this distance of time, look back and say: Yes, that was the divine springtime. How wonderful it must have been to have sat at His feet and heard those glorious words of the Sermon on the Mount, or to have followed his footsteps through Galilee. The three years of His ministry were the days of Spring for the Christian world. We can, in looking back, understand and appreciate this truth today, but at the time there were few, a mere handful, that appreciated and saw the glory of what was taking place.
The Faith of Christ is but one of the religious systems that the world know; What of the others?——The Jews, the followers of Buddha, the faithful of Islam, the Parsi, the Hindu—have they not also known a spiritual springtime? Each lays claim to such a time of re-birth; each looks upon his Prophet as a Messenger from God. Each looks upon the life time of his Prophet as a wondrous spiritual spring. But each claims that his Messenger was the true, the greatest and final One. How can this be? No spring season in Nature can claim to be the best or the final. At one time or another, all over the planet, year after year spring comes in nature. The seasons chase their sure way around the globe, slighting none. Yet men say the Springtime of God is exclusive, final, and named!
We of the West are more familiar with the teachings of the Jewish Faith than of any other religion except the Christian. Though that knowledge has not kept the western world from violent prejudices against the valiant congregation that through the centuries have kept aloft the banner of the One
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God—the Mighty Lord. The familiar story of Moses tells of the leading of a people from the winter season of bondage and despair in Egypt, to the spring season that in words of eternal glory descended from Sinai and ushered the Jews into the Promised Land. Those same Ten Commandments even today are the basis of our civil and religious law. Such ancient festivals as the Passover are still celebrated by the Jews in remembrance of the bounties and the bestowals of God during the Spring Season of their Faith.
The western peoples have had little contact with the other Faiths except in a prejudiced or negative way. The motion picture has shown us many scenes of the Arab peoples, usually so prejudicial to the true facts that we have the impressions of a dirty, fanatical, and scheming group of desert bandits. For the rest—such writers as Sales and a host of other lay and priestly writers of Christendom have thundered their charges that Muhammad was an impostor, the devil incarnate, the anti-Christ, a liar, a crazed and licentious fool. But the facts that one out of every seven inhabitants of the globe is a Muslim, and that no religion to that time so cemented its followers from such absolute disunity into so complete a unity attest the fallacy of these writings. Muhammad, the Messenger of God, preached His gospel of submission to the one true God. In His life time He witnessed the growth of that Faith from a handful of devoted followers in the city of Mecca to the rallying of the whole of Arabia to His banner.
Mecca, where Muhammad first preached His Message of one Almighty God, was already to the tribes of Arabia Deserta a Holy City. The Kaaba, in Mecca, was already a point of pilgrimage. That small square windowless building contained many stone idols to which the peoples of Arabia did homage. Here were to be found images of Mary and Joseph and the small black stone said to have been given by Gabriel to Abraham. Jealous of the fortunes that came from the pilgrims stopping to pray in this city- that burned in the desert, the leading families drove Muhammad and His little band out of the city. In time, and in peace, Muhammad returned, heading a great host of the faithful. From the top of the Kaaba a Negro convert, raised the call that today rallies Islam to prayer around the world:
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“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.” How like the first commandment that Moses brought down from Sinai! Muhammad raised the station of women, abolished dishonesty, forbade the use of intoxicating beverages, limited polygamy, and introduced a host of spiritual and civil laws that made the Muslim nations the envy and the mentors of the entire world. Such was the Islamic Springtime and its flowering.
Equally glorious, equally inspiring to their people were the spring seasons of Buddha, Krishna and Zoroaster. Bahá’ís believe that each of these God-inspired Men were Manifestations of God, bringers of the divine springtime, quickeners of a new Day of God and Of the earth and its peoples. The Bahá’í Faith teaches that each of these Prophets has been sent to call men back to truth and to God. They did not come to establish new religions. Each of these Divine Educators has upheld the validity of His predecessors and foretold the coming of a successor. Each and all have attested the coming of that most great spiritual springtime in the fullness of God’s plan that would signalize the bringing of the Kingdom of God to earth—the birth of a world religion.
It is the Bahá’í premise that once again, in our time, a divine springtime has blessed the planet. The story begins in the ancient land of Persia in the city of roses, the city of legend and nightingales, Shiréz, beloved of poets. On an evening in May in the year 1844, in an upper room there spoke One who called Himself the Báb (meaning the gate). He proclaimed the springtime of a new day of God. In words of magnetic beauty He called mankind to oneness and to God. He announced the coming of that most great divine Educator Who would lead the world into peace and order. For six years the matchless utterances of the Báb stirred the hearts of His countrymen, moving many thousands to love and devotion. Still others were stirred to hatred and violence, a violence that sought the life blood of all Who claimed allegiance to the Báb. In rising crescendos of horror, the forces of state and clergy rose in their might against these “God-intoxicated heroes” to destroy them; and the streets and the byways ran red with their blood. Then, one fateful day in a barracks square in Tabríz, the mouths of sevenhundred and fifty rifles spoke, and the beloved voice of the Báb was stilled forever.
THE BAHA’I WORLD
The Springtime had come, however, and the whole world could not stay its force. Nine years later in the ancient city of Bag_hdéd there arose, in fulfillment of the prophecies of the Báb, and of all religions, One who called Himself Bahá’u’lláh—the Glory of God, the Spirit of Truth, the Mighty Fortress. To Him the broken-hearted and leaderless followers of the Báb turned and were then called Bahá’ís. Laying claim to the mantle of Prophethood, Bahá’u’lláh called on the rulers of men to establish peace on earth and to turn to God. Heedless of His call, the world moved on in its accustomed ways. Bahá’u’lláh Himself, the victim of fanatical hatred, was moved from prison to prison, exile to exile, and finally was banished for life to the Turkish penal colony only a short distance from the slopes of Mt. Carmel—to the city of ‘Akká, the “Door of Hope” proclaimed in Hosea.
The history of the divine springtime that is the Bahá’í World Faith is no collection of legends—Bahá’u’lláh is as much a part of our modern history as Lincoln, Queen Victoria, or Napoleon III. From His “most great prison” He viewed our world and its clashing group disunities, its crashing worlds. He saw the races of the world fomenting hatreds for one another; He saw the subjugation of whole racial groups in slavery. From His pen there came the remedy: “Ye are all leaves of one tree, and drops of one sea.”1 “Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.”2 Bahá’u’lláh called the peoples of the world to the fold of one family, the human family.
From the remoteness of His exile He saw with prophetic vision the crashing of the nationalistic worlds——the eternal blood-letting of warring nations. He saw an end to war and He uttered the mighty assurance: “Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come . . . Is not
1 Bahá’í World Faith, p. 201. 2 Hidden Words (arabic), verse 68.
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this that which Christ foretold? . . . These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family . . . Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.”3 Baha’u’llah laid the principles upon which would be built an international tribunal—a Federation of Nations—the unity of the planet into one Nation with a common citizenship for its peoples.
From its beginning 108 years ago the Bahá’í Faith has moved around the globe. The Bab declared His mission to one; forty days later there were eighteen who believed. In the next nineteen years over twenty thousand had been martyred for believing the teachings of the Báb, and the Faith had spread in Persia, ‘Iráq, Burma, India and parts of the Turkish Empire. Through the life time of Bahá’u’lláh, the Faith became known more and more Widely. Shortly after the passing of Bahá’u’lláh, a Presbyterian Minister, Rev. Henry H. Jessup, of Beirut, Syria, sent an address to be read at the World’s Parliament of Religions convened in the city of Chicago in 1893. Dr. Jessup could not attend in person. In closing, his address reads:4
“In the palace of Bahjí, or delight, just outside the fortress of ‘Akká, on the Syrian coast, there died a few months since a famous Persian sage, the Bábi saint, named Bahá’u’lláh—the Glory of God—the head of that vast reform party of Persian Muslims, who accept the New Testament as the Word of God and Christ as the deliverer of men, who regard all nations as one, and all men as brothers. Three years ago He was visited by a Cambridge scholar, and gave utterance to sentiments so noble, so Christlike, that we repeat them as our closing words . . .” How little Dr. Jessup knew that he was introducing to the West the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, for his was the first known public reference to the Bahá’í Faith in the western world.
Bahá’u’lláh left for His people a Covenant in which He named His eldest Son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the Center of that Covenant, the exemplar of His teachings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was released from prison in 1908 by the Young Turk Revolution which granted amnesty to
3A5 recorded by Prof. Edward G. Browne, Introduction (p. x1) to A Traveller's Narrative.
4The World’s Parliament of Religions, vol. 2, p. 1125.
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all political and religious prisoners. Shortly thereafter He began a series of journeys that were to take him to Egypt, Europe and North America. Wherever he went people responded to the love for mankind that He demonstrated. Each and all sat in rapt attention as they listened to His message of peace and love. Great and small humbly bowed themselves before this Servant of God.
The venerable Archdeacon Wilberforce invited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to address the congregation of St. John the Divine at Westminster after the evening service. The archbishop read the translation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words himself. When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had finished, the congregation, following the archdeacon’s example, knelt to receive the blessing of the Servant of God. In the United States during an arduous eight months ‘Abdu’l-Bahá traveled from coast to coast, scattering on every hand the life-giving words of His Father’s Message. He spoke at New York, Columbia, and Howard Universities, laid the dedication stone for the Bahá’í House of Worship north of Chicago that today stands in its shimmering beauty.
In Temple Emmanu—El, synagogue in San Francisco, He addressed two thousand listeners; at Leland Stanford University over nineteen hundred gathered to hear His words. The names of those who met and talked with Him read like an American Who’s Who: Alexander Graham Bell, Mr. Roosevelt, Mrs. William Jennings Bryan, Admiral Peary, Rabbi Stephen Wise, and Dr. David Starr Jordan, who said, “ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá will surely unite the East and the West: for He treads the mystic way with practical feet.”5 This list is too long for inclusion here.G Besides these, thousands heard His message and many rallied to the Cause of Peace which He preached and lived.
In 1913 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá returned to Haifa, to spend the remaining years of His life consolidating the victories already won. There generated from His presence such order and love that the hearts of the diverse peoples throughout the world that called themselves Bahá’ís were cemented together into one great family.
In 1921 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. passed away. In His Will and Testament He named His grandson Shoghi Effendi as the first Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith. Into his capable
5“Appreciations of the Bahá’í Faith," The Bahá’í World, this volume, p. 646. 6 See God Passes By, p. 289.
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hands were entrusted the affairs of the youthful Cause. Through the ensuing years of his stewardship the administrative affairs of the world-wide Bahá’í Community have been consolidated. Step by step through grave perils and impending crises, the Guardian has led the Bahá’ís from victory to victory. Today in over 200 countries and territories of the world Bahá’í Spiritual Assemblies and groups function vigorously. Their literature is translated into over ninety languages. Local Spiritual Assemblies democratically elected have paved the way for the eleven National administrative institutions that have already come into being. The first International Bahá’í Council has but recently been established at the spiritual center of the Bahá’í world, Haifa, Israel,—the forerunner of that supreme Bahá’í administrative institution destined to emerge in the fullness of time—the International House of Justice.
Even the biased observer must admit that the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh has in slightly over a century fulfilled in marvelous ways the task of uniting peoples who before the advent of these Teachings knew no unity at all. Jew, Christian, Hindu, Parsi, Muslim, Buddhist and the man with no religion at all are, within the Bahá’í Faith, able to worship Almighty God without rancor or prejudice one for the other, for as Bahá’ís they understand that the names Allah, Jehovah, Brahma, Ahura Mazda, Lord, and many others all refer to one Father, God, and that His Messengers though different in name shed the same glorious light upon the dark planet.
Among Bahá’ís there is no overt nationalism, for they are indeed citizens of the world. With them also there is to be found
THE BAHA’I WORLD
a racial brotherhood in practice that has no equal in any other sectarian or religious group.
Bahá’ís believe this is a day of spiritual springtime—a new Day of God. Certainly the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh have stirred the hearts and minds of His followers and made of many “God-Intoxicated heroes.” They believe also that the events of this twentieth century, though seemingly unrelated to the growing Cause of God, are the results of this Most Glorious of spiritual springtimes. Bahá’u’lláh has written: “The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of the most great, this new World Order.”7 Thrones and dynasties have toppled, governments have been thrown from power, powerful church groups have lost prestige and temporal power, wars have riddled the planet leaving in their wake debt and death. An old world order struggles against its inevitable end. The winter season of an old age battles against the revivifying breaths of an advancing spiritual springtime. The Bahá’í Faith calls the world to witness the birth of a world religion. Only through independent investigation of these claims without prejudice can the seeker know this to be so through his own knowledge.
“Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
“Awake, for, 10! the morning Light has broken. Arise, for His Cause is made manifest. The portal of His grace is open wide; enter therein, O peoples of the world! For He who is your Promised One is come!”9
7 Gleam'ngs, p. 136. 3 Luke 11:9. 9 Cited in God Passes By, p. 6.
12. TEACHING AMONG THE AMERICAN INDIANS .
By REX KING
THE American Indians are potential Bahá’ís. Prayer in many forms is common practice among them, and many of their tribal council laws and procedures are similar to those of the Bahá’í administrative order. Their native religion involves every individual in the group and regulates every detail of personal behavior. They regard
religion as the source of personal power, and
many have espoused Christianity because
they look upon the white man as more
powerful than the Indian and credit this
power to his religion. However, they find the
many, often conflicting religious sects very
disconcerting, and thus are responsive to
movements that aim to unite instead of di
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vide. Because of their intense faith that peace will some day come to pass, they are easily interested in the Bahá’í teachings about World Order and Universal Brotherhood.
“Therefore, it is inevitable that as the Bahá’í Faith reaches out to embrace more and more peoples everywhere, it will easily win ‘unqualified adherence and support among the indigenous peoples of America’ for whom ‘Abdu’l-Bahá predicted so glorious a future.”
—STATEMENT BY AMERICAN Bahá’í NA TIONAL TEACHING COMMITTEE
Where the story of Bahá’í work among the Indians begins would be hard to find on a map or pinpoint in a report. It is enough to say and believe that when the breezes of God’s new Revelation breathed across the planet, it stirred American Indians as well as it did the rest of mankind, though they, like others, were not aware of the source of the Divine springtime that was stirring the winter season of men’s hearts.
The work of the Bahá’í American Indian Service committee began when instructions came from our beloved Guardian to form an administrative unit, the object of which would be to take the Faith to the leading Indian tribes of this country.
At the Bahá’í Intercontinental Conference held in Chicago in 1953, Bahá’ís who had no idea they Were to be on a committee of this type began to concern themselves with the task. Dorothy Baker asked one of them to “Find an Indian Bahá’í for me!” Rúḥíyyih Khánum asked another, “What are you doing about the Indians?” Thus the pattern for the Crusade years was begun far removed from Arizona which was to be the seat of committee membership, for the first year at least.
Yet in Tucson, Arizona, another part of the pattern was being woven. A young couple began to attend Bahá’í firesides, and just before Riḍván, 1953, they became Bahá’ís on an evening long to be remembered. They were Charmion and Robert McKusick, and Bahá’u’lláh certainly knew the need that was to be and prepared these two to be on hand when it arose. Charmion was freshly graduated with honors from the University of Arizona with a degree in Anthropology specializing in the American Indians. Bob was and is a potter, and his knowledge of Indian de 915
signs and ritualistic symbols is vast. Most of his pottery work is built around the religious symbols and designs of the Indians of the Southwest. They were ready made for the important work that was to come—the experts for the committee yet to be formed.
Later, when the committee was appointed, these two were a natural choice and so was Eli Powlas, its only Indian member. In November the National Spiritual Assembly added Wallace Heath of Tucson to the committee to assist in developing the great teaching potential that exists in the American colleges and universities attended by Indian youth. Wally had entered the University of Arizona in September, 1953, for the express purpose of teaching among Indian youth.
At an early meeting of the committee, it became clear that much groundwork had already been laid in scattered spots all over the country. Individual Bahá’ís and communities had “made a beginning” here and there. Many had registered their desire at the Conference of 1953 to assist in Indian teaching, and with these, correspondence was soon under way.
Four words, a prayer, and a statement written by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá became our watchwords:
The four words, to be repeated again and again in committee meetings, are Love, Wisdom, Tact, and Patience.
The prayer, which has become a favorite with the committee and looms large in the history of the year, reads: “Blessed is the spot, and the house, and the place, and the city, and the heart, and the mountain, and the refuge, and the cave, and the valley, and the land, and the sea, and the island, and the meadow, where mention of God hath been made, and His praise glorified” (Bahá’u’lláh).
The statement of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, an evershining beacon before the eyes of the committee, said in part, “. . . for these souls [the American Indians] may be likened unto the ancient inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula, who, prior to the Mission of Muhammad, were like unto savages. When the light of Muhammad shone forth in their midst, however, they became so illumined as to enlighten the whole world.”
Here was the challenge! Our task given by the Guardian was twofold: conversion to the Faith of members of the leading Indian tribes, and translation of Bahá’í literature into the Cherokee language.
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We chose as our goals, cities in or near heavy concentrations of Indian population: Gallup, New Mexico, Indian capital of the world; Miami, Oklahoma, center of interest for a larger number of different tribes than any other city; and Pierre, South Dakota. To these goal cities, we added the task of rebuilding the lapsed Macy, Nebraska, Assembly. An all-Indian Assembly had been formed at Macy with great labor and sacrifice through the dedicated efforts of Mrs. Mary Stevison and Mrs. Amelia Collins, who later visited the reservation to assist in the forming of the Assembly. Macy was a pivot around which many hopes revolved.
We were not able to make a general appeal for pioneers to our goals because of the urgent need for pioneers in foreign fields and in goal cities on the home front, so we set about making contact with those who had expressed a desire to work among the Indians.
Our first project was the preparation of a teaching brochure, a handbook to assist both those who would work on reservations and those who would be teaching that thirty-five per cent of the Indian population who live elsewhere. Next was the compiling of employment information and data concerning the various goal areas to which we hoped pioneers would go. Thirdly, maps of the reservations were obtained so that Bahá’ís interested could pinpoint the area where they might settle.
By early fall, the first pioneer, Grace Dean of Clifton, Arizona, secured a federal teaching post at Byless, Arizona, on the San Carlos reservation to teach the Apache children. Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Kit Goldstein of New York City volunteered her services to the committee for a one-year period, and proceeded to Flagstaff, Arizona, to do graduate work at the college there. In addition, she secured a teaching post at nearby Tuba City on the Navajo reservation.
In November, Mr. and Mrs. Edvard Lindstrom of Manchester, New Hampshire, moved to Yakima, Washington, to take a social service post that involves working with the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. During the same month, Mrs. Ethel Murray left Providence, Rhode Island, to take a post in Bryson City, North Carolina, near the Cherokee reservation. This was a most important place as her task was that of taking the Faith to the Cherokee and assisting
THE BAHA’I WORLD
with the translation work. In the fall also, Marguerite Bruegger of Chicago arrived in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, to pioneer among the Indians of that region.
On December 24, 1953, J ames Stone, Jr., of Martinsburg, West Virginia, arrived in Gallup, New Mexico, the first of our goal cities to be settled. Through the assistance of Edna Atkins who lives nearby, visits to the Macy reservation were begun in February.
Through the year a growing correspondence was carried on with government agencies, educational and religious groups, and individuals concerning the Cherokee language. After a while, a letter from Ethel Murray informed us that she had found a translator, named Moses Owl, among the Cherokee Indians. Immediately we sent the prayer beginning “Blessed is the spot . . .” to him for translation. Remembering what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had said when the American friends had asked his permission to build a Temple, “Make a beginning and all will come right,” we did just that, and our beginning was a prayer!
Through correspondence with Mrs. Murray, we learned that MOSeS Owl thought the name, Bahá’u’lláh, was like the Cherokee word for God. A Sioux who helped with the translation said the teachings sounded like those of the Sioux religion, and Moses Owl countered that they were very much like the Cherokee thinking on religion.
Finally that wonderful day arrived when through the mails came the long awaited scrap of paper holding the words of Baha’u’llah written in the language of the Cherokee people. Gratefully, we saw how the hand of the Beloved had helped us along the way.
Then we set about the larger task of choosing the contents of the first pamphlet to be translated into Cherokee, 3 work that will be one of the first concerns of the second year of committee activity.
In this first year we have brought the Message to nineteen tribes, the first translation into Cherokee has been accomplished, and the pattern for future activity has been set and is moving. Through the Secretary General of the International Bahá’í Council, Leroy Ioas, the Guardian has sent his approval and urged the further advancement of our work.
The Challenge is there—contacts must
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become converts so that they may teach their own people! ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has said these Indian people will illumine the whole
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world. It is the task of the American Bahá’ís to light the torch. What a glorious privilege!
13. IN THE PRESENCE OF ‘ABDU’L-BAHA By ELLA C. QUANT
IT WAS no confirmation in belief to me to come into the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; perhaps I did not need it. As I had come into the knowledge of the Bahá’í Faith in 1903, I had already been a Bahá’í for nine years when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá came to the United States in 1912; I had accepted Him as the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant of peace and unity for the world. However, every moment spent in His presence brought its lesson in the “divine art of living.”
Perhaps the best way to tell a story is to start at the beginning. Mrs. Margaret LaGrange and I, Bahá’ís of Johnstown, N.Y., anticipating the visit of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to America in 1912, were planning to go to New York City to meet Him on arrival. A day or so before we planned to start for New York, word came that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was not on the ship expected. This news was, of course, disturbing to us and was the cause, temporarily, of greater disappointment than I can express. However, the thought came to me that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá could send a wireless message, which He did, confirming His anticipated arrival. (Wireless was then in its infancy and was considered more or less a miracle.)
According to our plan, therefore, we started for New York City on the evening preceding the 11th of April. The next morning we found our way to the pier where already many of the friends of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were gathered, this number being augmented by the frequent arrival of others, some alone, some in groups of two or three. Subdued excitement, glorious anticipation at the joy of meeting the Master, filled the hearts and radiated from the faces and voices of the friends. We waited for some time and at last our patience was rewarded in seeing the huge bulk of the vessel breaking through the morning fog and mist. In due time it docked.
It was not long before word came from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. that He would meet the
friends at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kinney, two Bahá’ís of long standing in the Faith. After receiving this word the friends began to disperse. But Margaret and I, knowing that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was on the vessel, could not tear ourselves away from the pier; so, lingering, our eyes riveted, we were rewarded with a glimpse of Him for whom our hearts longed. Then, satisfied, in anticipation of the afternoon meeting, we, too, left the pier. Later I suppose we had lunch, but it is only a supposition, for such a minor detail of physical existence has absolutely passed from my memory.
When we arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kinney, the rooms were crowded with the friends and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was mingling freely among them radiating the spiritual happiness He said He felt in meeting the “friends of God.” That afternoon in His first address to the American Bahá’ís He said in part:
“I am greatly pleased with the city of New York. Its harbor entrance, its piers, buildings and broad avenues are magnificent and beautiful. Truly it is a wonderful city. As New York has made such progress in material civilization, I hope that it may also advance spiritually in the kingdom and covenant of God so that the friends here may become the cause of the illumination of America; that this city may become the city of love and that the fragrance of God may be spread from this place to all parts of the world. I have come for this. I pray that you may be manifestations of the love of Bahá’u’lláh . . . This is my highest aspiration.”1
At the end of this address ‘Abdu’l-Bahá greeted each one personally, clasping the hand and repeating the word, “Marhaba! Marhaba!” (Welcome! Welcome!) with such fervor that I could not fail to grasp
1 The addresses of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in New York City, from which passages are quoted in this article, may be found in Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 1-14. (Editors)
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His meaning, though unfamiliar with the word.
Our second meeting with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was on April 12, in the studio of Miss Phillips. In connection with this meeting, I must go into a little detail that will show all too clearly my immaturity in the ethics of the Kingdom. As Margaret and I entered the spacious room we observed our beloved ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sitting on a couch, a young Persian on either side of Him. Shortly one of the devoted friends of the Master entered and one of the Persians sitting beside ‘Abdu’l-Bahá arose and offered his seat to the lady, which she accepted. I was disturbed and said to myself, “0h! Who is worthy to sit beside ‘Abdu’l-Bahá?” The question bothered me all evening, but was relegated to the background of my mind save at such times as I found myself alone with my thoughts.
‘Abdu’LBahá. gave a beautiful talk that evening, saying in part:
“These are the days of seed-sowing. These are the days of tree-planting . . . He who sows a seed in this day will behold his reward in the fruits and harvest of the heavenly kingdom.”
And again,
“The doors of the kingdom are opened. The lights of the Sun of Truth are shining . . . Know ye then the value of these days.”
Later, in leaving, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá took my hand, I was conscious of His eyes partially raised to mine. Did He see there the unanswered question of the early evening: Who is worthy to sit beside ‘Abdu’l-Bahá?
On the following Monday, the last day we were privileged to be in His holy presence, He deigned to answer my question. After greeting us He seated Margaret on a chair near Him at just the right angle, she told me later, where she might look into His eyes; thus fulfilling a desire of hers. Then, He seated me on the couch beside Him and turned on me (the questioner) the smile of His divine love, which penetrated my physical and spiritual consciousness. Thus did He teach us, the friends, everywhere, not by rebuke, but with touching example, that the Sun of God’s bounty shines upon all and only the veils of self hide us from an ever—increasing realization of its effulgence.
On Saturday, April 13, 1912, with many others we gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Morten to see and hear the Master. That day in His address He compared the
THE BAHA’I WORLD
appearance of a Divine Manifestation to the springtime and showed us that the progress and decline of religion are comparable to the four seasons in the material world. In
part He said: “The world spiritual is like unto the world phenomenal . . . When we look upon the
phenomenal world we perceive that it is divided into four seasons; one is the season of spring, another the season of summer, another autumn and then these three seasons are followed by winter . . .”
When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reached the phrase “the season of summer” the interpreter hesitated and finally stopped speaking. Then the voice of the Master came forth clear and strong with “summer,” and a ripple of pleasantry went through the audience as we realized that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was interpreting to the interpreter.
When ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was weary and repaired to an upper room, some one suggested closing the door of the room, to “protect” the Master, that He might have some seclusion from the friends who were already ascending the stairs to be nearer to Him. How like the days of Jesus when the disciples tried to spare Him the encroachment of the crowd! ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, Let them come! He took my hand as I with others passed before Him and He said to me, Alla’h-u-Abhá’, that word of Bahá’í greeting, which means God the Most Glorious. Many years later ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that the unity of the friends was the cause of health to Him, and the extreme weariness of that afternoon I now believe was brought about by the weight of the Spirit’s burden rather than by any physical strain, great as that no doubt was; for He received callers from very early in the morning until late at night; no one was turned away.
Margaret and I longed for an interview with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Some of the friends had been granted that privilege, so We decided to ask an interpreter to arrange it for us. Again I was reminded of the days of Jesus Christ and of the desire of the disciples to protect Him from the multitude. The interpreter said the Master was very busy, but, nothing daunted, Margaret explained to him that we were from out of town and longed for an interview before leaving New York. So the matter was finally arranged and on Sunday morning at nine we found ourselves being ushered into the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and in English He was addressing us
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with the words, Sit down, sit down, as He courteously showed us to seats. Then the question so frequently asked by Him, Are you well? Are you happy?—What did He mean—the health of the body or the wellbeing of the spirit? I do not recall giving an answer. How could we answer a question that to the Questioner was already clearthat for us time was standing still; that we had reached the ultimate of our desire, our station in the sun where there is no night. His next words awakened us to our immediate environment. He said, He was happy to have such souls as we were: Rest thou assured, rest thou assured. And, we had come some distance to meet Him and had passed through difficulties, but He had come farther to meet us.
Such words we were not prepared to hear; knowing that we were humble people and feeling we had but small capacity to serve the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, we could not understand such words applying to ourselves.
We were taken to the smaller room of the suite, where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave private interviews. There He told Margaret He prayed for her parents (who had passed into the life beyond some months before). Her eyes filled with tears and overflowed; mine then did likewise. The interpreter, perhaps at a loss, shook his head at us and said in an admonishing tone that we should never cry in His presence. It made Him sad. As I looked up, I saw that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sadness was for us—not for Himself—for with hands outstretched to calm and protect us, like a mother bird hovering over her young in the nest, He exclaimed in English, Laugh! Laugh! I shall never forget that voice, vibrant and powerful beyond any words of mine to express. In that voice I have come to see the power of heaven to rout all the negative forces of existence, and in arising to obey that command to find the eternal joy of life.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá bade us come to the church (Church of the Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street) where He was to speak that morning. Margaret sat at His side and I directly facing Him. He lovingly took and held the hand of Margaret (in leaving) and fondly patted her shoulder with the other hand. He then did the same to me; and when I asked the interpreter to tell Him I wished to serve Him always, He called me His daughter. He then said, Your face is radiant.
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I find I must digress a little in order to give the reader a clear understanding of the real value of the beautiful expressions that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá bestowed upon the friends. Once when He in a Tablet called one of the faithful friends His daughter, I laughingly remarked, “If ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ever called me His daughter I’d never have another worry. I’d know I was saved.” As We grow in grace and spiritual understanding we find that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, through these bestowals, sowed the seeds of attainment in our hearts; we realize that He opened the door of spiritual progress for us, as in His great love and wisdom He saw the Father’s face in every face.
It was Palm Sunday and the church was filled to capacity and more, although we understood that the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá there that morning had not been publicly announced. To me, and I have no doubt to many others, it was an unforgettable picture —‘Abdu’l-Bahá standing among the lilies.
If you have thought of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as robed in somber, formal ecclesiastical dress, please “see” Him now (I never saw Him otherwise) in long, light, easy-flowing cloak and light head dress, a symbol of sunlight; warm, comforting, and “alive." There was a certain color resemblance between ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s white hair and his cream—colored cloak and the white and gold of the lilies. He stood there, not a figure come to be worshiped, but as the Servant of the Divine Gardener, warming the ground of human minds and hearts by a deeper penetration of the rays of the Sun of Truth.
Although coming from a life of suffering and imprisonment, He radiated the life-giving forces of God, declaring “there is no prison save the prison of self”; teaching that man is essentially a spiritual being, and that all down the ages man’s conception of socalled death as extinction has corroded within him and closed his spiritual eye to the unspeakably blessed opportunities of this life, as well as to the vision of his glorious destiny in all the worlds of God.
Among the words He addressed to that audience were the following, after forty years so strikingly applicable to the world of today. He said:
“Today the world of humanity is in need of international unity and conciliation. To establish these great fundamental principles a propelling power is needed. It is self-evident that unity of the human world and
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the ‘Most Great Peace’ cannot be accomplished through material means. . . . All the Prophets have come to promote divine bestowals, to found the spiritual civilization and teach the principles of morality. Therefore we must strive with all our powers so that spiritual influences may gain the victory . . .”
In His first address that Sunday to the Christian Church in America, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sent forth the call to unity, even as He did later on that same day in His address before the adherents of New Thought.
On that afternoon, April 14, 1912, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá addressed the Union Meeting of Advanced Thought Centers in Carnegie Lyceum on West 57th Street. In all His teachings ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was Himself 3 point of unity. He first established a basis of unity and upon that He proceeded to build something of eternal value. Sometimes people have questioned the simplicity of His presentation of truth. In His public addresses, as well as in His private interviews, He fitted His words to the spiritual capacity of those to whom He spoke. To that audience in Carnegie Lyceum He said in part:
“I have come here with this mission; that through your endeavors, through your heavenly morals, through your devoted efforts a perfect bond of unity and love may be established between the east and the west, so that the bestowals of God may descend upon all and all may be seen to be parts of the same tree,—the great tree of the human family
. . so likewise must we be connected and blended together until each part shall become the expression of the whole . . .”
Again and again did ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stress the oneness of mankind: All humanity are leaves on the Tree of Creation; some ill Who need to be healed, others ignorant who need to be taught; but all recipients of the bounty of the loving Creator. Even in material ways ‘Abdu’l-Bahá demonstrated the unity that He taught; He joined in the clapping of hands at that particular gathering, and contributed when the offering was taken.
I wish I could convey to you a clearer picture of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, that love that knows no limitation, no restriction, flowing out to and embracing male and female, rich and poor, schooled and unschooled. He received each soul as a precious substance upon which to bestow the bounty of the Love of God. A touching instance of that love is found in the episode of the roses.
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One day when we were in the hall, the little floor maid emerged frm ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s suite, her arms filled with roses—beautiful roses—the gift to Him from some of the Bahá’ís. Sensing that we were friends of the Master, all formality fell away and with a touching gesture she exclaimed, “See what He gave me! See what He gave me!” She probably knew nothing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Station as the Center of God’s Covenant and the Interpreter of Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching to a needy world; she perhaps did not know His name or title, but He had shown her His love.
Margaret and I were entertained during our stay in New York by my aunt who lived on 73rd Street, almost under the eaves, it seemed to me, of the Ansonia Hotel. Imagine our delight when we were told that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was staying at the Ansonia. It seemed like a special privilege to us, and indeed such it very strikingly turned out to be. It came about in this way. On that last morning of our stay I suggested to Margaret that we walk over to the hotel before leaving the city, saying we might get a glimpse of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá passing out or going in. How limited was my Vision! Later we walked over to the Ansonia and some friends who were just leaving the hotel said to us, “Go right up. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is there.” So as if led by an unseen hand we walked to the elevator and when we alighted from it other friends of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá were leaving His suite and in their joy of having been with the Master and in the blessing of sharing, they said to us, “ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is there. Go right in.” We opened the door and found, seemingly waiting for us, the one whose door was closed to none, regardless of color, race or creed. Truly ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had drawn us to Himself. He would not let us leave the city without another assurance of His love for us. As I write of His love “for us,” I am reminded of the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to one of the friends visiting Him in ‘Akká. When that Bahá’í spoke of her wish that all the friends in America might be in ‘Akká sharing her blessing, He answered that they are here; one represents all.
After seating us, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’. asked about our health, then addressed us with the words He had used in our first interview, enlarging upon them, saying we had come some distance to meet Him. He had come farther to meet us. He had made the journey because of His great love for us. At first the
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journey was very hard; the harder the path, the greater the difficulty, the greater the mercy. The divine bounty is continually descending.
I had been in rather poor health for some months and had hoped to receive from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá something to help me carry on my household duties, which were exacting, for I was brought up in the old-fashioned way that assumed the house could not be clean unless one had a backache. The mOSt experienced psychiatrist could not have more readily touched upon my need than did ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Servant of the Divine Physician, when He advised me, in response to the interpreter’s word about my health, to decrease physical labor, work not beyond the extent of your strength, turn toward the Kingdom of God; strength is from God; divine confirmation shall descend; you shall attain to physical health; rest assured of the favor of God. More than once through the years these words of the Master have kept
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not only my physical balance, but the mental and spiritual as well.
A day or two before leaving home for New York City to meet our beloved Master, I had a dream. During my years of knowledge of the Bahá’í Faith, I have had several dreams from which I have endeavored to extract some spiritual meaning, but the dream in question is the only one for which I have a verbal interpretation from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; therefore, the importance of that particular dream is to me very great.
When the interpreter spoke of my dream (with another Bahá’í, I was standing before a vast expanse of water) ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that in the dream the sea is the Kingdom, and that is the Cause of God. That I with that other Bahá’í shall attain to the shore of that Sea, and shall behold its expanse.
The time had come when Margaret and I were scheduled to leave New York City for home. After this last unexpected meeting, on April 15, 1912, we were never again in His physical presence.
14. THE BAHA’I FAITH IN BACKWARD AFRICA
By DUNDUZU K. CHISIZA
THE motion for today’s debate is: ‘Africa for Africans.’ May I call upon Mr. Chisiza to speak on the motion?” said the chairman.
“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,” the writer began, “we are assembled to debate but let us not talk for argument’s sake. The motion we have today affects us profoundly. The ideas We shall gather from this debate will go a long way to determine the fate or blessings of your immediate family, your fellow Africans and what’s more, our posterity.
“Black Africa is in ferment today. The African is in a plight because of a foreign white minority. The Hereros in South West Africa have protested, have prayed that their country should not be under Malan’s South Africa but the White administrators have given them a deaf ear. In South Africa itself the Defiance Campaign against apartheid laws is at its height. ‘Shoot the leaders, jail the rest and investigate later’ is Malan’s s10gan. In Bechuanaland, Seretse Khama has
been banished by foreigners who once acknowledged him ruler and owner of that country. In Central Africa, Africans are protesting, are wailing and yelling in vain against federation. In Tanganyika your fellow Africans are crying for equal representation. In Uganda, in 1949 we had terrible so-called riots. In Kenya your brothers and sisters are being marauded as Mau Maus and as adherents of Dini Ya Nsambwa.1 In Egypt there is the Suez Canal Zone struggle. In West Africa the massacres connected with the 5.8.5. movement will long remain in our memories. And alas, even in the far off Congo the East African Standard says that a chief has protested in public that he might better die than see himself stripped of his all by the white man.
“In all these troubles, please note, ladies and gentlemen, the aggressor has been the white man, and as long as he is with us he
1 A religion or sect started by an African in Kenya.
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will continue his demagoguery. But how long are we going to endure his atrocities? Granted we can’t any longer, how do we check them? Get rid of the aggressor himself and let Africa be for Africans.
“The white man must go back where he came from not because we hate foreigners but becauSe he hates us, because he oppresses us and as a raiding lion is got rid of, so must we get rid of the white man.
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”
“Segawa, anything striking in the paper?”
“Oh, thirty dear fellows—Dini Ya Nsambwa adherents—have been killed, so far, by the police.” I felt a chilly draft go through my heart.
“You know, Dunduzu,” Segawa started to say meditatively, his eyes fixed on a distant point, “I don’t think there is a God.” I eyed him with understanding. He continued.
“How can God, the Just, the Merciful, be indifferent to this tyranny? Why should a Just God create people with different colors so that some should be oppressed by reason of those same colors? What harm is there in following Dini Ya Nsambwa? They [Europeans] tell us of freedom of worship but what’s this now? Because an African is black they think God cannot send a black prophet to him. Look, these people are teaching us lies. They are selfish. They say Christian Africans shouldn’t drink liquors, but they do. They say you should not commit adultery but they are the worst harlots. They say you should love your neighbor but they don’t love us. Oh, they are liars!” He paused, then went on slowly, “I see now that we have been fools. Why did we leave the beliefs of our forefathers? They knew God and used to worship Him through dead people who were near Him. Why didn’t we continue to worship God that way? Believe me, these people are not following the teachings of Christ. Have you read Tolstoy’s letter to Mahatma Gandhi?”
“No,” I said.
“I can’t remember the exact words but what he means is this: The Christian world which professes to follow the teachings of Christ has built and is maintaining its empires by wars. This shows that they are not following the teaching of Christ which is LOVE.” We were silent for two minutes and then he sighed and said, “Oh, Lord!” Both of us were hopeless.
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We were out from our afternoon classes. The day was mild and most of the boys were outside the buildings reading newspapers.
“Hello, you fellows They say there is a European who wants to talk on spiritual things In the Hall, ” one boy said.
“Tell the gentleman that our parents don’t send us here for spiritual things. Our concern is the School Certificate. See?” snapped another.
In spite of this remark many boys went. I did, too, but for the simple reason of whiling away the evening.
“We are brothers, gentlemen,” the charming white fellow told us seriously. In spite of his seriousness, I felt like saying, “Son of a gunner! Your missionaries have been telling us this sort of thing for a century, yet do we see them practice it? Lincoln coined even a nobler phrase—‘with malice towards none but charity for all’—but what results has it produced on you fellows?”
“Color prejudice,” he went on to say, “is a man-made thing. It must be relinquished because it is the cause of human misunderstanding and discord.” There was something in that but it is a platitude which even Malan may have voiced in his early years. If only these fellows can practice what they say, this world might be a paradise overnight!
He dwelt at length on what he called Oneness of Mankind. In his eyes shone something invisible which touched your heart with a softening stroke. Indeed my stubborn heart was melting. He paused with a smile which had obviously a very distant source. It was deeply meaningful. “Does anybody want to ask a question?” No questions but silence and attention. He switched on to another subject.
“All religions are from God.” He surprised us. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, “Except Islém. Well, it just couldn’t be,” I thought. But by this time skepticism had almost left me. I allowed the words to soak into my head. The doors of my emotional self seemed to have been shattered to let in this fellow to play on my emotions and play he did. Now I marvel at: “The differences between different religions are due to the different times and places in which they happen to be revealed.” Now I frown with him at a blunder or injustice being done; now I smile with him at a feasible solution he presents. “God curse you if you don’t live the life of all that you say with this strange sincerity,” I am sure I said inwardly.
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It was getting towards sundown at this juncture and the fellow pulled out a pocket watch, looked at it and shot a glance at our teacher who evidently had met him before.
“It’s getting late, gentlemen. I don’t want to keep you long.”
I clicked my tongue in disgust. I thought: Europeans with their wives and food! Now this fellow feels as if he has been away from his wife for a century. He is probably dying of hunger too. But can’t he tolerate it only for today?
“Go, go on, go on, on,” came the confused urgings. Too late to say “go on” myself, I ventured to ask, “What’s the matter, sir?” He swept the audience with that smile which seemed to say: “We are in a quagmiry world, in a world of injustice and pathetic delusion.
“On my part, it wouldn’t bother me to be here till sunrise, but you must get home. Some of you are expected by your parents; we do not want to upset their plans,” he said.
“That is our business, sir,” retorted a young man from the back.
“Go on, go, go on,” came another volley of go-ons. He settled down without the least sign of fatigue, hunger or anxiety. I must have been wrong about his feelings.
“All that I have been telling you,” said he, “are the Teachings of a new Prophet Bahá’u’lláh. He was born in Persia and He is the Return of Christ!” The brows of the boys were furrowed as much as to say, “What?”
“Does anyone have a Bible?” he asked. A boy darted out and brought one.
“You see,” he told us, “we have forgotten the promise of Christ. We have forgotten its details. All we remember is that Christ said that He would come again. We are now going to prove that what Christ said about his second coming has been fulfilled by Bahá’u’lláh.”
Together we turned the leaves of the Bible and proved, first, that the time for Christ’s return arrived a hundred years ago; second, that the signs of His coming have all been fulfilled!
“From these,” the fellow cogently concluded, “it follows that Christ must have already come. But you may ask why did we not see Him?” He explained that for one thing we did not see the Return of Christ because He came in a manner we did not expect; for another we did not see Him be 923
cause we did not know from where He would come.
He expounded in detail the manner of coming of Christ’s Return. The gist of the explanation was first, that Christ in His second coming must be born; for if He is to come in a manner different from other men why should Jesus warn us against false prophets; second, that the clouds on which He is expected to come are the limitations of His human body. It is those physical limitations which would prevent people from seeing His Reality just as physical clouds prevent us from seeing the splendor of the sun.
Finally, the charming white fellow showed us how Bahá’u’lláh and His Faith fulfilled all these prophecies. He showed us (1) that the Bahá’í Faith started at a time when the Return of Christ should have come; (2) that Bahá’u’lláh and His Faith came at a time when the signs of Christ’s Return Were being fulfilled; (3) that Bahá’u’lláh came in the true manner He (as the Return of Christ) was expected; and (4) that He (Bahá’u’lláh) came from the place (Elam) where the Bible says the Return of Christ must come from. With this, ‘Ali Nalghjavéni (for that is the name of that white speaker) ended his talk and returned to his home.
So it was that I who was made to detest white men with the religion they brought, was now challenged by another white man to accept another religion; I who cherished the _ Teachings of Christ but who strongly doubted that Christ was the Son of God, was now being challenged to acknowledge His Return; I who believed in the expulsion of the white man from Africa, was now ironically being made to consider him as a brother. It was a frightful insomnia that I had that night. A deadly war was going on within my divided self. Its end seemed to be continually put off by a warning a student had yelled directly after we came out from the lecture. He said, “Don’t forget for a minute that white men brought their religion and took our land. This fellow is bringing a new technique of keeping you quiet while his friends snatch our land and domineer over us.” I confessed that I could not prove the contrary, yet some invisible force seemed to push me to a decision.
The following day witnessed the end of my war. I had turned things over for nine and a half hours of the previous night. The result was that I had trampled down every
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bit of a doubt within me. I longed to be asked the most difficult question by anybody who doubted because I was sure that I could rip off a cogent and convincing answer.
In the evening, ‘Ali came again to outline the history of the Forerunner, the Author and the Interpreter Of the Bahá’í Faith, and also to tell us about the obligations and prohibitions enjoined on the Bahá’ís. I considered all of them as reasonable and necessary but there was one which was a hard pillfasting! “Fasting.” I wondered. “Hope this isn’t Islam. Heavens, I have never fasted in my life.” However, later in the evening by sheer luck I came across Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era. “It’s a sort of text book of the Faith,” Mr. Frobisher K. Kagwa (the teacher Who first met ‘Ali) said as he gave it to me. The first thing I looked up was “fasting” and there I found a satisfying explanation. “Fasting,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Interpreter of Bahá’u’lláh’s Teachings, explained, “is a symbol. Fasting signifies abstinence from lust . . . from self—appetites and self-desires.” “Fasting,” He reiterated, “is a symbol of that abstinence . . . it is a reminder
. otherwise it is of no importance.” That appealed to me; it satisfied me. Right away I told Mr. Kagwa to contact Mr. ‘Ali and tell him that I wanted to become a Bahá’í. He did and the following day my roommate, Godwin Peter Kabisa, and I signed our declarations as Bahá’ís.
Later in the evening a teacher asked me, “Do you really understand what you have done? I understand Bahá’ís have nothing to do with politics. Is that what you are going to comply with?” “Yes. . . .” I started to speak, but he interrupted. “What a loss to Nyasaland,”2 he went on ruefully. “What a loss! Just why have you believed in the Bahá’í Faith?” he asked. He was just the fellow I had been looking for. Teacher or no teacher, I would hammer my belief into him.
“I believe in the Bahá’í Faith because it’s the only solution to political problems. And if I have a solution to our political problems I don’t think it is useful anymore to fiddle with politics. Let me add, sir, that the only thing that an African can do to regain his freedom is to expel Europeans from Africa. But this is impracticable in View of the fact that Europeans have hydrogen bombs while we have only spears. The alternative to the
2The writer’s native country.
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above solution is to compromise our claims. But why take only half of what we want while the Bahá’ís give us the whole? They give us full equality. Mr. Kagwa who has been with the Bahá’ís for a considerable time will bear this out. Equality,‘ which every African wants today, is what the Bahá’í Faith gives us and that is why I identify myself with it.” I laughed exultantly but he was serious. I thought he needed some more. I went on.
“I take it, sir, that you don’t ask me why I have embraced a faith, because I am sure you know that it is the propensity of ninetynine and three—quarters per cent of mankind to have a religious faith of some kind. What you ask, I believe, is why I have chosen the Bahá’í Faith of all faiths. The reason is this: I believe that mankind has been constantly lifted from a former religion to a new one just as a boy in grade one moves by degrees to the sixth form. The new faith to which mankind is being lifted is the Bahá’í Faith. It seems improper for me, therefore, to remain in the former grade while I am being called into a new one. That the Bahá’í Faith is new and that in a way it symbolizes an upper grade is shown by the following contrast: While the former Prophets taught individual love, to love our neighbors, Bahá’u’lláh teaches Universal Love. While the followers of different religions consider their particular religion to be the only true and best, Bahá’u’lláh says that all religions are from God, that all have been useful to mankind at their prescribed time but that now, after more than thirteen hundred years since the last religion was revealed, mankind needs a new religion which will be in keeping with his needs and his progressive mentality. So it seems to me, sir, that if one becomes a Bahá’í, one leaves his particular religion only to embrace all former religions plus Bahá’u’lláh’s New Faith. And I think such a fellow is better off than somebody who believes in only one grade of religion.”
The teacher shrugged his shoulders as he said, “Well.” And well it was.
Such was my preliminary understanding of the Bahá’í Faith but now after a year and a half of experience and Vigorous study, my understanding has deepened and broadened.
I have seen with my own eyes how the
Bahá’í Faith has restored unity in African
families which were formerly divided because one member belonged to a different religion or sect. I have watched it remove con
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fusion among many Africans who wondered why there were so many religions. For the first time, it has shown many the difference between a sect and religion. I used to call Protestantism a religion!
My association with white Bahá’ís, on the other hand, has proved to me that the Bahá’í Faith, unlike many other faiths today, is not impractical. The watchwords Of the white Bahá’ís seem to be: “Action, not words. Live the life,” which in black Africa means “Love the African.”
Finally, let me mention that the Bahá’í Teachings have brought hope not only to me but also to countless others who have had the golden chance of investigating the Bahá’í Faith. They have opened new vistas for us; they have made us sight new goals; nay, they have marshaled us into a new world of unprecedented ideals and aspirations. For I, who loved my country, now love my kind; I who dreamed of dedicating my life to the cause of the African, have now dedicated my life to the Cause of God. I am now seriously working for “. . . A world community in which all economic barriers will have been permanently demolished and the interdependence of Capital and Labor definitely recognized; in which the clamor of religious fanaticism and strife will have been forever stilled; in which the flame of racial animosity
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will have been finally extinguished; . . . and finally a world community in which the fury of a capricious and militant nationalism will have been transmuted into an abiding consciousness of world citizenship . . .”3
In my quiet moments I gape and murmur, “So the next record that history will make is that of the unification of the nations. So communication is soon going to assume new meaning—for travelers will no longer be mere tourists. They will be traveling with the anticipation of meeting new brothers and sisters in the islands of the seas, in far off Asia, Australia and even in wild Africa. So geography will put on a new meaning toofor old as well as young will begin to dust off and buy atlases that they may know exactly where George or Jane are in the Philippines, in the Congo, in Finland or in Peru.” It seems to me, people Will master the geography of the world as they have mastered the geography of their countries because soon the planet earth will be their country. The picture overpowers one. Vast and inevitable changes are impendingchanges which Bahá’u’lláh sums up by saying, ”Soon will the present day order be rolled up and a new one spread out in its stead.”
3 Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahd’u'lláh, p. 41.
SUNLIGHT
By WILLIAM AND MARGUERITE SEARS
THE swamp water, they told us, was alive with crocodiles. The raft, just big enough to hold our car, was propelled by six young Africans using long, thin poles. Once we sighted a breath-taking blue-gold water lily. At once, the boys pushed the raft into the reeds to pluck it for us. With great happiness they presented it to us. The ceremony had delayed the crossing another half hour. Our mixed group of African, British, and American Bahá’ís was watched curiously by one of the young Basoga on the raft.
“What makes the white-skin and blackskin people laugh together so pleasantly?” he asked.
He was given a Bahá’í pamphlet in Luganda. He was much taken with it, and began to read it aloud to all the African people
on the raft. He read it all, as the ferry raft inched along. There would have been time to have read The New Era. Timeless Africa!
Many things seasoned our long African journey. At one time we nearly drove our small car into a number of hippopotami which were coming up out of the Nile river to eat the sweet green grass. We stopped at another time within eight feet of a huge, sleeping lion. As our car sped along the Kenya Park roads, we scattered ostriches, zebra, giraffes; we sent gazelles and bucks of many varieties scurrying for cover. We sat at dusk on a terrace at Mtito Andei and looked across the haze of sunset at the white hair of Kilimanjaro. We spent a night on an African train which was so crowded that we had to sleep on the floor of the dining car.
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We stood with Bahá’í friends in the cauldron heat of Mombassa and studied that paradoxically named edifice, “Fort Jesus.” We welcomed a mammoth orange moon which rose majestically from the Indian Ocean at Zanzibar. As our ship slid noiselessly into harbor, the graceful palm trees would be etched against that ball of fire. The fragrance of cloves from the island drifted across the water. We clasped hands, and twenty years fell overboard!
We Visited a Bahá’í community in Dar es Salaam that would have cheered ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s heart. It had among its members Africans from several different tribes, Persian, British, Turkish, Indian, Egyptian, and American Bahá’ís. Once we drove off to help with a Bahá’í school in the interior, miles from the nearest town of any size. Soon we were in the center of an entire Bahá’í village. People rushed out to greet us, not in African or English, but with “Alláh-u-Abhá.” They ushered us into our new home, a round mud hut with thatched roof. There, hanging by itself, on the wall was a small frame drawing of the Greatest Name. This was our home for fifteen days. It would be crowded at night with eager faces, asking endless questions, still unsatisfied by a day filled with seven separate classes on the Faith. A wildcat would break in, steal food, and peer intently at the Americans feigning sleep inside the mosquito net. Hornets would drone mournfully in and out of the thatched roof when the sun roused them from sleep. Our guest, a sweet little monkey, lived on the wall top, and would poke his hand through the straw roof to steal eggs from the unsuspecting hen who had laid them there. OCcasionally, they would fight bitter duels through small holes in the roof. Here we would have dysentery and malaria. But everything is crowded out of the memory by the love we were shown. We thanked our host, through an interpreter, for his kindness in giving up his home to us. He replied, “It is not to thank me. It is to thank Bahá’u’lláh who makes all things possible.”
From June to February, we sailed anchorless upon the wondrous sea of Bahá’u’lláh’s world community. Each day was a treasure. The following are but a few of the incidents that make up the most rewarding period in our entire Bahá’í life to the present time.
1.
One evening in Kampala, we spoke to a charming young Buganda. We had been
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talking about the history of his people and the great war which had been so fiercely fought by the CatholiCS and Protestants to gain supremacy. He told us how the Kabaka (King) had refused to embrace either belief since they broke the very commandment which Jesus had given them, his followers, “to love one another.”
“What is your own background in religion?” we asked him.
“Many things I have been,” he said, “but never happy inside. I was born a Pagan, but I became a Catholic because they owned the primary school and I wished to learn. Then I became a Protestant because they owned the high school. Then,” he chuckled, “since the college was owned by the government, I became an agnostic.”
“What are you now?”
He smiled. “Bewildered. I have heard much about the Bahá’í Faith, but I lack the courage to believe that it can really be as my ears tell me. I am no longer a child or boy. Now I must believe, not because I desire to gain something, but because my heart tells me it is true and will fill my emptiness.”
We agreed. He told us that he knew it would not be easy, nor popular, but what did it matter if only it were true. Again we agreed, and quoting the words of Bahá’u’lláh, said, “adversity is the oil that feedeth the flame of this Lamp” of God.
When we parted months later, he said, “I thought my soul had been lost when I was born. Now I know that Baha’u’llah was just keeping it for me. Now He has returned it to me.” As we said our goodbyes, his parting words were, “The scar of friendship which the Bahá’ís have cut into my heart will never be healed.”
2.
There is a natural poetry in the African speech. It is not dependent on education. One of the most eloquent of all those we met was an illiterate. He spoke in fragments, but they fell together like pieces of a fresh mosaic. We met in Mombassa, in the Kit Kat Cafe. It is one of the few places where all races can gather in freedom and mental security. However, they also gather there in riotous sound. To the background chanting of an East Indian love song on the gramophone, and surrounded by raucous conversations in Swahili, Arabic and Portuguese, this young man told us his understanding of the three central figures of the Faith.
He wanted so sincerely to be a Bahá’í.
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We had come to determine his understanding, to see if he were ready to become a believer. We regretted at the time that we had no recorder to preserve his words. Halting as they were, they outshone, in their simplicity the polished speech of those who had come to question. The sequence and the exact content have escaped us after all this time, but we shall always be able to communicate the spirit of what he said.
“Tell us in your own words,” we asked him, “about the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.”
He nodded. Never taking his eyes from ours, he began to speak.
“When it is dusk, no one sees good. They fear. They hate what they don’t see. Even if it is people. Then the sun comes and they do see a little. And things are not so bad. That is the Báb. He was good. They killed Him because they liked it to be dark. But it needed to be brighter like hot day—time to see they are wrong to hate. This was Bahá’u’lláh. ‘See everybody,’ He said ‘how nice they are. Love, don’t hate.’ He died. Not really death because He left His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Not so bright, but good like afternoon sun to see us safe home before it is black. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said good things. People are alike even if they look different. All belong to God, so don’t do what God wouldn’t do. Be good men. Then He died. But He told us to go to the Guardian (Shoghi Effendi). He would be strong and guard us. He would tell away our troubles. He will, too; I believe in him. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, ‘Whatever the Guardian says is right. Do it.’ And I will.”
When he had finished, a questioning look came into his eyes. It seemed to say, “Please, am I a Bahá’í?”
“I know I am ignorant,” he told us, “but I want to learn all there is in the world to know about my Faith. I can’t find words for the fullness of my heart.” He sighed sadly, as he made a confession. “I tried to tell my religious man what I believe. He stops me sometimes and says, ‘Where are you when it is church?’ I told him what I believe, but always he defeats me what I say. He defeats me with words. I tell him again, but he defeats me with words.” Suddenly he looked up and smiled happily. “But only he defeats my head, not my heart. This,” he said, touching his heart, “belongs to Bahá’u’lláh and no one can conquer it away from Him.”
When they asked us later if we thought the young man should be taken into the
927
Faith, we replied, “If you don’t take him in, you had better put us out because we are learning from him every moment.”
3.
At the opening of the Teso Conference School in Teso, Uganda, there were over two hundred and fifty African Bahá’ís present. There were sixteen Local Assemblies represented. Following a huge barbecue, there was a public meeting. Public officials, school teachers, tribal dignitaries, guests both African and European were present.
At the first session, the chairman of the host community welcomed us with a delightful speech. He told of the great fear in his people’s hearts when all the Teso Bahá’ís had left for the Kampala Conference. They were implored not to go by their friends and families who were not Bahá’ís. “You will be eaten,” they warned. When all the Bahá’ís returned from the conference, there was great excitement. They were counted to make certain none was missing. Then there was rejoicing in the streets.
“Even today,” the chairman continued, “we were approached and told, ‘beware! The Americans will carry you away and eat
011.! 9, y Marguerite Sears replied to his speech and drew attention to the similarity of fears the world over.
“When we left New York,” she said, “some of our friends, who were not Bahá’ís, told us, ‘Be careful. Some of the people in Africa may carry you off and eat you.’ ”
When the laughter ebbed, the Conference began. The school followed. The program was as follows:
8—9z30 A.M.——History of Faith 10-12:3O A.M.—Three classes on language (A) For illiterates (to learn to read and write their own language) (B) For Beginning English (C) For English 12-4:00 P.M.—Committee Meetings Personal Interviews Visits to nearby Bahá’í Communities 4-5:00 P.M.—Bahá’í Administration (explanations) 5-5 :45 P.M.—Administration (practical application)
Advanced
[Page 928]928
How to conduct a Feast, an election How to hold Bahá’í consultation Functions of Assemblies, Committees, etc. 7-9230 P.M.—Special classes for Bahá’í Pioneers 9:30-12:00 P.M.—Social, questions, fun.
The more these people heard about their Faith, the more enthusiastic they became. When the sheer delight of hearing the teachings was too much for them, they would cover their ears with both hands and then remove them to make certain they were hearing these wonderful things. Then they would say, “Tell the words again, please.”
4.
One entire afternoon of the Conference was given over to a discussion of the two most challenging problems that Africa must face: polygamy and alcohol.
The law relative to polygamy was simply explained. No African is penalized by becoming a Bahá’í. If a man has more than one wife before he accepts the Faith, he keeps them all. However, he can take no more without breaking the law. If he has but one, he keeps that one and takes no more. If he is unmarried, he is permitted but one wife.
A young man asked a question (on behalf of a friend, he said) about marriage.
“What if you know you’re going to become a Bahá’í? Couldn’t you fast marry three wives first, and then accept the Faith?”
The silence of his own people was his answer. One of the men near him said, “The answer to that lies between you and God.”
“Oh,” said the young man, and he sat down.
The law about alcohol was more simply explained. It was not taken in any form unless essentially required as medical treatment under doctor’s prescription. We suggested that we secure some of the local drink, put it in a bowl and set fire to it. When it burst into flames, we could demonstrate what happened to the inside of the stomach when a person drank.
“No,” we were cautioned, “that wouldn’t be helpful. You see, when our people want to get something to drink, they say, ‘Light a match to it. If it burns, I’ll buy it.’ ”
One old man shook his head. “Bad thing,”
THE BAHA’I WORLD
he grumbled, “it steals your head before it steals your feet.”
The remark by a Basoga man, who admitted to taking a drink off and on, settled the matter of alcohol.
“I did not know it was forbidden,” he told everyone. “Now I do know. So it must go forever. There is no room in my heart for both alcohol and Bahá’u’lláh.”
5.
One young man spends his time going from community to community in Teso, helping each assembly and group to remain as active as possible. He was a translator at the Conference school. His little child became ill with smallpox. At the same time, thieves broke into his home in his absence and stole his supply of grain. The year before, enemies had thrown acid on his family’s clothes, ruining the clothes completely. When we asked him if all this had really happened to him, he replied, “Yes. Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Oule, why is this happening to you always, so many things?’ Then I answer myself and I say, ‘Oule, it is Bahá’u’lláh who is polishing you inside. Go and teach His Faith, and leave the rest to God.’ ”
When the Uganda Teaching Committee met one day in Mbale, forty-five miles away, Oule missed the bus. He scurried about until he could borrow a bicycle and then he pumped the forty-five miles and arrived but ten minutes late for the meeting. He did not feel that there could be any excuse for his absence. This was part of his belief in God. and he must not fail to do his part. It would be easy to believe in Bahá’u’lláh and remain at home, but it would be impossible to serve Bahá’u’lláh and still remain. He felt that life must be an example of Bahá’u’lláh’s words in His book of Laws where He cautions mankind “not to be indulgent in carrying out His statutes”; prescribes the twin inseparable duties of recognizing the “Dayspring of God’s Revelation (the Messenger) and of observing all the ordinances revealed by Him, neither of which is acceptable without the other.”
6.
There were seven African pioneers who attended the Teso school. They had risen spontaneously when the Guardian had called for volunteers. They planned to leave for their posts immediately after the school ended. We took one of them to Ngora to catch the bus for his goal city. He had
[Page 929]ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
already said good-bye to family and friends. Over his shoulder he carried a stick, broken from a young tree. In a white cloth, tied to the end of the stick, were all his worldly possessions. He was off to a new land, a new language, a new people.
“Pray for me,” he said, “that I will stand brave.”
Then he thanked the pioneer teachers who had come to the school. He praised their sacrifice for coming to Teso, for giving up so much to bring more of God’s truth to his people. These teachers had come by auto, with their families, and would return together. This African pioneer had left wife, children, home—everything—at the call of the Guardian. He did not think that what he was doing was a sacrifice. Others might be sacrificing, but he was obeying the voice in his heart. Bahá’u’lláh had said of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Who obeys Him, obeys God.” The Guardian had called for pioneers, and to this soul the voice of God had spoken. He answered it the only way he knew how to answer, with “instant, exact and complete obedience.”
To us, he was the symbol of Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “whither can a lover go but to the land of his beloved? and what seeker findeth rest away from his heart’s desire? . . . seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more.”
He shook hands with us and then wormed his way into the crowded bus. He was the leaven in this mass of humanity. He poked his head out the window and grinned at us. His smile made you feel how deprived you were not to be where he would be. He managed to wriggle one arm free to wave to us. As the bus carried him off to his post, he called back happily, “Alláh-u-Abhá!”
No word was received from him for some time after. The committee became worried about his welfare. Perhaps he was ill. Perhaps he had not found employment. Perhaps the teaching work had not yet begun. There had been no word for tw0 months.
Finally they heard. Not a letter, but a telegram. It said simply: “Send more declara< tion blanks, and pamphlets in English.”
7.
Another of the pioneers was off to teach the Faith in Kenya, in the heart of the Mau Mau trouble area. He had been a teacher at a church school when he had first heard of the Faith. One of the Bahá’ís gave him a pamphlet to read. He took it back to his
929
room at the school. It was discovered by the school authorities, and he was told to destroy it and have nothing further to do with this new belief. He refused, saying, “This is my faith. This I can really believe.” He was warned that if he persisted, he would lose his job. He must either give up his job or this foolishness.
“Foolishness?” he asked. “That there is only one God and only one religion? That all the Messengers of God are equal and teach the same truth in different ages? That all men are brothers, and that mankind must not only believe this is so, but behave that way? This is foolishness?”
He was told to make a choice.
“There is no choice,” he told them. “Nothing can make me give up my faith.”
“We shall see,” he was told.
He was put out of his job. He was barred from securing teaching work at any other school. His father and the tribal authorities were approached by the clergy and asked to influence the boy to return to his work and to the church. He was threatened with banishment from the tribe, with disinheritance, with open opposition.
“If it must be,” he replied, “it is God’s will. I shall never give up my belief in Bahá’u’lláh. It is better to be for something than to live for nothing.”
Everyone opposed him. Obstacles were hurled into his path. Bahá’u’lláh’s words were fulfilled at each step along the way for this courageous believer: “Ye shall be hindered from loving Me, and souls shall be perturbed as they make mention of Me. For minds cannot grasp Me, nor hearts contain Me.” As a last resort, they tried to get the young man’s wife to sway him, to threaten him with divorce unless he abandoned the Bahá’í Faith.
Little by little, he had been shorn of every tie. He had given up his job, his tribe, his family, his friends, and now his wife and children. There was, he said, no praise due him. If there had been a choice to make, perhaps his wisdom could have been commended; but since God had talked to his heart, the world had died before his eyes.
How many times these people, because of their purity and simplicity reminded us of the Hidden Words Of Bahá’u’lláh: “Divest not thyself of My beauteous robe, and forfeit not thy portion from My wondrous fountain, lest thou shouldst thirst forevermore.”
Later, when we arrived in Dar es Salaam,
[Page 930]930
we heard that this young man had already brought eight new people into the Faith at his pioneer post.
8.
There was a very lovable boy who was determined to speak English as soon as possible. Whenever he was with us, he would practice.
“After all,” he said, “when in Rome, do as Rome does.”
Following one of the classes on The Dawn-Breakers, and the tale of the historic defense of Fort Tabarsi, he said, admiringly, “That was a very movable story.”
A man from Mbale read the small booklet on the principles of the Faith, and insisted on becoming a believer immediately. He was told he could not, that he must wait until he knew more. He was also told that it was for his protection as well as the protection of the Faith that each person should know exactly and thoroughly what he was accepting before he could become a follower of Baha’u’llah.
“I’m ready now,” he said. He held up the booklet. “Never did I have such happy reading. This is the truth I accept. I believe in Baha’u’llah. I am a Bahá’í.”
“You are not. Not yet. There is more to learn.”
“Good. I accept it. Whatever it is, if Bahá’u’lláh said it, I believe it, and I will do it. I am a Bahá’í.”
“Later maybe.”
“Now!” _
“But you do not know what the Faith is yet. You have only a beginning.”
“I know all. Listen!” Then he began to recite his version of what he had read in the booklet: “God one. Prophets one. Man one. All good. Work is to pray, justice for everybody—even the dark—all good. See, I know everything. I am a Bahá’í.”
Impatiently, his questioner said, “All right, if you know everything, where does the Guardian live?”
The answer came back at once, full of confidence.
“Mombassa!”
It was the only large city he knew; so certainly the Guardian must live there.
Now he knows where the Guardian lives. He also knows about the local and national assemblies, and the Universal House of J ustice. He knows that there are other cities than Mombassa, and that there are Bahá’ís
THE BAHA’I WORLD
throughout the world, living His principles and spreading His teachings that the “world is one country and mankind its citizens.” He blushingly admits now that he doesn’t know everything, but he does know that this Faith is the hope of his heart and the help of his people. 9.
The first pioneer to leave the Teso school for his post went to far off Tanganyika. To him it meant a journey to another country across great Lake Victoria. We gathered around the car that was to take him as far as Kampala. His wife and little son kissed him goodbye. He laughed and cried all at the same time. He was laughing with joy for the privilege of serving this Faith he so loved, and he was weeping with sadness at parting. He was shaken with bewilderment at this great spiritual motion that was stirring amidst his people. His body seemed to be urging him to stay, while his spirit pulled him inexorably away.
We all sang in unison the most popular song of the school session. It was written by the Americans, using all the words of Ateso they had learned. It was set to the tune of “Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord.”
“Yoga Ojekuna ebu Yoga Ojekuna ebu Yoga Ojekuna ebu Ealama nui nui Yoga do!”
Freely translated it said, “Hello, I am feeling fine, yes. Hello, I am feeling fine, yes. Hello, I am feeling fine, yes. Thank you very very much. Good-bye!”
This never failed to send the two hundred and . fifty Bahá’ís at the school off into spasms of unrestrained laughter.
Finally the moment of farewell came. We had one last song together around the car. The words and music had been written by the school chorus, written they said by Bahá’í consultation. They called it, “Yes, Bahá’u’lláh is the return of Christ.”
Then we embraced our pioneer in fond good-byes. Our last view of this servant of the Guardian was the picture of him clinging tightly with one hand to the Bahá’í literature he was taking with him.
He had a Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era,
the little pamphlet in Swahili, the Hidden
Words, a mimeographed copy of Bible
Prophecies, and a small five cent red note
[Page 931]ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
book in which, he said, he could write down all the names of his new contacts. With his free hand, he waved farewell. He called out the window of the car to us: “We shall meet again, in Haifa, Bag_hdéd, or heaven.”
10.
We have not spoken here of the difficulties or hardships that a pioneer encounters. No citadel is wrested from the enemy without casualties. Malaria, dysentery, infected toes, smashed fingers, influenza, cold, heat, hunger, discomfort. These are all campaign ribbons for each pioneer. There is no need to expatiate upon sufferings. These are the mortar with which the monument of victory is held erect and in place. One rapidly learns that what he thought were bare essentials of living, are really luxuries. What he thought were impossible conditions are really the bare essentials.
Every pioneer has a period of “let down.” The trumpets and the banners of “send off” fade. He has ridden the exciting crest of the wave. The wave subsides and he is in the quiet waters of the harbor. Now only his own energy can keep him afloat until be adjusts to this new world. It is here that he suffers from a common pioneer disease. Not fatal, but universal. It is caused by: no job, no visa, no money, no room, no friends, no mail, and no good coffee. Everything seems impossible of accomplishment. The disease is called the Afri“can’ts.” But once the prayers begin to take hold and the pioneer receives an encouraging letter such as: “Dear Mabel—~I would have written from the Congo sooner to cheer you through malaria only I was unconscious with typhoid” the cure is accomplished! This is the time when the pioneer realizes that, of course, he can’t accomplish everything all by himself. He was never expected to do this. All he was asked to do was to “report at his post for duty” and allow Bahá’u’lláh to accomplish the task through him, the willing channel. At this point, he becomes a real Afri“can.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us that we must be so]diers of God. We leave our homes, friends, families—all—and go into the field of battle. There is no turning back. The enemy is engaged. The world is now our battlefield, the ten year crusade our plan of action. We must empty ourselves from the cities and rush out to reinforce every outpost, armed only with what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá called “guns of
931
love.” The light, once kindled, must never be allowed to go out.
Bahá’u’lláh, in the Tablet of Carmel, cried out, “0 how I long to announce unto every spot on the surface of the earth, and to carry to each one of its cities, the glad-tidings of this Revelation . . .”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá echoed poignantly those same words. “0 that I could travel, even though on foot and in the utmost poverty, to these regions and, raising the call of YaBahá’u’l’-Abhá in cities, villages, mountains, deserts and oceans, promote the Divine teachings! This, alas, I cannot do. How intensely I deplore it. Please God, ye may achieve it.”
Africa, the most neglected, abused, deprived of the continents has heard this call and is answering.
One morning we were speaking of the suffering and martyrdoms during the time of the Báb. We had just finished telling the story of the seven martyrs of Tihran. One very sweet old man came up to speak with us. The dear soul thought that these stories meant that they, too, the African Bahá’ís, would soon be called upon to give their lives for the Faith. He thanked us and said, “This will help to hold me up when it comes my turn to be killed.”
In one of the very last letters ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote, He said, “I have done all that could be done. I have served the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh t0 the utmost of My ability. 0 how I long to see the Believers shouldering the responsibilities of the Cause . . . save this there remains none other joy for me.”
The charger that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá promised us is awaiting the rider who will spur it into the arena to win the victory in His name. The tests that hold men back are the same in this day as they have been in every day of God: wealth, children, hunger, and death. Cast them aside, as the hero of Bérfurfish cast aside his satchel of turquoise, as the mother of Ashraf cast aside her heart’s desire, as the defenders of Tabarsi cast aside the sumptuous banquet offered by their tempters, as the uncle of the Báb cast aside his life asking only that he “be the first to lay down his life for his beloved kinsman.”
Let all, who are not “clay pieces to be disintegrated with a little moisture,” enter the fray as soldiers of the Covenant; not turning back until the Crusade is won, or life has been laid down as a marker along the way that points to the hill of triumph.
[Page 932]THE
BAHA’I FAITH
THEIR SPIRITUAL
”tee
l .. 3 J_flweegéé
90
A WORLD RELIGION
CENTRE IS HAIFA
.9
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- ‘g’i‘f \é.§ .'
eeesfl iumfiifi £9“
In Haifa on the .tlope: of Mount Carmel in the midst of a beautiful garden lie the sacred shrine: of the Bahá’í 1cligion, "' the foundation and growth of which,” according to Lord Samuel, first—and only jewish—High Commissioner of Mandated Palestine, “ ix one a/ the moxt xtriking movements that have proceeded from the East in rewnt.gencmliom.”
This religion which only last year celebrated the cantenary’o/ its founder’: martyr’s death is today represented in a hundred countries throughout the world and Bahá’í literature ha: been trarulated into sixty languages. In India alone there are Bahá’í congregations in 54 different towns.
The Bahá’í Faith is of non-political character and Bahá’í: are commanded by the Founder of their Faith to be loyal subject: 0/ the Government: under which they live.
Whilst the Bahá’í religion originated in Persia, and a‘bart jmm perhaps the U.S.A. still is represented there by larger' numbers of followers than in any other country, it: spiritual centre is Haifa, where Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í faith, reside: and where the remain: of the founder JL'L'I‘L' brought for interment.
True to it: enlightened religious policy the Government of Israel is extending fullest religious autpnomy to this little known and small community and Israel is probably the only country today where Bahá’í marriage certificates are spectfically recognized by the law.
Reproduced below is Lord Samuel’s introductory address delivered at the Bahá’í sesxion of the World Congress of Faiths, held in London in :936t
The Ed.
If one were compelled to choose which of the many religious communities of the world was closest to the aim and purpose of this Congress, I think one would be obliged.to say that; it was the comparatively little known Bahá’í community.
The compteted pm! of the shrine on Carmel, Haifa.
Other communities may consider how far a particular element of their respective faith may be regarded as similar to those of other communities, but the Bahá’í Faith exists for the purpose of combining in one synthesis all those elc‘ moms in the various faiths which are held in common.
Its origin was in Persia where a mystiqproph-ct, who took the name of the Báb, the “Gate”, began a mission among the Persians in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. He collected a considerable number of adherents. His activities were rega'rded with apprehension by the government of Persia of ‘that day. Finally, he and his leading disciples were seized by the forces of the Persian Government and were shot- in the year 1850. In spite of the persecution, the movement spread in Persia and in many Islamic countries.
He was followed as the head of the community by the one who has been its principal prophet and exponent, Baha’u’llah. He was most active and despite pei’secution and imprisonment made it his life mission to spread the creed which he claimed to have received by direct divine revelation. He died in 1892 and was succeeded as the head of the community by his son Abdu’l-Bahá, who was born in 1844. quas living in Haifa, in a simple house, when I went there as High Commissioner in 1920, and I had the privilege of one or two most interesting conversations with him on the principles and methods of the Bahá’í Faith. He died in 1921 and his obsequies were attended by a great concourse of people. I had the honour of representing His Majesty the King on the occasion.
Since that time the Bahá’í Faith h'as secured the support of a very large number of communities throughout the world. At the present time it is estimated that there are about eight hundred 'Bahá’í communities in various countries.
Above and opposite: Pages from India and Israel, March, 1951, with article on the Bahá’í Faith and the World Center of the Faith (reproduced by permisswn).
Dexign [or the :ampletion of (IN
- epulchre a/ the Heb on Mt. Carmel
[Page 933]49w: .
A PROPHECY COMES TRUE
1 . ‘4. " \
'1 ‘1’“ \~\ \
m
~9— Reproduced below i: a quotation attn'buted to ‘ Abdu’l
- 3): Bnha’ (1844-1921) grandfather of the Menu: " Guar.—.: dian o/ the Bahá’í Faith.”
37% Thi: astounding prophecy about the development of Eli: Haifa Bay, was Ieeorded by Mina Ahmad Sohrab in ii? his diary as having been made by ’Abdu’l Baha’ in
- 1??? 1914, i.e. when Jewish immigration was hardly notice33$}: able yet:
$32 " In the future the distance between Aceo (Acre) arid $5} Haifa will be built ab, and the two cities will join and $3?) clasp hands, becoming the [we terminal section: of one
mighty melrapolix. A: I look now over this :eene, I see so clearly that i! will become one of the first em porium: 0/ the world. This great :emi—tireular buy will
be Imm/ormed into the fines! harbour, wherein the :hip: of all nationx will seek shelter and refuge. The great vessels of all peoplex will come 10 (hi: fart, bringing on their deck: thousand: and thousands of men and women [ram every [Jail 0] the globe. The mountain and the plain will 'be dulled with the max! modem Industries will be established and various inflitulions o/ philanthropic nature will be
building: and palaces.
Iounded. The [lowers of civilization and culture [mm all nations will be brought here to blend their fragrance: together and blaze the way [or the brotherhood 0/ man.
3.x
Wonderful gardens, orchards, groves and parkx will be laid out on alt.sidex. At night the great city will be \‘A lighted by electricity. The entire harbour [mm Aeca ' Ia Haifa will be one path of illumination.
’I 7| I V'b/IA
w,“ 35: \\
\n
IL\
Power/ul
74 .:
- enrchlighl: will be placed on both sides of Mount 4
Carmel to guide the :teamen. Mount Carmel ilsel/,' 9253 [mm top to ballam, will be submerged in a 5m 0/ lights. ‘5??? A person standing on the :ummit of Mount Carmel, and g}? the [muengers of the steamer: coming lo it, will look $35“ iipan the mast sublime and majestic Jpeelnele a/ the :aé
whole world.”
(Top) Haifa 1914 (population 15,000, no part laeilities, no induitty, no road to Aeeo, Haifa Bay one big swamp).
(Bottom) Haifa 195i (fiopulalion 200,000, be3t harbouv in Eastern Mediterranean, big industry, excellent mad: [0 Acre, entire Haifa Bay densely populaled.)
(Centre) Haifa 1951, by night,
A ”$33“ - “3‘53???" Xz'll\f_w_§l§$.\ z. aslfib‘
“AN EPOCH—MAKING DECISION"
NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE BAHA'IS OF INDIA. PAKISTAN AND BURMA
Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, with the headquarters at Haifa, Israel, has announced through the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of India, Pakx§tan and Burma and eight other sister National Assemblies representing the Bahá’í community in 100 countries of the globe, that 'as prophecies uttered .-)y thea'Founder of the Faith about the establuhxpent of the Jewilh
- tate after a lapse of two thousand years as an independent nation
~d such other connected matters have come about to be true, he
feels induced to go ahead with the formation of the First International Bahá’í Council. This Council whereas in the first instance will forge a link with the authorities of the newly emerged state, discharge the responsibilities connected with the erection of the superstructure of the Báb’s Holy Shrine at Haifa and conduct negotiations relating to matters of personal status of the Bahá’í: with civil authorities throughout the world, will ultimately transform itself into an elected International House of Justice.
N. A. KHAVARI,
Delhi, 9-1-1951. Acting Secretary.
A
Haifa and Haifa Bay at night, 1951. (Reproduced by courtesy of India and Israel.)