Bahá’í World/Volume 7/Excerpts from the Letters of Shoghi Effendi
EXCERPTS FROM THE LETTERS OF SHOGHI EFFENDI
I HAVE been acquainted by the perusal of your latest communications with the nature of the doubts that have been publicly expressed, by one who is wholly misinformed as to the true precepts of the Cause, regarding the validity of institutions that stand inextricably interwoven with the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Not that I for a moment view such faint misgivings in the light of an open challenge to the structure that embodies the Faith, nor is it because I question in the least the unyielding tenacity of the faith of the American believers, if I venture to dwell upon what seems to me appropriate observations at the present stage of the evolution of our beloved Cause. I am indeed inclined to welcome these expressed apprehensions inasmuch as they afford me an opportunity to familiarize the elected representatives of the believers with the origin and character of the institutions which stand at the very basis of the world order ushered in by Bahá’u’lláh. We should feel truly thankful for such futile attempts to undermine our beloved Faith—attempts that protrude their ugly face from time to time, seem for a while able to create a breach in the ranks of the faithful, recede finally into the obscurity of oblivion, and are thought of no more. Such incidents we should regard as the interpositions of Providence, designed to fortify our faith, to clarify our vision, and to deepen our understanding of the essentials of His Divine Revelation.
It would, however, be helpful and
instructive to bear in mind certain
basic principles with reference to the
Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
which together with the
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, constitutes the
chief depository wherein are enshrined
those priceless elements of that Divine
Civilization, the establishment of which
is the primary mission of
the Bahá’í Faith. A study of the provisions
of these sacred documents will reveal the
close relationship that exists between them,
as well as the identity of purpose and method
which they inculcate. Far from regarding
their specific provisions as incompatible and
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contradictory in spirit,
every fair-minded inquirer will
readily admit that they are not
only complementary, but that they mutually
confirm one another, and are inseparable
parts of one complete unit. A comparison
of their contents with the rest of Bahá’í
Sacred Writings will similarly establish the
conformity of whatever they contain with
the spirit as well as the letter of the
authenticated writings and sayings of Bahá’u’lláh
and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In fact, he who reads the
Aqdas with care and diligence will not find
it hard to discover that the Most Holy Book
[Aqdas] itself anticipates in a number of
passages the institutions which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
ordains in His Will. By leaving certain
matters unspecified and unregulated in His Book
of Laws [Aqdas], Bahá’u’lláh seems to have
deliberately left a gap in the general scheme
of Bahá’í Dispensation, which the
unequivocal provisions of the Master’s
Will has filled. To attempt to
divorce the one from the
other, to insinuate that the Teachings of
Bahá’u’lláh have not been upheld, in their
entirety and with absolute integrity, by
what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has revealed in his Will,
is an unpardonable affront to the unswerving
fidelity that has characterized the life and
labors of our beloved Master.
I will not attempt in the least to assert or demonstrate the authenticity of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, for that in itself would betray an apprehension on my part as to the unanimous confidence of the believers in the genuineness of the last written wishes of our departed Master. I will only confine my observations to those issues which may assist them to appreciate the essential unity that underlies the spiritual, the humanitarian, and the administrative principles enunciated by the Author and the Interpreter of the Bahá’í Faith.
I am at a loss to explain that strange mentality that inclines to uphold as the sole criterion of the truth of the Bahá’í Teachings what is admittedly only an obscure and unauthenticated translation of an oral statement made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in defiance and total disregard of the available text of all of His universally recognized writings. I truly deplore the unfortunate distortions that have resulted in days past from the incapacity of the interpreter to grasp the meaning of ‘Abdu,’l-Bahá, and from his incompetence to render adequately such truths as have been revealed to him by the Master’s statements. Much of the confusion that has obscured the understanding of the believers should be attributed to this double error involved in the inexact rendering of an only partially understood statement. Not infrequently has the interpreter even failed to convey the exact purport of the inquirer’s specific questions, and, by his deficiency of understanding and expression in conveying the answer of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, has been responsible for reports wholly at variance with the true spirit and purpose of the Cause. It was chiefly in view of this misleading nature of the reports of the informal conversations of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá with visiting pilgrims, that I have insistently urged the believers of the West to regard such statements as merely personal impressions of the sayings of their Master, and to quote and consider as authentic only such translations as are based upon the authenticated text of His recorded utterances in the original tongue.
It should be remembered by every follower of the Cause that the system of Bahá’í administration is not an innovation imposed arbitrarily upon the Bahá’ís of the world since the Master’s passing, but derives its authority from the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is specifically prescribed in unnumbered Tablets, and rests in some of its essential features upon the explicit provisions of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. It thus unifies and correlates the principles separately laid down by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and is indissolubly bound with the essential verities of the Faith. To dissociate the administrative principles of the Cause from the purely spiritual and humanitarian teachings would be tantamount to a mutilation of the body of the Cause, a separation that can only result in the disintegration of its component parts, and the extinction of the Faith itself.
Local and National Houses of Justice
It should be carefully borne in mind that
the local as well as the international Houses
of Justice have been expressly enjoined by
the Kitáb-i-Aqdas; that the institution of
the National Spiritual Assembly,
as an intermediary body, and referred
to in the Master’s
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Will as the
"Secondary House of Justice,”
has the express sanction of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; and
that the method to be pursued
for the election of the
International and National Houses
of Justice has been set forth by Him in His
Will, as well as in a number of His Tablets.
Moreover, the institutions of the local and
national Funds, that are now the necessary
adjuncts to all Local and National Spiritual
Assemblies, have not only been established
by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the Tablets He revealed
to the Bahá’ís of the Orient, but their
importance and necessity have been repeatedly
emphasized by Him in His utterances and
writings. The concentration of authority in
the hands of the elected representatives of
the believers; the necessity of the submission
of every adherent of the Faith to the
considered judgment of Bahá’í Assemblies; His
preference for unanimity in decision; the
decisive character of the majority vote; and
even the desirability for the exercise of close
supervision over all Bahá’í publications, have
been sedulously instilled by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as
evidenced by His authenticated and
widely-scattered Tablets. To accept His broad and
humanitarian Teachings on one hand, and to
reject and dismiss with neglectful
indifference His more challenging and
distinguishing precepts, would be an act of manifest
disloyalty to that which He has cherished
most in His life.
That the Spiritual Assemblies of today will be replaced in time by the Houses of Justice, and are to all intents and purposes identical and not separate bodies, is abundantly confirmed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself. He has in fact in a Tablet addressed to the members of the first Chicago Spiritual Assembly, the first elected Bahá’í body instituted in the United States, referred to them as the members of the "House of Justice” for that city, and has thus with His own pen established beyond any doubt the identity of the present Bahá’í Spiritual Assemblies with the Houses of Justice referred to by Bahá’u’lláh. For reasons which are not difficult to discover, it has been found advisable to bestow upon the elected representatives of Bahá’í communities throughout the world the temporary appellation of Spiritual Assemblies, a term which, as the position and aims of the Bahá’í Faith are better understood and more fully recognized, will gradually be superseded by the permanent and more appropriate designation of House of Justice. Not only will the present-day Spiritual Assemblies be styled differently in future, but will be enabled also to add to their present functions those powers, duties, and prerogatives necessitated by the recognition of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, not merely as one of the recognized religious systems of the world, but as the State Religion of an independent and Sovereign Power. And as the Bahá’í Faith permeates the masses of the peoples of East and West, and its truth is embraced by the majority of the peoples of a number of the Sovereign States of the world, will the Universal House of Justice attain the plenitude of its power, and exercise, as the supreme organ of the Bahá’í Commonwealth, all the rights, the duties, and responsibilities incumbent upon the world’s future superstate.
It must be pointed out, however, in this
connection that, contrary to what has been
confidently asserted, the establishment of the
Supreme House of Justice is
in no way dependent upon the adoption of the Bahá’í
Faith by the mass of the peoples of the
world, nor does it presuppose its acceptance
by the majority of the inhabitants of any one
country. In fact, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Himself,
in one of His earliest Tablets, contemplated
the possibility of the formation
of the Universal House of Justice
in His own lifetime,
and but for the unfavorable circumstances
prevailing under the Turkish régime, would
have, in all probability, taken
the preliminary steps for its
establishment. It will be
evident, therefore, that given
favorable circumstances, under
which the Bahá’ís of Írán
and of the adjoining countries under Soviet
Rule may be enabled to elect their national
representatives, in accordance
with the guiding principles
laid down in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
writings, the only remaining obstacle in the
way of the definite formation
of the International House of
Justice will have been removed.
For upon the National Houses of
Justice of the East and West devolves the
task, in conformity with the
explicit provisions of the Will,
of electing directly the
members of the International
House of Justice. Not until
they are themselves fully
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representative
of the rank and file of the
believers in their respective countries, not
until they have acquired the weight and the
experience that will enable them to function
vigorously in the organic life of the Cause,
can they approach their sacred task,
and provide the spiritual basis
for the constitution
of so august a body in the Bahá’í world.
The Institution of Guardianship
It must be also clearly understood by every believer that the institution of Guardianship does not under any circumstances abrogate, or even in the slightest degree detract from, the powers granted to the Universal House of Justice by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and repeatedly and solemnly confirmed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will. It does not constitute in any manner a contradiction to the Will and Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, nor does it nullify any of His revealed instructions. It enhances the prestige of that exalted assembly, stabilizes its supreme position, safeguards its unity, assures the continuity of its labors, without presuming in the slightest to infringe upon the inviolability of its clearly defined sphere of jurisdiction. We stand indeed too close to so monumental a document to claim for ourselves a complete understanding of all its implications, or to presume to have grasped the manifold mysteries it undoubtedly contains. Only future generations can comprehend the value and the significance attached to this Divine Masterpiece, which the hand of the Master-builder of the world has designed for the unification and the triumph of the world-wide Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. Only those who come after us will be in a position to realize the value of the surprisingly strong emphasis that has been placed on the institution of the House of Justice and of the Guardianship. They only will appreciate the significance of the vigorous language employed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá with reference to the band of Covenant-breakers that has opposed Him in His days. To them alone will be revealed the suitability of the institutions initiated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the character of the future society which is to emerge out of the chaos and confusion of the present age. . . .
The Animating Purpose of Bahá’í Institutions
And, now, it behooves us to reflect on the animating purpose and the primary functions of these divinely-established institutions, the sacred character and the universal efficacy of which can be demonstrated only by the spirit they diffuse and the work they actually achieve. I need not dwell upon what I have already reiterated and emphasized that the administration of the Cause is to be conceived as an instrument and not a substitute for the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, that it should be regarded as a channel through which His promised blessings may flow, that it should guard against such rigidity as would clog and fetter the liberating forces released by His Revelation. . . . Who, I may ask, when viewing the international character of the Cause, its far-flung ramifications, the increasing complexity of its affairs, the diversity of its adherents, and the state of confusion that assails on every side the infant Faith of God, can for a moment question the necessity of some sort of administrative machinery that will insure, amid the storm and stress of a struggling civilization, the unity of the Faith, the preservation of its identity, and the protection of its interests? To repudiate the validity of the assemblies of the elected ministers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh would be to reject these countless Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, wherein they have extolled their privileges and duties, emphasized the glory of their mission, revealed the immensity of their task, and warned them of the attacks they must needs expect from the unwisdom of friends, as well as from the malice of their enemies. It is surely for those to whose hands so priceless a heritage has been committed to prayerfully watch lest the tool should supersede the Faith itself, lest undue concern for the minute details arising from the administration of the Cause obscure the vision of its promoters, lest partiality, ambition, and worldliness tend in the course of time to becloud the radiance, stain the purity, and impair the effectiveness of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.
(February 27, 1929.)
THE WORLD ORDER OF BAHÁ’U’LLÁH
AMID the reports that have of late reached the Holy Land, most of which witness to the triumphant march of the Cause, a few seem to betray a certain apprehension regarding the validity of the institutions which stand inseparably associated with the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. These expressed misgivings appear to be actuated by certain whisperings which have emanated from quarters which are either wholly misinformed regarding the fundamentals of the Bahá’í Revelation, or which deliberately contrive to sow the seeds of dissension in the hearts of the faithful.
Viewed in the light of past experience, the inevitable result of such futile attempts, however persistent and malicious they be, is to contribute to a wider and deeper recognition by believers and unbelievers alike of the distinguishing features of the Faith proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh. These challenging criticisms, whether or not dictated by malice, cannot but serve to galvanize the souls of its ardent supporters, and to consolidate the ranks of its faithful promoters. They will purge the Faith from those pernicious elements whose continued association with the believers tends to discredit the fair name of the Cause, and to tarnish the purity of its spirit. We should welcome, therefore, not only the open attacks which its avowed enemies persistently launch against it, but should also view as a blessing in disguise every storm of mischief with which they who apostatize their faith or claim to be its faithful exponents assail it from time to time. Instead of undermining the Faith, such assaults, both from within and without, reinforce its foundations, and excite the intensity of its flame. Designed to becloud its radiance, they proclaim to all the world the exalted character of its precepts, the completeness of its unity, the uniqueness of its position, and the pervasiveness of its influence.
I do not feel for one moment that such clamor, mostly attributable to impotent rage against the resistless march of the Cause of God, can ever distress the valiant warriors of the Faith. For these heroic souls, whether they be contending in America’s impregnable stronghold, or struggling in the heart of Europe, and across the seas as far as the continent of Australia, have already abundantly demonstrated the tenacity of their faith and the abiding value of their conviction.
I feel it, however, incumbent upon me by virtue of the responsibility attached to the Guardianship of the Faith, to dwell more fully upon the essential character and the distinguishing features of that world order as conceived by Bahá’u’lláh. . . .
It behooves us, dear friends, to endeavor not only to familiarize ourselves with the essential features of this supreme Handiwork of Bahá’u’lláh, but also to grasp the fundamental difference existing between this world-embracing, divinely-appointed Order and the chief ecclesiastical organizations of the world, whether they pertain to the Church of Christ, or to the ordinances of the Muḥammadan Dispensation.
For those whose priceless privilege is to
guard over, administer the affairs,
and advance the interests of these
Bahá’í institutions will have,
sooner or later, to face this
searching question: “Where and how does
this Order established by Bahá’u’lláh, which
to outward seeming is but a replica of the
institutions established in Christianity and
Islám, differ from them? Are not the twin
institutions of the House of Justice and of
the Guardianship, the institution of the
Hands of the Cause of God, the institution
of the national and local Assemblies, the
institution of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár,
but different names for the institutions of the
Papacy and the Caliphate, with all their
attending ecclesiastical orders which the
Christians uphold and advocate? What can
possibly be the agency that can safeguard
these Bahá’í institutions, so strikingly
resemblant, in some of their features, to those
which have been reared by the Fathers of
the Church and the Apostles of Muḥammad,
from witnessing the deterioration in
character, the breach of unity,
and the extinction
of influence, which have befallen
all organized religious hierarchies?
Why should they not eventually
suffer the same fate that has
overtaken the institutions which the
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successors of
Christ and Muḥammad have reared?”
Upon the answer given to these challenging questions will, in a great measure, depend the success of the efforts which believers in every land are now exerting for the establishment of God’s kingdom upon the earth. Few will fail to recognize that the Spirit breathed by Bahá’u’lláh upon the world, and which is manifesting itself with varying degrees of intensity through the efforts consciously displayed by His avowed supporters and indirectly through certain humanitarian organizations, can never permeate and exercise an abiding influence upon mankind unless and until it incarnates itself in a visible Order, which would bear its name, wholly identify itself with His principles, and function in conformity with His laws. That Bahá’u’lláh in His Book of Aqdas, and later ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will—a document which confirms, supplements, and correlates the provisions of the Aqdas—have set forth in their entirety those essential elements for the constitution of the world Bahá’í Commonwealth, no one who has read them will deny. According to these divinely ordained administrative principles, the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh—the Ark of human salvation —must needs be modeled. From them, all future blessings must flow, and upon them its inviolable authority must ultimately rest.
For Bahá’u’lláh, we should readily recognize, has not only imbued mankind with a new and regenerating Spirit. He has not merely enunciated certain universal principles, or propounded a certain philosophy, however potent, sound and universal these may be. In addition to these He, as well as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá after Him, have, unlike the Dispensations of the past, clearly and specifically laid down a set of Laws, established definite institutions, and provided for the essentials of a Divine Economy. These are destined to be a pattern for future society, a supreme instrument for the establishment of The Most Great Peace, and the one agency for the unification of the world, and the proclamation of the reign of righteousness and justice upon the earth. Not only have they revealed all the directions required for the practical realization of those ideals which the Prophets of God have visualized, and which from time immemorial have inflamed the imagination of seers and poets in every age; they have also, in unequivocal and emphatic language, appointed those twin institutions of the House of Justice and of the Guardianship as their chosen Successors, destined to apply the principles, promulgate the laws, protect the institutions, adapt loyally and intelligently the Faith to the requirements of progressive society, and consummate the incorruptible inheritance which the Founders of the Faith have bequeathed to the world.
Should we look back to the past, were we to search out the Gospel and the Qur’án, we will readily recognize that neither the Christian nor the Islámic Dispensations can offer a parallel either to the system of Divine Economy so thoroughly established by Bahá’u’lláh, or to the safeguards which He has provided for its preservation and advancement. Therein, I am profoundly convinced, lies the answer to those questions to which I have already referred.
None, I feel, will question the fact that the fundamental reason why the unity of the Church of Christ was irretrievably shattered, and its influence was in the course of time undermined was that the Edifice which the Fathers of the Church reared after the passing of His First Apostle was an Edifice that rested in nowise upon the explicit directions of Christ Himself. The authority and features of their administration were wholly inferred, and indirectly derived, with more or less justification, from certain vague and fragmentary references which they found scattered amongst His utterances as recorded in the Gospel. Not one of the sacraments of the Church; not one of the rites and ceremonies which the Christian Fathers have elaborately devised and ostentatiously observed; not one of the elements of severe discipline they rigorously imposed upon the primitive Christians; none of these reposed on the direct authority of Christ, or emanated from His specific utterances. Not one of these did Christ conceive, none did He specifically invest with sufficient authority to either interpret His Word, or to add to that which He had not specifically enjoined.
For this reason, in later generations, voices
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were raised in protest
against the self-appointed Authority
which arrogated to itself
privileges and powers which did not emanate
from the clear text of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, and which constituted a
grave departure from the spirit which that Gospel
did inculcate. They argued with force and
justification that the canons promulgated
by the Councils of the Church were
not divinely-appointed laws, but
were merely human devices which
did not even rest upon
the actual utterances of Jesus.
Their contention centered around
the fact that the
vague and inconclusive words, addressed by
Christ to Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon
this rock I will build my Church,” could
never justify the extreme measures,
the elaborate ceremonials,
the fettering creeds and
dogmas, with which His successors have
gradually burdened and obscured His Faith.
Had it been possible for the Church Fathers,
whose unwarranted authority was thus
fiercely assailed from every side, to refute
the denunciations heaped upon them by
quoting specific utterances of Christ
regarding the future administration of His Church,
or the nature of the authority
of His Successors, they would
surely have been capable
of quenching the flame of controversy, and
preserving the unity of Christendom. The
Gospel, however, the only repository of the
utterances of Christ, afforded no such shelter
to these harassed leaders of the Church, who
found themselves helpless in the face of the
pitiless onslaught of their enemy, and who
eventually had to submit to the forces of
schism which invaded their ranks.
In the Muḥammadan Revelation, however, although His Faith as compared with that of Christ was, so far as the administration of His Dispensation is concerned, more complete and more specific in its provisions, yet in the matter of succession it gave no written, no binding and conclusive instructions to those whose mission was to propagate His Cause. For the text of the Qur’án, the ordinances of which regarding prayer, fasting, marriage, divorce, inheritance, pilgrimage, and the like, have after the revolution of thirteen hundred years remained intact and operative, gives no definite guidance regarding the Law of Succession, the source of all the dissensions, the controversies, and schisms which have dismembered and discredited Islám.
Not so with the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. Unlike the Dispensation of Christ, unlike the Dispensation of Muḥammad, unlike all the Dispensations of the past, the apostles of Bahá’u’lláh in every land, wherever they labor and toil, have before them in clear, in unequivocal and emphatic language, all the laws, the regulations, the principles, the institutions, the guidance, they require for the prosecution and consummation of their task. Both in the administrative provisions of the Bahá’í Dispensation, and in the matter of succession, as embodied in the twin institutions of the House of Justice and of the Guardianship, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh can summon to their aid such irrefutable evidences of Divine Guidance that none can resist, that none can belittle or ignore. Therein lies the distinguishing feature of the Bahá’í Revelation. Therein lies the strength of the unity of the Faith, of the validity of a Revelation that claims not to destroy or belittle previous Revelations, but to connect, unify and fulfill them. . . .
We should also bear in mind that the distinguishing character of the Bahá’í Revelation does not consist solely in the completeness and unquestionable validity of the Dispensation which the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá have established. Its excellence lies also in the fact that those elements which in past Dispensations have, without the least authority from their Founders, been a source of corruption and of incalculable harm to the Faith of God, been strictly excluded by the clear text of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings. Those unwarranted practices, in connection with the sacrament of baptism, of communion, of confession of sins, of asceticism, of priestly domination, of elaborate ceremonials, of holy war and of polygamy, have one and all been rigidly suppressed by the Pen of Bahá’u’lláh, whilst the rigidity and rigor of certain observances, such as fasting, and which are necessary to the devotional life of the individual, have been considerably abated. . . .
Dear friends! Feeble though our Faith
may now appear in the eyes of men, who
either denounce it as an offshoot of Islám,
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or contemptuously
ignore it as one more of
those obscure sects that abound in the West,
this priceless gem of Divine Revelation, now
still in its embryonic state, shall evolve
within the shell of His law, and shall forge
ahead, undivided and unimpaired,
till it embraces the whole of
mankind. Only those
who have already recognized the supreme
station of Bahá’u’lláh, only those whose
hearts have been touched by His love, and
have become familiar with the potency of
His spirit, can adequately appreciate the
value of this Divine Economy—His
inestimable gift to mankind. (March 21, 1930.)
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THE GOAL OF A NEW WORLD ORDER
THE inexorable march of recent events has carried humanity so near to the goal foreshadowed by Bahá’u’lláh that no responsible follower of His Faith, viewing on all sides the distressing evidences of the world’s travail, can remain unmoved at the thought of its approaching deliverance.
It would not seem inappropriate, at a time when we are commemorating the world over, the termination of the first decade since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s sudden removal1 from our midst, to ponder, in the light of the teachings bequeathed by Him to the world, such events as have tended to hasten the gradual emergence of the World Order anticipated by Bahá’u’lláh.
Ten years ago, this very day, there flashed upon the world the news of the passing of Him Who alone, through the ennobling influence of His love, strength and wisdom, could have proved its stay and solace in the many afflictions it was destined to suffer.
How well we, the little band of His avowed supporters who lay claim to have recognized the Light that shone within Him, can still remember His repeated allusions, in the evening of His earthly life, to the tribulation and turmoil with which an unregenerate humanity was to be increasingly afflicted. How poignantly some of us can recall His pregnant remarks, in the presence of the pilgrims and visitors who thronged His doors on the morrow of the jubilant celebrations that greeted the termination of the World War—a war, which by the horrors it evoked, the losses it entailed and the complications it engendered, was destined to exert so far-reaching an influence on the fortunes of mankind. How serenely, yet how powerfully, He stressed the cruel deception which a Pact, hailed by peoples
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1November 28, 1921.
and nations as the embodiment of triumphant justice and the unfailing instrument of an abiding peace, held in store for an unrepentant humanity. "Peace, Peace,” how often we heard Him remark, "the lips of potentates and peoples unceasingly proclaim, whereas the fire of unquenched hatreds still smoulders in their hearts.” How often we heard Him raise His voice, whilst the tumult of triumphant enthusiasm was still at its height and long before the faintest misgivings could have been felt or expressed, confidently declaring that the Document, extolled as the Charter of a liberated humanity, contained within itself seeds of such bitter deception as would further enslave the world. How abundant are now the evidences that attest the perspicacity of His unerring judgment!
Ten years of unceasing turmoil, so laden with anguish, so fraught with incalculable consequences to the future of civilization, have brought the world to the verge of a calamity too awful to contemplate. Sad indeed is the contrast between the manifestations of confident enthusiasm in which the Plenipotentiaries at Versailles so freely indulged and the cry of unconcealed distress which victors and vanquished alike are now raising in the hour of bitter disillusion.
Neither the force which the Framers and
Guarantors of the Peace Treaties
have mustered, nor the lofty
ideals which originally
animated the Author of the Covenant of
the League of Nations, have proved
a sufficient bulwark against
the forces of internal
disruption with which a structure
so laboriously contrived had been
consistently assailed. Neither
the provisions of the so-called
Settlement which the victorious
Powers have sought to impose,
nor the machinery of an
institution which America’s
[Page 270]
illustrious
and far-seeing President had
conceived, have proved, either in conception or
practice, adequate instruments to ensure the
integrity of the Order they had striven to
establish.
"The ills from which the world now suffers,”
wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in January, 1920,
"will multiply; the gloom which envelops it will deepen. The Balkans will remain discontented. Its restlessness will increase. The vanquished Powers will continue to agitate. They will resort to every measure that may rekindle the flame of war. Movements, newly-born and worldwide in their range, will exert their utmost effort for the advancement of their designs. The Movement of the Left will acquire great importance. Its influence will spread.”
Economic distress, since those words were written, together with political confusion, financial upheavals, religious restlessness and racial animosities, seem to have conspired to add immeasurably to the burdens under which an impoverished, a war-weary world is groaning. Such has been the cumulative effect of these successive crises, following one another with such bewildering rapidity, that the very foundations of society are trembling. The world, to whichever continent we turn our gaze, to however remote a region our survey may extend, is everywhere assailed by forces it can neither explain nor control.
Europe, hitherto regarded as the cradle of a highly-vaunted civilization, as the torchbearer of liberty and the mainspring of the forces of world industry and commerce, stands bewildered and paralyzed at the sight of so tremendous an upheaval. Long-cherished ideals in the political no less than in the economic sphere of human activity are being severely tested under the pressure of reactionary forces on one hand and of an insidious and persistent radicalism on the other. From the heart of Asia distant rumblings, ominous and insistent, portend the steady onslaught of a creed which, by its negation of God, His Laws and Principles, threatens to disrupt the foundations of human society. The clamor of a nascent nationalism, coupled with a recrudescence of skepticism and unbelief, come as added misfortunes to a continent hitherto regarded as the symbol of age-long stability and undisturbed resignation.
From darkest Africa the first stirrings of a conscious and determined revolt against the aims and methods of political and economic imperialism can be increasingly discerned, adding their share to the growing vicissitudes of a troubled age. Not even America, which until very recently prided itself on its traditional policy of aloofness and the self-contained character of its economy, the invulnerability of its institutions and the evidences of its growing prosperity and prestige, has been able to resist the impelling forces that have swept her into the vortex of an economic hurricane that now threatens to impair the basis of her own industrial and economic life. Even far-away Australia, which, owing to its remoteness from the storm-centers of Europe, would have been expected to be immune from the trials and torments of an ailing continent, has been caught in this whirlpool of passion and strife, impotent to extricate herself from their ensnaring influence.
Never indeed have there been such widespread and basic upheavals, whether in the social, economic or political spheres of human activity as those now going on in different parts of the world. Never have there been so many and varied sources of danger as those that now threaten the structure of society. The following words of Bahá’u’lláh are indeed significant as we pause to reflect upon the present state of a strangely disordered world: “How long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of society? The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.”
The disquieting influence of over thirty
million souls living under minority
conditions throughout the continent of Europe;
the vast and ever-swelling army
of the unemployed with its crushing
burden and demoralizing influence on governments and
peoples; the wicked, unbridled race of
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armaments swallowing
an ever-increasing share
of the substance of already impoverished
nations; the utter demoralization from
which the international financial markets
are now increasingly suffering; the
onslaught of secularism invading what has
hitherto been regarded as the impregnable
strongholds of Christian and Muslim
orthodoxy—these stand out as the gravest
symptoms that bode ill for the future stability
of the structure of modern civilization.
Little wonder if one of Europe's preeminent
thinkers, honored for his wisdom and
restraint, should have been forced to make so
bold an assertion: “The world is passing
through the gravest crisis in the history of
civilization.” “We stand,” writes another,
"before either a world catastrophe,
or perhaps before the dawn of a greater era of
truth and wisdom.” “It is in such times,”
he adds, “that religions have perished and
are born.”
Might we not already discern, as we scan the political horizon, the alignment of those forces that are dividing afresh the continent of Europe into camps of potential combatants, determined upon a contest that may mark, unlike the last war, the end of an epoch, a vast epoch, in the history of human evolution? Are we, the privileged custodians of a priceless Faith, called upon to witness a cataclysmical change, politically as fundamental and spiritually as beneficent as that which precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the West? Might it not happen—every vigilant adherent of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh might well pause to reflect—that out of this world eruption there may stream forces of such spiritual energy as shall recall, nay eclipse, the splendor of those signs and wonders that accompanied the establishment of the Faith of Jesus Christ? Might there not emerge out of the agony of a shaken world a religious revival of such scope and power as to even transcend the potency of those world-directing forces with which the Religions of the Past have, at fixed intervals and according to an inscrutable Wisdom, revived the fortunes of declining ages and peoples? Might not the bankruptcy of this present, this highly-vaunted materialistic civilization, in itself clear away the choking weeds that now hinder the unfoldment and future efflorescence of God’s struggling Faith?
Let Bahá’u’lláh Himself shed the illumination of His words upon our path as we steer our course amid the pitfalls and miseries of this troubled age. More than fifty years ago, in a world far removed from the ills and trials that now torment it, there flowed from His Pen these prophetic words: "The world is in travail and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then and only then will the Divine Standard be unfurled and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody.”
Dearly - beloved friends! Humanity, whether viewed in the light of man’s individual conduct or in the existing relationships between organized communities and nations, has, alas, strayed too far and suffered too great a decline to be redeemed through the unaided efforts of the best among its recognized rulers and statesmen-however disinterested their motives, however concerted their action, however unsparing in their zeal and devotion to its cause. No scheme which the calculations of the highest statesmanship may yet devise, no doctrine which the most distinguished exponents of economic theory may hope to advance, no principle which the most ardent of moralists may strive to inculcate, can provide, in the last resort, adequate foundations upon which the future of a distracted world can be built. No appeal for mutual tolerance which the worldly-wise might raise, however compelling and insistent, can calm its passions or help restore its vigor. Nor would any general scheme of mere organized international cooperation, in whatever sphere of human activity, however ingenious in conception or extensive in scope, succeed in removing the root cause of the evil that has so rudely upset the equilibrium of present day society. Not even, I venture to assert, would the very act of devising the machinery required for the political and
The new garden and entrance to the Báb’s Shrine, looking westward.
New garden and approach to the Báb’s Shrine, looking eastward towards the Íránian Pilgrim House.
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economic unification
of the world—a principle that has been
increasingly advocated in
recent times—provide in itself the antidote
against the poison that is steadily undermining
the vigor of organized peoples and nations.
What else, might we not confidently affirm, but the unreserved acceptance of the Divine Program enunciated, with such simplicity and force as far back as sixty years ago, by Bahá’u’lláh, embodying in its essentials God’s divinely appointed scheme for the unification of mankind in this age, coupled with an indomitable conviction in the unfailing efficacy of each and all of its provisions, is eventually capable of withstanding the forces of internal disintegration which, if unchecked, must needs continue to eat into the vitals of a despairing society. It is towards this goal—the goal of a new World Order, Divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, equitable in principle, challenging in its features—that a harassed humanity must strive.
To claim to have grasped all the implications of Bahá’u’lláh’s prodigious scheme for world-wide human solidarity, or to have fathomed its import, would be presumptuous on the part of even the declared supporters of His Faith. To attempt to visualize it in all its possibilities, to estimate its future benefits, to picture its glory, would be premature at even so advanced a stage in the evolution of mankind.
All we can reasonably venture to attempt is to strive to obtain a glimpse of the first streaks of the promised Dawn that must, in the fullness of time, chase away the gloom that has encircled humanity. All we can do is to point out, in their broadest outlines, what appears to us to be the guiding principles underlying the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, as amplified and enunciated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of His Covenant with all mankind and the appointed, Interpreter and Expounder of His Word.
That the unrest and suffering afflicting the mass of mankind are in no small measure the direct consequences of the World War and are attributable to the unwisdom and shortsightedness of the framers of the Peace Treaties only a biased mind can refuse to admit. That the financial obligations contracted in the course of the war, as well as the imposition of a staggering burden of reparations upon the vanquished, have, to a very great extent, been responsible for the maldistribution and consequent shortage of the world's monetary gold supply, which in turn has, to a very great measure, accentuated the phenomenal fall in prices and thereby relentlessly increased the burdens of impoverished countries, no impartial mind would question. That intergovernmental debts have imposed a severe strain on the masses of the people in Europe, have upset the equilibrium of national budgets, have crippled national industries, and led to an increase in the number of the unemployed, is no less apparent to an unprejudiced observer. That the spirit of vindictiveness, of suspicion, of fear and rivalry, engendered by the war, and which the provisions of the Peace Treaties have served to perpetuate and foster, has led to an enormous increase of national competitive armaments, involving during the last year the aggregate expenditure of no less than a thousand million pounds, which in turn has accentuated the effects of the worldwide depression, is a truth that even the most superficial observer will readily admit. That a narrow and brutal nationalism, which the post-war theory of self-determination has served to reinforce, has been chiefly responsible for the policy of high and prohibitive tariffs, so injurious to the healthy flow of international trade and to the mechanism of international finance, is a fact which few would venture to dispute.
It would be idle, however, to contend that
the war, with all the losses it involved,
the passions it aroused and the
grievances it left
behind, has solely been responsible for the
unprecedented confusion into which almost
every section of the civilized world is
plunged at present. Is it not a fact—and
this is the central idea I desire to emphasize
—that the fundamental cause of this world
unrest is attributable, not so much to the
consequences of what must sooner or later
come to be regarded as a transitory
dislocation in the affairs of a
continually changing
world, but rather to the failure
of those into whose hands the
immediate destinies
of peoples and nations have been committed, to
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adjust their systems
of economic and political institutions
to the imperative needs
of a fast evolving age? Are not
these intermittent crises that
convulse present-day
society due primarily to the
lamentable inability of the world’s
recognized leaders to
read aright the signs of the times, to rid
themselves once for all of their preconceived
ideas and fettering creeds, and to reshape
the machinery of their respective
governments according to those
standards that are
implicit in Bahá’u’lláh’s supreme
declaration of the Oneness of
Mankind—the chief
and distinguishing feature of the Faith He
proclaimed? For the principle
of the Oneness of Mankind,
the corner-stone of Bahá’u’lláh’s
world-embracing dominion, implies
nothing more or less than the enforcement
of His scheme for the unification of the
world—the scheme to which we have already
referred. “In every Dispensation,” writes
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “the light of Divine Guidance
has been focussed upon one central theme.
. . . In this wondrous Revelation,
this glorious century, the
foundation of the Faith of
God and the distinguishing feature of His
Law is the consciousness of the Oneness of
Mankind.”
How pathetic indeed are the efforts of these leaders of human institutions who, in utter disregard of the spirit of the age, are striving to adjust national processes, suited to the ancient days of self-contained nations, to an age which must either achieve the unity of the world, as adumbrated by Bahá’u’lláh, or perish. At so critical an hour in the history of civilization it behooves the leaders of all the nations of the world, great and small, whether in the East or in the West, whether victors or vanquished, to give heed to the clarion call of Bahá’u’lláh and, thoroughly imbued with a sense of world solidarity, the sine quâ non of loyalty to His Cause, arise manfully to carry out in its entirety the one remedial scheme He, the Divine Physician, has prescribed for an ailing humanity. Let them discard, once for all, every preconceived idea, every national prejudice, and give heed to the sublime counsel of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the authorized Expounder of His teachings. “You can best serve your country,” was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s rejoinder to a high official in the service of the federal government of the United States of America, who had questioned Him as to the best manner in which he could promote the interests of his government and people, "if you strive, in your capacity as a citizen of the world, to assist in the eventual application of the principle of federalism underlying the government of your own country to the relationships now existing between the peoples and nations of the world.”
In “The Secret of Divine Civilization” (“The Mysterious Forces of Civilization”), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s outstanding contribution to the future re-organization of the world, we read the following:
"True civilization will unfurl its banner
in the midmost heart of the world whenever
a certain number of its distinguished
and high-minded sovereigns—the shining
exemplars of devotion and
determination—shall, for the good and
happiness of all mankind, arise,
with firm resolve and clear
vision, to establish the Cause of Universal
Peace. They must make the Cause of Peace
the object of general consultation, and seek
by every means in their power to establish
a Union of the nations of the world. They
must conclude a binding treaty and
establish a covenant, the provisions of which shall
be sound, inviolable and definite. They must
proclaim it to all the world and obtain for
it the sanction of all the human race. This
supreme and noble undertaking—the real
source of the peace and well-being of all
the world—should be regarded as sacred by
all that dwell on earth. All the forces of
humanity must be mobilized to ensure the
stability and permanence of this Most Great
Covenant. In this all-embracing pact the
limits and frontiers of each and every
nation should be clearly fixed, the principles
underlying the relations of governments
towards one another definitely laid down,
and all international agreements and
obligations ascertained. In like
manner, the size of the armaments
of every government
should be strictly limited, for if
the preparations for war
and the military forces of any
nation should be allowed to increase, they
will arouse the suspicion of others. The
fundamental principle underlying
this solemn Pact should be so fixed
that if any government later
violate any one of its
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provisions, all
the governments on earth should
arise to reduce it to utter submission, nay
the human race as a whole should resolve,
with every power at its disposal, to destroy
that government. Should this greatest of
all remedies be applied to the sick body of
the world, it will assuredly recover from its
ills and will remain eternally safe and secure.”
"A few,” He further adds, “unaware of the power latent in human endeavor, consider this matter as highly impracticable, nay even beyond the scope of man’s utmost efforts. Such is not the case, however. On the contrary, thanks to the unfailing grace of God, the loving-kindness of His favored ones, the endeavors of unrivalled wise and capable souls, and the thoughts and ideas of the peerless leaders of this age, nothing whatsoever can be regarded as unattainable. Endeavor, ceaseless endeavor, is required. Nothing short of an indomitable determination can possibly achieve it. Many a cause past ages have regarded as purely visionary, yet in this day have become most easy and practicable. Why should this most great and lofty cause—the day-star of the firmament of true civilization and the cause of the glory, the advancement, the well-being and the success of all humanity be regarded as impossible of achievement? Surely the day will come when its beauteous light shall shed illumination upon the assemblage of man.”
In one of His Tablets ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, elucidating further His noble theme, reveals the following:
“In cycles gone by, though harmony was established, yet, owing to the absence of means, the unity of all mankind could not have been achieved. Continents remained widely divided, nay even among the peoples of one and the same continent association and interchange of thought were well nigh impossible. Consequently intercourse, understanding and unity amongst all the peoples and kindreds of the earth were unattainable. In this day, however, means of communication have multiplied, and the five continents of the earth have virtually merged into one. . . . In like manner all the members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is self-sufficiency any longer possible, inasmuch as political ties unite all peoples and nations, and the bonds of trade and industry, of agriculture and education, are being strengthened every day. Hence the unity of all mankind can in this day be achieved. Verily this is none other but one of the wonders of this wondrous age, this glorious century. Of this past ages have been deprived, for this century—the century of light—has been endowed with unique and unprecedented glory, power and illumination. Hence the miraculous unfolding of a fresh marvel every day. Eventually it will be seen how bright its candles will burn in the assemblage of man.
“Behold how its light is now dawning upon the world's darkened horizon. The first candle is unity in the political realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned. The second candle is unity of thought in world undertakings, the consummation of which will ere long be witnessed. The third candle is unity in freedom which will surely come to pass. The fourth candle is unity in religion which is the corner-stone of the foundation itself, and which, by the power of God, will be revealed in all its splendor. The fifth candle is the unity of nations—a unity which in this century will be securely established, causing all the peoples of the world to regard themselves as citizens of one common fatherland. The sixth candle is unity of races, making of all that dwell on earth peoples and kindreds of one race. The seventh candle is unity of language, that is, the choice of a universal tongue in which all peoples will be instructed and converse. Each and every one of these will inevitably come to pass, inasmuch as the power of the Kingdom of God will aid and assist in their realization.”
Over sixty years ago, in His Tablet to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh, addressing "the concourse of the rulers of the earth,” revealed the following:
“Take ye counsel together, and let your
concern be only for that which profiteth
mankind and bettereth the condition
thereof. . . . Regard the world as
the human body which though created whole and
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perfect has
been afflicted, through divers
causes, with grave ills and maladies. Not
for one day did it rest, nay its sicknesses
waxed more severe, as it fell under
the treatment of unskilled physicians who have
spurred on the steed of their worldly
desires and have erred grievously. And, if at
one time, through the care of an
able physician, a member of that body was healed,
the rest remained afflicted as before. Thus
informeth you the All-Knowing, the
All-Wise. . . . That which the Lord
hath ordained as a 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. This can
in no wise be achieved except through the
power of a skilled, all-powerful and inspired
Physician. This verily is the truth, and all
else naught but error.”
In a further passage Bahá’u’lláh adds these words:
"We see you adding every year unto your expenditures and laying the burden thereof on the people whom ye rule; this verily is naught but grievous injustice. Fear the sighs and tears of this wronged One, and burden not your peoples beyond that which they can endure. . . . Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may need armaments no more save in a measure to safeguard your territories and dominions. Be united, O concourse of the sovereigns of the world, for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you and your peoples find rest. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.”
What else could these weighty words signify if they did not point to the inevitable curtailment of unfettered national sovereignty as an indispensable preliminary to the formation of the future Commonwealth of all the nations of the world? 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. 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 will have been finally extinguished; in which a single code of international law—the product of the considered judgment of the world's federated representatives—shall have as its sanction the instant and coercive intervention of the combined forces of the federated units; 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—such indeed, appears, in its broadest outline, the Order anticipated by Bahá’u’lláh, an Order that shall come to be regarded as the fairest fruit of a slowly maturing age.
"The Tabernacle of Unity,” Bahá’u’lláh proclaims in His message to all mankind, "has been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. . . . Of one tree are all ye the fruit and of one bough the leaves. . . . The world is but one country and mankind its citizens. . . . Let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.”
Let there be no misgivings as to the
animating purpose of the world-wide Law of
Bahá’u’lláh. Far from aiming at the
subversion of the existing foundations
of society, it seeks to broaden its basis,
to remold its institutions in a manner consonant
with the needs of an ever-changing world.
It can conflict with no legitimate
allegiances, nor can it undermine essential
loyalties. Its purpose is neither to stifle the
flame of a sane and intelligent patriotism in
men’s hearts, nor to abolish the system
of [Page 277]
national autonomy
so essential if the evils
of excessive centralization are to be avoided.
It does not ignore, nor does it attempt to
suppress the diversity of ethnical origins, of
climate, of history, of language and
tradition, of thought and habit, that differentiate
the peoples and nations of the world. It
calls for a wider loyalty, for a
larger aspiration than any that
has animated the human
race. It insists upon the subordination of
national impulses and interests
to the imperative claims of a unified
world. It repudiates excessive
centralization on one
hand, and disclaims all attempts
at uniformity on the other.
Its watchword is unity in
diversity such as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself has
explained:
“Consider the flowers of a garden. Though differing in kind, color, form and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun, this diversity increaseth their charm and addeth unto their beauty. How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruit, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color! Diversity of hues, form and shape enricheth and adorneth the garden, and heighteneth the effect thereof. In like manner, when divers shades of thought, temperament, and character, are brought together under the power and influence of one central agency, the beauty and glory of human perfection will be revealed and made manifest. Naught but the celestial potency of the Word of God, which ruleth and transcendeth the realities of all things, is capable of harmonizing the divergent thoughts, sentiments, ideas and convictions of the children of men.”
The call of Bahá’u’lláh is primarily directed against all forms of provincialism, all insularities and prejudices. If long-cherished ideals and time-honored institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulas have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer administer to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine.
Let there be no mistake. 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 re-awakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering 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 constitutes a challenge, at once bold and universal, to outworn shibboleths of national creeds—creeds that have had their day and which must, in the ordinary course of events as shaped and controlled by Providence, give way to a new gospel, fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, what the world has already conceived. 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.
It represents the consummation of
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human
evolution—an evolution that has had
its earliest beginnings in the birth of family
life, its subsequent development in the
achievement of tribal solidarity, leading in
turn to the constitution of the city-state,
and expanding later into the institution of
independent and sovereign nations.
The principle of the Oneness of Mankind, as proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, carries with it, no more and no less, than a solemn assertion that attainment to this final stage in this stupendous evolution is not only necessary but inevitable, that its realization is fast approaching, and that nothing short of a power that is born of God can succeed in establishing it.
So marvellous a conception finds its earliest manifestations in the efforts consciously exerted and the modest beginnings already achieved by the declared adherents of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh who, conscious of the sublimity of their calling and initiated into the ennobling principles of His Administration, are forging ahead to establish His Kingdom on this earth. It has its indirect manifestations in the gradual diffusion of the spirit of world solidarity which is spontaneously arising out of the welter of a disorganized society.
It would be stimulating to follow the history of the growth and development of this lofty conception which must increasingly engage the attention of the responsible custodians of the destinies of peoples and nations. To the states and principalities just emerging from the welter of the great Napoleonic upheaval, whose chief preoccupation was either to recover their rights to an independent existence or to achieve their national unity, the conception of world solidarity seemed not only remote but inconceivable. It was not until the forces of nationalism had succeeded in overthrowing the foundations of the Holy Alliance that had sought to curb their rising power, that the possibility of a world order, transcending in its range the political institutions these nations had established, came to be seriously entertained. It was not until after the World War that these exponents of arrogant nationalism came to regard such an order as the object of a pernicious doctrine tending to sap that essential loyalty upon which the continued existence of their national life depended. With a vigor that recalled the energy with which the members of the Holy Alliance sought to stifle the spirit of a rising nationalism among the peoples liberated from the Napoleonic yoke, those champions of an unfettered national sovereignty, in their turn, have labored and are still laboring to discredit principles upon which their own salvation must ultimately depend.
The fierce opposition which greeted the abortive scheme of the Geneva Protocol; the ridicule poured upon the proposal for a United States of Europe which was subsequently advanced, and the failure of the general scheme for the economic union of Europe, may appear as setbacks to the efforts which a handful of foresighted people are earnestly exerting to advance this noble ideal. And yet, are we not justified in deriving fresh encouragement when we observe that the very consideration of such proposals is in itself an evidence of their steady growth in the minds and hearts of men. In the organized attempts that are being made to discredit so exalted a conception are we not witnessing the repetition, on a larger scale, of those stirring struggles and fierce controversies that preceded the birth, and assisted in the reconstruction, of the unified nations of the West?
To take but one instance. How confident
were the assertions made in the
days preceding the unification of the states of the
North American continent regarding the
insuperable barriers that stood in the way
of their ultimate federation! Was it not
widely and emphatically declared that the
conflicting interests, the mutual distrust, the
differences of government and habit that
divided the states were such as no force,
whether spiritual or temporal, could ever
hope to harmonize or control? And yet
how different were the conditions prevailing
a hundred and fifty years ago from those
that characterize present-day society! It
would indeed be no exaggeration to say that
the absence of those facilities which modern
scientific progress has placed at the service
of humanity in our time made of the
problem of welding the American states into a
single federation a task infinitely more
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complex than that
which confronts a divided humanity
in its efforts to achieve
the unification of all mankind.
Who knows that for so exalted a conception to take shape a suffering more intense than any it has yet experienced will have to be inflicted upon humanity? Could anything less than the fire of a civil war with all its violence and vicissitudes—a war that nearly rent the great American Republic have welded the states, not only into a Union of independent units, but into a Nation, in spite of all the ethnic differences that characterized its component parts? That so fundamental a revolution, involving such far-reaching changes in the structure of society, can be achieved through the ordinary processes of diplomacy and education seems highly improbable. We have but to turn our gaze to humanity’s bloodstained history to realize that nothing short of intense mental as well as physical agony has been able to precipitate those epoch-making changes that constitute the greatest landmarks in the history of human civilization.
Great and far-reaching as have been those changes in the past, they cannot but appear, when viewed in their proper perspective, except as subsidiary adjustments preluding that transformation of unparalleled majesty and scope which humanity is in this age bound to undergo. That the forces of a world catastrophe can alone precipitate such a new phase of human thought is, alas, becoming increasingly apparent. That nothing short of the fire of a severe ordeal, unparalleled in its intensity, can fuse and weld the discordant entities, that constitute the elements of present-day civilization, into the integral components of the world Commonwealth of the future is a truth which future events will increasingly demonstrate.
The prophetic voice of Bahá’u’lláh warning, in the concluding passages of the Hidden Words, “the peoples of the world” that "an unforeseen calamity is following them and that grievous retribution awaiteth them” throws indeed a lurid light upon the immediate fortunes of sorrowing humanity. Nothing but a fiery ordeal, out of which humanity will emerge, chastened and prepared, can succeed in implanting that sense of responsibility which the leaders of a newborn age must arise to shoulder.
I would again direct your attention to those ominous words of Bahá’u’lláh which I have already quoted: “And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake.”
Has not ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself asserted in unequivocal language that “another war, fiercer than the last, will assuredly break out”?
Upon the consummation of this colossal, this unspeakably glorious enterprise—an enterprise that baffled the resources of Roman statesmanship and which Napoleon’s desperate efforts failed to achieve—will depend the ultimate realization of that millennium of which poets of all ages have sung and seers have long dreamed. Upon it will depend the fulfillment of the prophecies uttered by the Prophets of old when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and the lion and the lamb lie down together. It alone can usher in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father as anticipated by the Faith of Jesus Christ. It alone can lay the foundation for the New World Order visualized by Bahá’u’lláh—a World Order that shall reflect, however dimly, upon this earthly plane, the ineffable splendors of the Abhá Kingdom.
One word more in conclusion. The proclamation of the Oneness of Mankind—the head corner-stone of Bahá’u’lláh’s all-embracing dominion—can under no circumstances be compared with such expressions of pious hope as have been uttered in the past. His is not merely a call which He raised, alone and unaided, in the face of the relentless and combined opposition of two of the most powerful Oriental potentates of His day—while Himself an exile and prisoner in their hands. It implies at once a warning and a promise—a warning that in it lies the sole means for the salvation of a greatly suffering world, a promise that its realization is at hand.
Uttered at a time when its possibility had
not yet been seriously envisaged in any part
of the world, it has, by virtue of
that celestial potency which
the Spirit of Bahá’u’lláh
has breathed into it, come at last to be
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regarded, by an increasing
number of thoughtful men, not only as an
approaching possibility, but
as the necessary outcome of the
forces now operating in the world.
Surely the world, contracted and transformed into a single highly complex organism by the marvellous progress achieved in the realm of physical science, by the worldwide expansion of commerce and industry, and struggling, under the pressure of world economic forces, amidst the pitfalls of a materialistic civilization, stands in dire need of a restatement of the Truth underlying all the Revelations of the past in a language suited to its essential requirements. And what voice other than that of Bahá’u’lláh—the Mouthpiece of God for this age—is capable of effecting a transformation of society as radical as that which He has already accomplished in the hearts of those men and women, so diversified and seemingly irreconcilable, who constitute the body of His declared followers throughout the world?
That such a mighty conception is fast budding out in the minds of men, that voices are being raised in its support, that its salient features must fast crystallize in the consciousness of those who are in authority, few indeed can doubt. That its modest beginnings have already taken shape in the world-wide Administration with which the adherents of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh stands associated only those whose hearts are tainted by prejudice can fail to perceive.
Ours, dearly-beloved co-workers, is the paramount duty to continue, with undimmed vision and unabated zeal, to assist in the final erection of that Edifice the foundations of which Bahá’u’lláh has laid in our hearts. Ours is the duty to derive added hope and strength from the general trend of recent events, however dark their immediate effects, and to pray with unremitting fervor that He may hasten the approach of the realization of that Wondrous Vision which constitutes the brightest emanation of His Mind and the fairest fruit of the fairest civilization the world has yet seen.
Might not the hundredth anniversary 1 of the Declaration of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh mark the inauguration of so vast an era in human history? (November 28, 1931.)
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11963.
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NON-POLITICAL CHARACTER OF THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH
We stand too close to so colossal a Revelation to expect in this, the first century of its era, to arrive at a just estimate of its towering grandeur, its infinite possibilities, its transcendent beauty. Small though our present numbers may be, however limited our capacities, or circumscribed our influence, we, into whose hands so pure, so tender, so precious, a heritage has been entrusted, should at all times strive, with unrelaxing vigilance, to abstain from any thoughts, words, or deeds, that might tend to dim its brilliance or injure its growth. . . .
Dear friends: Clear and emphatic as are the instructions which our departed Master has reiterated in countless Tablets bequeathed by Him to his followers throughout the world, a few, owing to the restricted influence of the Cause in the West, have been purposely withheld from the body of His occidental disciples, who, despite their numerical inferiority, are now exercising such a preponderating influence in the direction and administration of its affairs. I feel it, therefore, incumbent upon me to stress, now that the time is ripe, the importance of an instruction which, at the present stage of the evolution of our Faith, should be increasingly emphasized, irrespective of its application to the East or to the West. And this principle is no other than that which involves the non-participation by the adherents of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, whether in their individual capacities or collectively as local or national Assemblies, in any form of activity that might be interpreted, either directly or indirectly, as an interference in the political affairs of any particular government. Whether it be in the publications which they initiate and supervise; or in their official and public deliberations; or in the posts they occupy and the services they render; or in the communications they address to their fellow-disciples; or in their
Gathered together under the Big Tree at Geyserville, California, at the Nineteen Day Feast, July, 1936.
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dealings with men of
eminence and authority; or in their
affiliations with kindred societies
and organizations, it is, I am firmly
convinced, their first and sacred obligation
to abstain from any word or deed that might
be construed as a violation of this vital
principle. Theirs is the duty to demonstrate,
on one hand, their unqualified loyalty
and obedience to whatever is the
considered judgment of
their respective governments.
Let them refrain from associating themselves, whether by word or by deed, with the political pursuits of their respective nations, with the policies of their governments and the schemes and programs of parties and factions. In such controversies they should assign no blame, take no side, further no design, and identify themselves with no system prejudicial to the best interests of that world-wide Fellowship which it is their aim to guard and foster. Let them beware lest they allow themselves to become the tools of unscrupulous politicians, or to be entrapped by the treacherous devices of the plotters and the perfidious among their countrymen. Let them so shape their lives and regulate their conduct that no charge of secrecy, of fraud, of bribery or of intimidation may, however ill-founded, be brought against them. Let them rise above all particularism and partisanship, above the vain disputes, the petty calculations, the transient passions that agitate the face, and engage the attention, of a changing world. It is their duty to strive to distinguish, as clearly as they possibly can, and if needed with the aid of their elected representatives, such posts and functions as are either diplomatic or political from those that are purely administrative in character, and which under no circumstances are affected by the changes and chances that political activities and party government, in every land, must necessarily involve. Let them affirm their unyielding determination to stand, firmly and unreservedly, for the way of Bahá’u’lláh, to avoid the entanglements and bickerings inseparable from the pursuits of the politician, and to become worthy agencies of that Divine Polity which incarnates God’s immutable Purpose for all men.
It should be made unmistakably clear that such an attitude implies neither the slightest indifference to the cause and interests of their own country, nor involves any insubordination on their part to the authority of recognized and established governments. Nor does it constitute a repudiation of their sacred obligation to promote, in the most effective manner, the best interests of their government and people. It indicates the desire cherished by every true and loyal follower of Bahá’u’lláh to serve, in an unselfish, unostentatious and patriotic fashion, the highest interests of the country to which he belongs, and in a way that would entail no departure from the high standards of integrity and truthfulness associated with the teachings of His Faith. (March 21, 1932.)
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AMERICA AND THE MOST GREAT PEACE
Dearly-beloved friends! It is not for me,
nor does it seem within the competence of
any one of the present generation, to trace
the exact and full history of the rise and
gradual consolidation of this invincible arm,
this mighty organ, of a continually
advancing Cause. It would be premature at this
early stage of its evolution, to attempt an
exhaustive analysis, or to arrive at a just
estimate, of the impelling forces that have
urged it forward to occupy so exalted a
place among the various instruments which
the Hand of Omnipotence has fashioned,
and is now perfecting, for the execution of
His divine Purpose. Future historians of
this mighty Revelation, endowed with pens
abler than any which its present-day
supporters can claim to possess, will no doubt
transmit to posterity a masterly exposition
of the origins of those forces which, through
a remarkable swing of the pendulum, have
caused the administrative center of the
Faith to gravitate, away from its cradle, to
the shores of the American continent and
towards its very heart—the present
mainspring and chief bulwark of its fast evolving
institutions. On them will devolve the task
of recording the history, and of estimating
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the significance,
of so radical a revolution in
the fortunes of a slowly maturing Faith.
Theirs will be the opportunity to extol the
virtues and to immortalize the memory of
those men and women who have participated
in its accomplishment. Theirs will
be the privilege of evaluating the share
which each of these champion-builders of
the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh has had in
ushering in that golden Millennium, the
promise of which lies enshrined in His teachings.
Does not the history of primitive Christianity and of the rise of Islám, each in its own way, offer a striking parallel to this strange phenomenon the beginnings of which we are now witnessing in this, the first century of the Bahá’í Era? Has not the Divine Impulse which gave birth to each of these great religious systems been driven, through the operation of those forces which the irresistible growth of the Faith itself had released, to seek away from the land of its birth and in more propitious climes a ready field and a more adequate medium for the incarnation of its spirit and the propagation of its cause? Have not the Asiatic churches of Jerusalem, of Antioch and of Alexandria, consisting chiefly of those Jewish converts, whose character and temperament inclined them to sympathize with the traditional ceremonies of the Mosaic Dispensation, been forced, as they steadily declined, to recognize the growing ascendancy of their Greek and Roman brethren? Have they not been compelled to acknowledge the superior valor and the trained efficiency which have enabled these standard-bearers of the Cause of Jesus Christ to erect the symbols of His world-wide dominion on the ruins of a collapsing Empire? Has not the animating spirit of Islám been constrained, under the pressure of similar circumstances, to abandon the inhospitable wastes of its Arabian Home, the theatre of its greatest sufferings and exploits, to yield in a distant land the fairest fruit of its slowly maturing civilization?
"From the beginning of time until the present day,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself affirms, "the light of Divine Revelation hath risen in the East and shed its radiance upon the West. The illumination thus shed hath, however, acquired in the West an extraordinary brilliancy. Consider the Faith proclaimed by Jesus. Though it first appeared in the East, yet not until its light had been shed upon the West did the full measure of its potentialities be manifest.” "The day is approaching,” He, in another passage, assures us, "when ye shall witness how, through the splendor of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, the West will have replaced the East, radiating the light of Divine Guidance.” "In the books of the Prophets,” He again asserts, "certain glad-tidings are recorded which are absolutely true and free from doubt. The East hath ever been the dawning-place of the Sun of Truth. In the East all the Prophets of God have appeared. . . . The West hath acquired illumination from the East but in some respects the reflection of the light hath been greater in the Occident. This is specially true of Christianity. Jesus Christ appeared in Palestine and His teachings were founded in that country. Although the doors of the Kingdom were first opened in that land and the bestowals of God were spread broadcast from its center, the people of the West have embraced and promulgated Christianity more fully than the people of the East.”
Little wonder that from the same unerring
pen there should have flowed, after
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s memorable visit to the West,
these often-quoted words, the significance
of which it would be impossible for me to
overrate:
"The continent of America,” He
announced in a Tablet unveiling His Divine
Plan to the believers residing in
the North-Eastern States of the American Republic,
"is in the eyes of the one true God the land wherein the splendors of His light shall be revealed, where the righteous will abide and the free assemble.” "May this American democracy,”
He Himself, while in America, was heard to remark,
"be the first nation to establish the foundation of international agreement. May it be the first nation to proclaim the unity of mankind. May it be the first to unfurl the standard of the ‘Most Great Peace.’ . . . The American people are indeed worthy of being the first to build the tabernacle of the great peace and proclaim the oneness of mankind. . . . May America become the distributing center of spiritual enlightenment and all the world receive this
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heavenly blessing. For America has developed powers and capacities greater and more wonderful than any other nations. . . . May the inhabitants of this country become like angels of heaven with faces turned continually toward God. May all of them become servants of the omnipotent One. May they rise from their present material attainments to such a height that heavenly illumination may stream from this center to all the peoples of the world. . . . This American nation is equipped and empowered to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the world and be blest in both the East and the West for the triumph of its people. . . . The American continent gives signs and evidences of very great advancement. Its future is even more promising, for its influence and illumination are far-reaching. It will lead all nations spiritually.”
Would it seem extravagant, in the light of so sublime an utterance, to expect that in the midst of so enviable a region of the earth and out of the agony and wreckage of an unprecedented crisis there should burst forth a spiritual renaissance which, as it propagates itself through the instrumentality of the American believers, will rehabilitate the fortunes of a decadent age? It was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself, His most intimate associates testify, Who, on more than one occasion, intimated that the establishment of His Father’s Faith in the North American continent ranked as the most outstanding among the threefold aims which, as He conceived it, constituted the principal objective of His ministry. It was He who, in the heyday of His life and almost immediately after His Father’s ascension, conceived the idea of inaugurating His mission by enlisting the inhabitants of so promising a country under the banner of Bahá’u’lláh. He it was Who in His unerring wisdom and out of the abundance of His heart chose to bestow on His favored disciples, to the very last day of His life, the tokens of His unfailing solicitude and to overwhelm them with the marks of His special favor. It was He Who, in His declining years, as soon as delivered from the shackles of a long and cruel incarceration, decided to visit the land which had remained for so many years the object of His infinite care and love. It was He Who, through the power of His presence and the charm of His utterance, infused into the entire body of His followers those sentiments and principles which could alone sustain them amidst the trials which the very prosecution of their task would inevitably engender. Was He not, through the several functions which He exercised whilst He dwelt amongst them, whether in the laying of the corner-stone of their House of Worship, or in the Feast which He offered them and at which He chose to serve them in person, or in the emphasis which He on a more solemn occasion placed on the implications of His spiritual station—was He not, thereby, deliberately bequeathing to them all the essentials of that spiritual heritage which He knew they would ably safeguard and by their deeds continually enrich? And finally who can doubt that in the Divine Plan which, in the evening of His life, He unveiled to their eyes He was investing them with that spiritual primacy on which they could rely in the fulfillment of their high destiny?
"O ye apostles of Bahá’u’lláh!” He thus
addresses them in one of His Tablets,
"May my life be sacrificed for you! . . . Behold the portals which Bahá’u’lláh hath opened before you! Consider how exalted and lofty is the station you are destined to attain; how unique the favors with which you have been endowed.” "My thoughts,”
He tells them in another passage,
"are turned towards you, and my heart leaps within me at your mention. Could ye know how my soul glows with your love, so great a happiness would flood your hearts as to cause you to become enamored with each other.” "The full measure of your success,”
He declares in another Tablet,
"is as yet unrevealed, its significance still unapprehended. Ere long ye will, with your own eyes, witness how brilliantly every one of you, even as a shining star, will radiate in the firmament of your country the light of Divine Guidance and will bestow upon its people the glory of an everlasting life.” "The range of your future achievements,”
He once more affirms,
"still remains undisclosed. I fervently hope that in the near future the whole earth may be stirred and shaken by the results of your
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achievements.” "The Almighty,”
He assures them,
"will no doubt grant you the help of His grace, will invest you with the tokens of His might, and will endue your souls with the sustaining power of His holy Spirit.” "Be not concerned,”
He admonishes them,
"with the smallness of your numbers, neither be oppressed by the multitude of an unbelieving world. . . . Exert yourselves; your mission is unspeakably glorious. Should success crown your enterprise, America will assuredly evolve into a center from which waves of spiritual power will emanate, and the throne of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude of its majesty and glory, be firmly established.” (April 21, 1933.)
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THE BAHA’I ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER
Dearly-beloved brethren in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá! With the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh the Day-Star of Divine guidance which, as foretold by Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim, had risen in Shíráz, and, while pursuing its westward course, had mounted its zenith in Adrianople, had finally sunk below the horizon of ‘Akká, never to rise again ere the complete revolution of one thousand years. The setting of so effulgent an Orb brought to a definite termination the period of Divine Revelation—the initial and most vitalizing stage in the Bahá’í era. Inaugurated by the Báb, culminating in Bahá’u’lláh, anticipated and extolled by the entire company of the Prophets of this great prophetic cycle, this period has, except for the short interval between the Báb’s martyrdom and Bahá’u’lláh’s shaking experiences in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán, been characterized by almost fifty years of continuous and progressive Revelation—a period which by its duration and fecundity must be regarded as unparalleled in the entire field of the world’s spiritual history.
The passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, on the other hand, marks the closing of the Heroic and Apostolic Age of this same Dispensation-that primitive period of our Faith the splendors of which can never be rivaled, much less be eclipsed, by the magnificence that must needs distinguish the future victories of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation. For neither the achievements of the champion-builders of the present-day institutions of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, nor the tumultuous triumphs which the heroes of its Golden Age will in the coming days succeed in winning, can measure with, or be included within the same category as, the wondrous works associated with the names of those who have generated its very life and laid its pristine foundations. That first and creative age of the Bahá’í era must, by its very nature, stand above and apart from the formative period into which we have entered and the golden age destined to succeed it.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who incarnates an institution for which we can find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world’s recognized religious systems, may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the one in which we are now laboring. His "Will and Testament” should thus be regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three ages that constitute the component parts of the Bahá’í Dispensation. The period in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit.
The creative energies released by the Law of Bahá’u’lláh, permeating and evolving within the mind of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, have, by their very impact and close interaction, given birth to an Instrument which may be viewed as the Charter of the New World Order which is at once the glory and the promise of this most great Dispensation. The Will may thus be acclaimed as the inevitable offspring resulting from that mystic intercourse between Him Who communicated the generating influence of His divine Purpose and the One Who was its vehicle and chosen recipient. Being the Child of the Covenant—the Heir of both the Originator and the Interpreter of the Law of God—the “Will and Testament” of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá can
Corner of the new extension of the terrace facing the Báb’s Shrine
A View of the new entrance to the Báb’s Shrine on Mt. Carmel, showing extension of the terrace facing the Shrine.
[Page 287]
no more be divorced
from Him Who supplied
the original and motivating impulse than
from the One Who ultimately conceived it.
Bahá’u’lláh’s inscrutable purpose, we must
ever bear in mind, has been so thoroughly
infused into the conduct of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
and their motives have been so closely
wedded together, that the mere attempt to
dissociate the teachings of the former from
any system which the ideal Exemplar of those
same teachings has established would amount
to a repudiation of one of the most sacred and
basic truths of the Faith.
The Administrative Order, which ever since ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension has evolved and is taking shape under our very eyes in no fewer than forty countries of the world, may be considered as the framework of the Will itself, the inviolable stronghold wherein this new-born child is being nurtured and developed. This Administrative Order, as it expands and consolidates itself, will no doubt manifest the potentialities and reveal the full implications of this momentous Document—this most remarkable expression of the Will of One of the most remarkable Figures of the Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh. It will, as its component parts, its organic institutions, begin to function with efficiency and vigor, assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind.
It should be noted in this connection that this Administrative Order is fundamentally different from anything that any Prophet has previously established, inasmuch as Bahá’u’lláh has Himself revealed its principles, established its institutions, appointed the person to interpret His Word and conferred the necessary authority on the body designed to supplement and apply His legislative ordinances. Therein lies the secret of its strength, its fundamental distinction, and the guarantee against disintegration and schism. Nowhere in the sacred scriptures of any of the world’s religious systems, nor even in the writings of the Inaugurator of the Bahá’í Dispensation, do we find any provisions establishing a covenant or providing for an administrative order that can compare in scope and authority with those that lie at the very basis of the Bahá’í Dispensation. Has either Christianity or Islám, to take as an instance two of the most widely diffused and outstanding among the world’s recognized religions, anything to offer that can measure with, or be regarded as equivalent to, either the Book of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant or to the “Will and Testament” of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá? Does the text of either the Gospel or the Qur’án confer sufficient authority upon those leaders and councils that have claimed the right and assumed the function of interpreting the provisions of their sacred scriptures and of administering the affairs of their respective communities? Could Peter, the admitted chief of the Apostles, or the Imám ‘Alí the cousin and legitimate successor of the Prophet, produce in support of the primacy with which both had been invested written and explicit affirmations from Christ and Muḥammad that could have silenced those who either among their contemporaries or in a later age have repudiated their authority and, by their action, precipitated the schisms that persist until the present day? Where, we may confidently ask, in the recorded sayings of Jesus Christ, whether in the matter of succession or in the provision of a set of specific laws and clearly defined administrative ordinances, as distinguished from purely spiritual principles, can we find anything approaching the detailed injunctions, laws and warnings that abound in the authenticated utterances of both Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá? Can any passage of the Qur’án, which in respect to its legal code, its administrative and devotional ordinances marks already a notable advance over previous and more corrupted Revelations, be construed as placing upon an unassailable basis the undoubted authority with which Muḥammad had, verbally and on several occasions, invested His successor? Can the Author of the Bábí Dispensation, however much He may have succeeded through the provisions of the Bayán in averting a schism as permanent and catastrophic as those that afflicted Christianity and Islám-can He be said to have produced instruments for the safeguarding of His faith as definite and efficacious as those which must for all time preserve the unity of the organized followers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh?
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Alone of all the Revelations
gone before
it this Faith has, through the explicit
directions, the repeated warnings, the
authenticated safeguards incorporated
and elaborated
in its teachings, succeeded in raising
a structure which the bewildered
followers of bankrupt and broken creeds
might well approach
and critically examine, and seek, ere it is too
late, the invulnerable security of its
world-embracing shelter.
No wonder that He Who through the operation of His Will has inaugurated so vast ands unique an Order and Who is the Center of so mighty a Covenant should have written these words: "So firm and mighty is this Covenant that from the beginning of time until the present day no religious Dispensation hath produced its like.” "Whatsoever is latent in the innermost of this holy cycle,” He wrote during the darkest and most dangerous days of His ministry, "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.” "Fear not,” are His reassuring words foreshadowing the rise of the Administrative Order established by His Will, "fear not if this Branch be severed from this material world and cast aside its leaves; nay, the leaves thereof shall flourish, for this Branch will grow after it is cut off from this world below, it shall reach the loftiest pinnacles of glory, and it shall bear such fruits as will perfume the world with their fragrance.”
To what else if not to the power and majesty which this Administrative Order—the rudiments of the future all-enfolding Bahá’í Commonwealth—is destined to manifest, can these utterances of Bahá’u’lláh allude: "The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. 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.”
The Báb Himself, in the course of His references to "Him Whom God will make manifest” anticipates the System and glorifies the World Order which the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh is destined to unfold. "Well is it with him,” is His remarkable statement in the third chapter of the Bayán, "who fixeth his gaze upon the Order of Bahá’u’lláh and rendereth thanks unto his Lord! For He will assuredly be made manifest. God hath indeed irrevocably ordained it in the Bayán.”
In the Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh where the institutions of the International and local Houses of Justice are specifically designated and formally established; in the institution of the Hands of the Cause of God which first Bahá’u’lláh and then ‘Abdu’l-Bahá brought into being; in the institution of both local and national Assemblies which in their embryonic stage were already functioning in the days preceding ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension; in the authority with which the Author of our Faith and the Center of His Covenant have in their Tablets chosen to confer upon them; in the institution of the Local Fund which operated according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s specific injunctions addressed to certain Assemblies in Írán; in the verses of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas the implications of which clearly anticipate the institution of the Guardianship; in the explanation which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in one of His Tablets, has given to, and the emphasis He has placed upon, the hereditary principle and the law of primogeniture as having been upheld by the Prophets of the past—in these we can discern the faint glimmerings and discover the earliest intimation of the nature and working of the Administrative Order which the Will of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was at a later time destined to proclaim and formally establish.
An attempt, I feel, should at the present
juncture be made to explain the character
and functions of the twin pillars that
support this mighty Administrative Structure
—the institutions of the Guardianship and
of the Universal House of Justice. To
describe in their entirety the diverse elements
that function in conjunction with these
institutions is beyond the scope and purpose of
this general exposition of the fundamental
verities of the Faith. To define with
accuracy and minuteness the features, and to
analyze exhaustively the nature of the
relationships which, on the one hand,
bind together these two fundamental organs of the
Will of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and connect, on the
other, each of them to the Author of
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the Faith and the
Center of His Covenant is
a task which future generations will no
doubt adequately fulfill. My present
intention is to elaborate certain
salient features of
this scheme which, however close we may
stand to its colossal structure, are already so
clearly defined that we find it inexcusable to
either misconceive or ignore.
It should be stated, at the very outset, in clear and unambiguous language, that these twin institutions of the Administrative Order of Bahá’u’lláh should be regarded as divine in origin, essential in their functions and complementary in their aim and purpose. Their common, their fundamental object is to insure the continuity of that divinely-appointed authority which flows from the Source of our Faith, to safeguard the unity of its followers and to maintain the integrity and flexibility of its teachings. Acting in conjunction with each other these two inseparable institutions administer its affairs, coordinate its activities, promote its interests, execute its laws and defend its subsidiary institutions. Severally, each operates within a clearly defined sphere of jurisdiction; each is equipped with its own attendant institutions —instruments designed for the effective discharge of its particular responsibilities and duties. Each exercises, within the limitations imposed upon it, its powers, its authority, its rights and prerogatives. These are neither contradictory, nor detract in the slightest degree from the position which each of these institutions occupies. Far from being incompatible or mutually destructive, they supplement each other’s authority and functions, and are permanently and fundamentally united in their aims.
Divorced from the institution of the Guardianship the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh would be mutilated and permanently deprived of that hereditary principle which, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written, has been invariably upheld by the Law of God. "In all the Divine Dispensations,” He states, in a Tablet addressed to a follower of the Faith in Írán, "the eldest son hath been given extraordinary distinctions. Even the station of prophethood hath been his birthright.” Without such an institution the integrity of the Faith would be imperiled, and the stability of the entire fabric would be gravely endangered. Its prestige would suffer, the means required to enable it to take a long, an uninterrupted view over a series of generations would be completely lacking, and the necessary guidance to define the sphere of the legislative action of its elected representatives would be totally withdrawn.
Severed from the no less essential institution of the Universal House of Justice this same system of the Will of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would be paralyzed in its action and would be powerless to fill in those gaps which the Author of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas has deliberately left in the body of His legislative and administrative ordinances.
"He is the Interpreter of the Word of God,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, referring to the functions of the Guardian of the Faith, asserts, using in His Will the very term which He Himself had chosen when refuting the argument of the Covenant-breakers who had challenged His right to interpret the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh. "After him,” He adds, "will succeed the first-born of his lineal descendants.” "The mighty stronghold,” He further explains, "shall remain impregnable and safe through obedience to him who is the Guardian of the Cause of God.” "It is incumbent upon the members of the House of Justice, upon all the Aghsán, the Afnán, the Hands of the Cause of God, to show their obedience, submissiveness and subordination unto the Guardian of the Cause of God.”
"It is incumbent upon the members of the House of Justice,” Bahá’u’lláh, on the other hand, declares in the Eighth Leaf of the Exalted Paradise, "to take counsel together regarding those things which have not outwardly been revealed in the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God will verily inspire them with whatsoever He willeth, and He verily is the Provider, the Omniscient.” "Unto the Most Holy Book” (the Kitáb-i-Aqdas), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states in His Will, "every one must turn, and all that is not expressly recorded therein must be referred to the Universal House of Justice. That which this body, whether unanimously or by a majority doth carry, that is verily the truth and the purpose of God Himself. Whoso doth deviate therefrom is verily of them that love discord, hath shown forth
A View of one of the garden walks behind the Shrine of the Báb on Mt. Carmel, Haifa.
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malice, and turned away from the Lord of the Covenant.”
Not only does ‘Abdu’l-Bahá confirm in His Will Bahá’u’lláh’s above-quoted statement, but invests this body with the additional right and power to abrogate, according to the exigencies of time, its own enactments, as well as those of a preceding House of Justice. "Inasmuch as the House of Justice,” is His explicit statement in His Will, "hath power to enact laws that are not expressly recorded in the Book and bear upon daily transactions, so also it hath power to repeal the same. . . . This it can do because these laws form no part of the divine explicit text.”
Referring to both the Guardian and the Universal House of Justice we read these emphatic words: "The sacred and youthful Branch, the Guardian of the Cause of God, as well as the Universal House of Justice to be universally elected and established, are both under the care and protection of the Abhá Beauty, under the shelter and unerring guidance of the Exalted One (the Báb) (may my life he offered up for them both). Whatsoever they decide is of God.”
From these statements it is made indubitably clear and evident that the Guardian of the Faith has been made the Interpreter of the Word and that the Universal House of Justice has been invested with the function of legislating on matters not expressly revealed in the teachings. The interpretation of the Guardian, functioning within his own sphere, is as authoritative and binding as the enactments of the International House of Justice, whose exclusive right and prerogative is to pronounce upon and deliver the final judgment on such laws and ordinances as Bahá’u’lláh has not expressly revealed. Neither can, nor will ever, infringe upon the sacred and prescribed domain of the other. Neither will seek to curtail the specific and undoubted authority with which both have been divinely invested.
Though the Guardian of the Faith has been made the permanent head of so august a body he can never, even temporarily, assume the right of exclusive legislation. He cannot override the decision of the majority of his fellow-members, but is bound to insist upon a reconsideration by them of any enactment he conscientiously believes to conflict with the meaning and to depart from the spirit of Bahá’u’lláh’s revealed utterances. He interprets what has been specifically revealed, and cannot legislate except in his capacity as member of the Universal House of Justice. He is debarred from laying down independently the constitution that must govern the organized activities of his fellow-members, and from exercising his influence in a manner that would encroach upon the liberty of those whose sacred right is to elect the body of his collaborators.
It should be borne in mind that the institution of the Guardianship has been anticipated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in an allusion He made in a Tablet addressed, long before His own ascension, to three of His friends in Írán. To their question as to whether there would be any person to whom all the Bahá’ís would be called upon to turn after His ascension He made the following reply: "As to the question ye have asked me, know verily that this is a well-guarded secret. It is even as a gem concealed within its shell. That it will be revealed is predestined. The time will come when its light will appear, when its evidences will be made manifest, and its secrets unraveled.”
Dearly beloved friends! Exalted as is the
position and vital as is the function of the
institution of the Guardianship in the
Administrative Order of Bahá’u’lláh, and
staggering as must be the weight of responsibility
which it carries, its importance must,
whatever be the language of the Will, be in no
wise over-emphasized. The Guardian of the
Faith must not under any circumstances, and
whatever his merits or his achievements, be
exalted to the rank that will make him a
co-sharer with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the unique
position which the Center of the Covenant
occupies—much less to the station exclusively
ordained for the Manifestation of God. So
grave a departure from the established tenets
of our Faith is nothing short of open
blasphemy. As I have already stated, in the
course of my references to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
station, however great the gulf that separates
Him from the Author of a Divine Revelation
it can never measure with the distance that
stands between Him Who is the Center of
Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant and the Guardians
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who are its chosen
ministers. There is a far,
far greater distance separating the Guardian
from the Center of the Covenant than there
is between the Center of the Covenant and
its Author.
No Guardian of the Faith, I feel it my solemn duty to place on record, can ever claim to be the perfect exemplar of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh or the stainless mirror that reflects His light. Though overshadowed by the unfailing, the unerring protection of Bahá’u’lláh and of the Báb, and however much he may share with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the right and obligation to interpret the Bahá’í teachings, he remains essentially human and cannot, if he wishes to remain faithful to his trust, arrogate to himself, under any pretense whatsoever, the rights, the privileges and prerogatives which Bahá’u’lláh has chosen to confer upon His Son. In the light of this truth to pray to the Guardian of the Faith, to address him as lord and master, to designate him as his holiness, to seek his benediction, to celebrate his birthday, or to commemorate any event associated with his life would be tantamount to a departure from those established truths that are enshrined within our beloved Faith. The fact that the Guardian has been specifically endowed with such power as he may need to reveal the purport and disclose the implications of the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá does not necessarily confer upon him a station co-equal with those Whose words he is called upon to interpret. He can exercise that right and discharge this obligation and yet remain infinitely inferior to both of them in rank and different in nature.
To the integrity of this cardinal principle of our Faith the words, the deeds of its present and future Guardians must abundantly testify. By their conduct and example they must needs establish its truth upon an unassailable foundation and transmit to future generations unimpeachable evidences of its reality.
For my own part to hesitate in recognizing so vital a truth or to vacillate in proclaiming so firm a conviction must constitute a shameless betrayal of the confidence reposed in me by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and an unpardonable usurpation of the authority with which He Himself has been invested.
A word should now be said regarding the theory on which this Administrative Order is based and the principle that must govern the operation of its chief institutions. It would be utterly misleading to attempt a comparison between this unique, this divinely-conceived Order and any of the diverse systems which the minds of men, at various periods of their history, have contrived for the government of human institutions. Such an attempt would in itself betray a lack of complete appreciation of the excellence of the handiwork of its great Author. How could it be otherwise when we remember that this Order constitutes the very pattern of that divine civilization which the almighty Law of Bahá’u’lláh is designed to establish upon earth? The divers and evershifting systems of human polity, whether past or present, whether originating in the East or in the West, offer no adequate criterion wherewith to estimate the potency of its hidden virtues or to appraise the solidity of its foundations.
The Bahá’í Commonwealth of the future, of which this vast Administrative Order is the sole framework, is, both in theory and practice, not only unique in the entire history of political institutions, but can find no parallel in the annals of any of the world’s recognized religious systems. No form of democratic government; no system of autocracy or of dictatorship, whether monarchical or republican; no intermediary scheme of a purely aristocratic order; nor even any of the recognized types of theocracy, whether it be the Hebrew Commonwealth, or the various Christian ecclesiastical organizations, or the Imámate or the Caliphate in Islám—none of these can be identified or be said to conform with the Administrative Order which the masterhand of its perfect Architect has fashioned.
This new-born Administrative Order
incorporates within its structure
certain elements which are to be
found in each of the
three recognized forms of
secular government, without
being in any sense a mere
replica of any one of them, and without
introducing within its machinery any of the
objectionable features which they inherently
possess. It blends and harmonizes, as no
government fashioned by mortal hands has
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as yet accomplished,
the salutary truths
which each of these systems undoubtedly
contains without vitiating the integrity of
those God-given verities on which
it is ultimately founded.
The Administrative Order of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh must in no wise be regarded as purely democratic in character inasmuch as the basic assumption which requires all democracies to depend fundamentally upon getting their mandate from the people is altogether lacking in this Dispensation. In the conduct of the administrative affairs of the Faith, in the enactment of the legislation necessary to supplement the laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the members of the Universal House of Justice, it should be borne in mind, are not, as Bahá’u’lláh’s utterances clearly imply, responsible to those whom they represent, nor are they allowed to be governed by the feelings, the general opinion, and even the convictions of the mass of the faithful, or of those who directly elect them. They are to follow, in a prayerful attitude, the dictates and promptings of their conscience. They may, indeed they must, acquaint themselves with the conditions prevailing among the community, must weigh dispassionately in their minds the merits of any case presented for their consideration, but must reserve for themselves the right of an unfettered decision. "God will verily inspire them with whatsoever he willeth,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s incontrovertible assurance. They, and not the body of those who either directly or indirectly elect them, have thus been made the recipients of the divine guidance which is at once the life-blood and ultimate safe—guard of this Revelation. Moreover, he who symbolizes the hereditary principle in this Dispensation has been made the interpreter of the words of its Author, and ceases consequently, by virtue of the actual authority vested in him, to be the figure-head invariably associated with the prevailing systems of constitutional monarchies.
Nor can the Bahá’í Administrative Order be dismissed as a hard and rigid system of unmitigated autocracy or as an idle imitation of any form of absolutistic ecclesiastical government, whether it be the Papacy, the Imámate or any other similar institution, for the obvious reason that upon the international elected representatives of the followers of Bahá’u’lláh has been conferred the exclusive right of legislating on matters not expressly revealed in the Bahá’í writings. Neither the Guardian of the Faith nor any institution apart from the International House of Justice can ever usurp this vital and essential power or encroach upon that sacred right. The abolition of professional priesthood with its accompanying sacraments of baptism, of communion and of confession of sins, the laws requiring the election by universal suffrage of all local, national, and international Houses of Justice, the total absence of episcopal authority with its attendant privileges, corruptions and bureaucratic tendencies, are further evidences of the non-autocratic character of the Bahá’í Administrative Order and of its inclination to democratic methods in the administration of its affairs.
Nor is this Order identified with the name of Bahá’u’lláh to be confused with any system of purely aristocratic government in view of the fact that it upholds, on the one hand, the hereditary principle and entrusts the Guardian of the Faith with the obligation of interpreting its teachings, and provides, on the other, for the free and direct election from among the mass of the faithful of the body that constitutes its highest legislative organ.
Whereas this Administrative Order cannot
be said to have been modeled after any of
these recognized systems of government, it
nevertheless embodies, reconciles
and assimilates within its framework
such wholesome
elements as are to be found in each one of
them. The hereditary authority which the
Guardian is called upon to exercise, the vital
and essential functions which the Universal
House of Justice discharges, the
specific provisions requiring its
democratic election by
the representatives of the faithful—these
combine to demonstrate the truth that this
divinely revealed Order, which can never be
identified with any of the standard types of
government referred to by Aristotle in his
works, embodies and blends with the spiritual
verities on which it is based the beneficent
elements which are to be found in each one
of them. The admitted evils inherent in
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each of these
systems being rigidly and
permanently excluded, this unique Order,
however long it may endure and
however extensive its ramifications,
cannot ever degenerate into any
form of despotism, of oligarchy,
or of demagogy which must sooner
or later corrupt the machinery
of all manmade and essentially
defective political institutions.
Dearly-beloved friends! Significant as are the origins of this mighty administrative structure, and however unique its features, the happenings that may be said to have heralded its birth and signalized the initial stage of its evolution seem no less remarkable. How striking, how edifying the contrast between the process of slow and steady consolidation that characterizes the growth of its infant strength and the devastating onrush of the forces of disintegration that are assailing the outworn institutions, both religious and secular, of present-day society!
The vitality which the organic institutions of this great, this ever-expanding Order so strongly exhibit; the obstacles which the high courage, the undaunted resolution of its administrators have already surmounted; the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm that glows with undiminished fervor in the hearts of its itinerant teachers; the heights of self-sacrifice which its champion—builders are now attaining; the breadth of vision, the confident hope, the creative joy, the inward peace, the uncompromising integrity, the exemplary discipline, the unyielding unity and solidarity which its stalwart defenders manifest; the degree to which its moving Spirit has shown itself capable of assimilating the diversified elements within its pale, of cleansing them of all forms of prejudice and of fusing them with its own structure—these are evidences of a power which a disillusioned and sadly shaken society can ill afford to ignore.
Compare these splendid manifestations of the spirit animating this vibrant body of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh with the cries and agony, the follies and vanities, the bitterness and prejudices, the wickedness and divisions of an ailing and chaotic world. Witness the fear that torments its leaders and paralyzes the action of its blind and bewildered statesmen. How fierce the hatreds, how false the ambitions, how petty the pursuits, how deep-rooted the suspicions of its peoples! How disquieting the lawlessness, the corruption, the unbelief that are eating into the vitals of a tottering civilization!
Might not this process of steady deterioration which is insidiously invading so many departments of human activity and thought be regarded as a necessary accompaniment to the rise of this almighty Arm of Bahá’u’lláh? Might we not look upon the momentous happenings which, in the course of the past twenty years, have so deeply agitated every continent of the earth, as ominous signs simultaneously proclaiming the agonies of a disintegrating civilization and the birthpangs of that World Order—that Ark of human salvation—that must needs arise upon its ruins?
The catastrophic fall of mighty monarchies and empires in the European continent, allusions to some of which may be found in the prophecies of Bahá’u’lláh; the decline that has set in, and is still continuing, in the fortunes of the Shí‘ih hierarchy in His own native land; the fall of the Qájár dynasty, the traditional enemy of His Faith; the overthrow of the Sultanate and the Caliphate, the sustaining pillars of Sunni Islám, to which the destruction of Jerusalem in the latter part of the first century of the Christian era offers a striking parallel; the wave of secularization which is invading the Muḥammadan ecclesiastical institutions in Egypt and sapping the loyalty of its staunchest supporters; the humiliating blows that have afflicted some of the most powerful Churches of Christendom in Russia, in Western Europe and Central America; the dissemination of those subversive doctrines that are undermining the foundations and overthrowing the structure of seemingly impregnable strongholds in the political and social spheres of human activity; the signs of an impending catastrophe, strangely reminiscent of the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West, which threatens to engulf the whole structure of present-day civilization—all witness to the tumult which the birth of this mighty Organ of the Religion of Bahá’u’lláh has cast into the world—a tumult which will grow in
The entrance to Green Acre Bahá’í Summer School, Eliot, Maine, U. S. A., showing the new sign erected in July, 1936.
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scope and in intensity
as the implications of
this constantly evolving Scheme are more
fully understood and its ramifications more
widely extended over the surface of the globe.
A word more in conclusion. The rise and establishment of this Administrative Order —the shell that shields and enshrines so precious a gem—constitutes the hallmark of this second and formative age of the Bahá’í era. It will come to be regarded, as it recedes farther and farther from our eyes, as the chief agency empowered to usher in the concluding phase, the consummation of this glorious Dispensation.
Let no one, while this System is still in its infancy, misconceive its character, belittle its significance or misrepresent its purpose. The bedrock on which this Administrative Order is founded is God’s immutable Purpose for mankind in this day. The Source from which it derives its inspiration is no one less than Bahá’u’lláh Himself. Its shield and defender are the embattled hosts of the Abhá Kingdom. Its seed is the blood of no less than twenty thousand martyrs who have offered up their lives that it may be born and flourish. The axis round which its institutions revolve are the authentic provisions of the Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Its guiding principles are the truths which He Who is the unerring Interpreter of the teachings of our Faith has so clearly enunciated in His public addresses throughout the West. The laws that govern its operation and limit its functions are those which have been expressly ordained in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. The seat round which its spiritual, its humanitarian and administrative activities will cluster are the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár and its Dependencies. The pillars that sustain its authority and buttress its structure are the twin institutions of the Guardianship and of the Universal House of Justice. The central, the underlying aim which animates it is the establishment of the New World Order as adumbrated by Bahá’u’lláh. The methods it employs, the standard it inculcates, incline it to neither East nor West, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither rich nor poor, neither white nor colored. Its watchword is the unification of the human race; its standard the “Most Great Peace”; its consummation the advent of that golden millenniugn—the Day when the kingdoms of this world shall have become the Kingdom of God Himself, the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh. (February 8, 1934.)
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THE UNFOLDMENT OF WORLD CIVILIZATION
AS your co-sharer in the building up of the New World Order which the mind of Bahá’u’lláh has visioned, and whose features the pen of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, its perfect Architect, has delineated, I pause to contemplate with you the scene which the revolution of well-nigh fifteen years after His passing unfolds before us.
The contrast between the accumulating
evidences of steady consolidation
that accompany the rise of the
Administrative Order
of the Faith of God, and the forces
of disintegration which batter at the fabric of a
travailing society, is as clear as it is arresting.
Both within and outside the Bahá’í world the
signs and tokens which, in a mysterious
manner, are heralding the birth of that World
Order, the establishment of which must
signalize the Golden Age of the Cause of
God, are growing and multiplying day by
day. No fair-minded observer can any
longer fail to discern them. He cannot be
misled by the painful slowness characterizing
the unfoldment of the civilization which the
followers of Bahá’u’lláh are laboring
to establish. Nor can he be deluded by
the ephemeral manifestations of returning prosperity
which at times appear to be capable of
checking the disruptive influence of the chronic
ills afflicting the institutions of a decaying
age. The signs of the times are too numerous
and compelling to allow him to mistake their
character or to belittle their significance. He
can, if he be fair in his judgment, recognize
in the chain of events which proclaim on
the one hand the irresistible march of the
institutions directly associated with
the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and foreshadow on the
other the downfall of those powers
and principalities that have either ignored or opposed
it—he can recognize in them all evidences of
the operation of God’s all-pervasive Will, the
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shaping of His perfectly
ordered and world-embracing Plan.
"Soon,” Bahá’u’lláh’s own words proclaim it, "will the present day Order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth and is the Knower of things unseen.” "By Myself,” He solemnly asserts, "the day is approaching when We will have rolled up the world and all that is therein, and spread out a new Order in its stead. He, verily, is powerful over all things.” "The world’s equilibrium,” He explains, "hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this Most Great, this new World Order. 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.” "The signs of impending convulsions and chaos,” He warns the peoples of the world, "can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing Order appeareth to be lamentably defective.”
Dearly-beloved friends! This New World Order, whose promise is enshrined in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, whose fundamental principles have been enunciated in the Writings of the Center of His Covenant, involves no less than the complete unification of the entire human race. This unification should conform to such principles as would directly harmonize with the spirit that animates, and the laws that govern the operation of, the institutions that already constitute the structural basis of the Administrative Order of His Faith.
No machinery falling short of the standard inculcated by the Bahá’í Revelation, and at variance with the sublime pattern ordained in His teachings, which the collective efforts of mankind may yet devise can ever hope to achieve anything above or beyond that "Lesser Peace” to which the Author of our Faith has Himself alluded in His writings. "Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace,” He, admonishing the kings and rulers of the earth, has written, "hold ye fast unto this the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own condition and that of your dependents.” Expatiating on this Lesser Peace, He thus addresses in that same Tablet the 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. . . . Be united, O kings of the earth, for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest, if ye be of them that comprehend. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.”
The Most Great Peace, on the other hand, as conceived by Bahá’u’lláh—a peace that must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes and nations—can rest on no other basis, and can be preserved through no other agency, except the divinely appointed ordinances that are implicit in the World Order that stands associated with His holy name. In His Tablet, revealed almost seventy years ago to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh, alluding to this Most Great Peace, has declared: "That which the Lord hath ordained as 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. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician. This, verily, is the truth, and all else naught but error. . . . Consider these days in which the Ancient Beauty, He Who is the Most Great Name, hath been sent down to regenerate and unify mankind. Behold how with drawn swords they rose against Him, and committed that which caused the Faithful Spirit to tremble. And whenever We said unto them: ‘Lo, the World Reformer is come,’ they made reply: ‘He, in truth, is one of the stirrers of mischief.’” "It beseemeth all men in this Day,” He, in another Tablet, asserts, "to take firm hold on the Most Great Name, and to establish the unity of all mankind. There is no place to flee to, no refuge that any one can seek, except Him.”
Humanity’s Coming of Age
The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh,
whose supreme mission is none other
but the achievement of this organic
and spiritual unity of
the whole body of nations, should, if we be
faithful to its implications, be regarded as
signalizing through its advent the coming of
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age of the entire human race.
It should be
viewed not merely as yet another spiritual
revival in the ever-changing fortunes
of mankind, not only as a further stage
in a chain of progressive Revelations,
nor even as the
culmination of one of a series of recurrent
prophetic cycles, but rather as marking the
last and highest stage in the stupendous
evolution of man’s collective life
on this planet. The emergence of
a world community, the
consciousness of world citizenship,
the founding of a world civilization and culture—all
of which must synchronize with the initial
stages in the unfoldment of the Golden Age
of the Bahá’í Era—should, by their very
nature, be regarded, as far as this planetary
life is concerned, as the further-most limits
in the organization of human society, though
man, as an individual, will, nay, must indeed
as a result of such a consummation, continue
indefinitely to progress and develop.
That mystic, all-pervasive, yet indefinable change, which we associate with the stage of maturity inevitable in the life of the individual and the development of the fruit must, if we would correctly apprehend the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh, have its counterpart in the evolution of the organization of human society. A similar stage must sooner or later be attained in the collective life of mankind, producing an even more striking phenomenon in world relations, and endowing the whole human race with such potentialities of well-being as shall provide, throughout the succeeding ages, the chief incentive required for the eventual fulfillment of its high destiny. Such a stage of maturity in the process of human government must, for all time, if we would faithfully recognize the tremendous claim advanced by Bahá’u’lláh, remain identified with the Revelation of which He was the Bearer.
In one of the most characteristic passages He Himself has revealed, He testifies in a language that none can mistake to the truth of this distinguishing principle of Bahá’í belief: "It hath been decreed by Us that the Word of God and all the potentialities thereof shall be manifested unto men in strict conformity with such conditions as have been foreordained by Him Who is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. . . . Should the Word be allowed to release suddenly all the energies latent within it, no man could sustain the weight of so mighty a revelation. . . . Consider that which hath been sent down unto Muḥammad, the Apostle of God. The measure of the Revelation of which He was the Bearer had been clearly foreordained by Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Powerful. They that heard Him, however, could apprehend His purpose only to the extent of their station and spiritual capacity. He, in like manner, uncovered the Face of Wisdom in proportion to their ability to sustain the burden of His Message. No sooner had mankind attained the stage of maturity, than the Word revealed to men’s eyes the latest energies with which it had been endowed-energies which manifested themselves in the plenitude of their glory when the Ancient Beauty appeared, in the year sixty, in the person of ‘Alí Muḥammad, the Báb.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, elucidating this fundamental verity, has written: "All created things have their degree or stage of maturity. The period of maturity in the life of a tree is the time of its fruit-bearing. . . . The animal attains a stage of full growth and completeness, and in the human kingdom man reaches his maturity when the light of his intelligence attains its greatest power and development. . . . Similarly there are periods and stages in the collective life of humanity. At one time it was passing through its stage of childhood, at another its period of youth, but now it has entered its long-predicted phase of maturity, the evidences of which are everywhere apparent. . . . That which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race can neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day, this period of newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former state of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties, perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the requirements of its maturity.”
The spot in the garden of Riḍván, near ‘Akká, where Bahá’u’lláh used to sit under the mulberry tree. The gardener, ‘Abdu’l-Qasim, is shown.
The Process of Integration
Such a unique and momentous crisis in the life of organized mankind may, moreover, be likened to the culminating stage in the political evolution of the great American Republic—the stage which marked the emergence of a unified community of federated states. The stirring of a new national consciousness, and the birth of a new type of civilization, infinitely richer and nobler than any which its component parts could have severally hoped to achieve, may be said to have proclaimed the coming of age of the American people. Within the territorial limits of this nation, this consummation may be viewed as the culmination of the process of human government. The diversified and loosely related elements of a divided community were brought together, unified and incorporated into one coherent system. Though this entity may continue gaining in cohesive power, though the unity already achieved may be further consolidated, though the civilization to which that unity could alone have given birth may expand and flourish, yet the machinery essential to such an unfoldment may be said to have been, in its essential structure, erected, and the impulse required to guide and sustain it may be regarded as having been fundamentally imparted. No stage above and beyond this consummation of national unity can, within the geographical limits of that nation, be imagined, though the highest destiny of its people, as a constituent element in a still larger entity that will embrace the whole of mankind, may still remain unfulfilled. Considered as an isolated unit, however, this process of integration may be said to have reached its highest and final consummation.
Such is the stage to which an evolving humanity is collectively approaching. The Revelation entrusted by the Almighty Ordainer to Bahá’u’lláh, His followers firmly believe, has been endowed with such potentialities as are commensurate with the maturity of the human race—the crowning and most momentous stage in its evolution from infancy to manhood.
The successive Founders of all past Religions Who, from time immemorial, have shed, with ever-increasing intensity, the splendor of one common Revelation at the various stages which have marked the advance of mankind towards maturity may thus, in a sense, be regarded as preliminary Manifestations, anticipating and paving the way for the advent of that Day of Days when the whole earth will have fructified and the tree of humanity will have yielded its destined fruit.
Incontrovertible as is this truth, its challenging character should never be allowed to obscure the purpose, or distort the principle, underlying the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh—utterances that have established for all time the absolute oneness of all the Prophets, Himself included, whether belonging to the past or to the future. Though the mission of the Prophets preceding Bahá’u’lláh may be viewed in that light, though the measure of Divine Revelation with which each has been entrusted must, as a result of this process of evolution, necessarily differ, their common origin, their essential unity, their identity of purpose, should at no time and under no circumstances be misapprehended or denied. That all the Messengers of God should be regarded as "abiding in the same Tabernacle, soaring in the same Heaven, seated upon the same Throne, uttering the same Speech, and proclaiming the same Faith” must, however much we may extol the measure of Divine Revelation vouchsafed to mankind at this crowning stage of its evolution, remain the unalterable foundation and central tenet of Bahá’í belief. Any variations in the splendor which each of these Manifestations of the Light of God has shed upon the world should be ascribed not to any inherent superiority involved in the essential character of any one of them, but rather to the progressive capacity, the ever-increasing spiritual receptiveness, which mankind, in its progress towards maturity, has invariably manifested.
The Final Consummation
Only those who are willing to associate the
Revelation proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh with
the consummation of so stupendous an
evolution in the collective life of the whole
human race can grasp the significance of the
words which He, while alluding to the glories
of this promised Day and to the duration of
the Bahá’í Era, has deemed fit to utter. "This
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is the King of Days,”
He exclaims,
"the Day that hath seen the coming of the Best-Beloved, Him Who, through all eternity, hath been acclaimed the Desire of the World.” "The Scriptures of past Dispensations,”
He further asserts,
"celebrate the great jubilee that must needs greet this most great Day of God. Well is it with him that hath lived to see this Day and hath recognized its station.” "It is evident,”
He, in another passage explains,
"that every age in which a Manifestation of God hath lived is divinely-ordained, and may, in a sense, be characterized as God’s appointed Day. This Day, however, is unique, and is to be distinguished from those that have preceded it. The designation ‘Seal of the Prophets’ fully revealeth its high station. The Prophetic Cycle hath verily ended. The Eternal Truth is now come. He hath lifted up the ensign of power, and is now shedding upon the world the unclouded splendor of His Revelation.” "In this most mighty Revelation,”
He, in categorical language, declares,
"all the Dispensations of the past have attained their highest, their final consummation. That which hath been made manifest in this preeminent, this most exalted Revelation, standeth unparalleled in the annals of the past, nor will future ages witness its like.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s authentic pronouncements should, likewise, be recalled as confirming, in no less emphatic manner, the unexampled vastness of the Bahá’í Dispensation. "Centuries,” He affirms in one of His Tablets, "nay, countless ages, must pass away ere the Day-Star of Truth shineth again in its midsummer splendor, or appeareth once more in the radiance of its vernal glory. . . . The mere contemplation of the Dispensation inaugurated by the Blessed Beauty would have sufficed to overwhelm the saints of bygone ages—saints who longed to partake, for one moment, of its great glory.” "Concerning the Manifestations that will come down in the future ‘in the shadows of the clouds,’ ” He, in a still more definite language, affirms, "know, verily, that in so far as their relation to the Source of their inspiration is concerned, they are under the shadow of the Ancient Beauty. In their relation, however, to the age in which they appear, each and every one of them 'doeth whatsoever He willeth.’ ” "This holy Dispensation,” He, alluding to the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, explains, "is illumined with the light of the Sun of Truth shining from its most exalted station, and in the plenitude of its resplendency, its heat and glory.”
Pangs of Death and Birth
Dearly-beloved friends: Though the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh has been delivered, the World Order which such a Revelation must needs beget is as yet unborn. Though the Heroic Age of His Faith is passed, the creative energies which that Age has released have not as yet crystallized into that world society which, in the fullness of time, is to mirror forth the brightness of His glory. Though the framework of His Administrative Order has been erected, and the Formative Period of the Bahá’í Era has begun, yet the promised Kingdom into which the seed of His institutions must ripen remains as yet uninaugurated. Though His Voice has been raised, and the ensigns of His Faith have been lifted up in no less than forty countries of both the East and the West, yet the wholeness of the human race is as yet unrecognized, its unity unproclaimed, and the standard of its Most Great Peace unhoisted.
"The heights,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself testifies, "which, through the most gracious favor of God, mortal man can attain in this Day are as yet unrevealed to his sight. The world of being hath never had, nor doth it yet possess, the capacity of such a revelation. The day, however, is approaching when the potentialities of so great a favor will, by virtue of His behest, be manifested unto men.”
For the revelation of so great a favor a period of intense turmoil and wide-spread suffering would seem to be indispensable. Resplendent as has been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the Mission with which Bahá’u’lláh has been entrusted, the interval which must elapse ere that Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is becoming increasingly apparent, be overshadowed by such moral and social gloom as can alone prepare an unrepentant humanity for the prize she is destined to inherit.
Into such a period we are now steadily and
irresistibly moving. Amidst the shadows
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which are increasingly
gathering about us
we can faintly discern the glimmerings of
Bahá’u’lláh’s unearthly sovereignty appearing
fitfully on the horizon of history. To us,
the "generation of the half-light,” living at
a time which may be designated as the period
of the incubation of the World
Commonwealth envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, has been
assigned a task whose high privilege we can
never sufficiently appreciate, and the
arduousness of which we can as yet but
dimly recognize. We may well believe,
we who are called
upon to experience the operation of the dark
forces destined to unloose a flood of agonizing
afflictions, that the darkest hour that must
precede the dawn of the Golden Age of our
Faith has not yet struck. Deep as is the
gloom that already encircles the world, the
afflictive ordeals which that world is to suffer
are still in preparation, nor can their
blackness be as yet imagined. We stand on the
threshold of an age whose convulsions
proclaim alike the death-pangs of the old order
and the birth-pangs of the new. Through
the generating influence of the Faith
announced by Bahá’u’lláh this New World
Order may be said to have been conceived.
We can, at the present moment, experience
its stirrings in the womb of a travailing age
—an age waiting for the appointed hour at
which it can cast its burden and yield its
fairest fruit.
"The whole earth,” writes Bahá’u’lláh, "is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings. Immeasurably exalted is the breeze that wafteth from the garment of thy Lord, the Glorified! For lo, it hath breathed its fragrance and made all things new! Well is it with them that comprehend.” "The onrushing winds of the grace of God,” He, in the Súratu’l-Haykal, proclaims, "have passed over all things. Every creature hath been endowed with all the potentialities it can carry. And yet the peoples of the world have denied this grace! Every tree hath been endowed with the choicest fruits, every ocean enriched with the most luminous gems. Man, himself, hath been invested with the gifts of understanding and knowledge. The whole creation hath been made the recipient of the revelation of the All-Merciful, and the earth the repository of things inscrutable to all except God, the Truth, the Knower of things unseen. The time is approaching when every created thing will have cast its burden. Glorified be God Who hath vouchsafed this grace that encompasseth all things, whether seen or unseen!”
"The Call of God,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written, "when raised, breathed a new life into the body of mankind, and infused a new spirit into the whole creation. It is for this reason that the world hath been moved to its depths, and the hearts and consciences of men been quickened. Erelong the evidences of this regeneration will be revealed, and the fast asleep will be awakened.”
Universal Fermentation
As we view the world around us, we are compelled to observe the manifold evidences of that universal fermentation which, in every continent of the globe and in every department of human life, be it religious, social, economic or political, is purging and reshaping humanity in anticipation of the Day when the wholeness of the human race will have been recognized and its unity established. A two-fold process, however, can be distinguished, each tending, in its own way and with an accelerated momentum, to bring to a climax the forces that are transforming the face of our planet. The first is essentially an integrating process, while the second is fundamentally disruptive. The former, as it steadily evolves, unfolds a System which may well serve as a pattern for that world polity towards which a strangely disordered world is continually advancing; while the latter, as its disintegrating influence deepens, tends to tear down, with increasing violence, the antiquated barriers that seek to block humanity’s progress towards its destined goal. The constructive process stands associated with the nascent Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, and is the harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish. The destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a civilization that has refused to answer to the expectation of a new age, and is consequently falling into chaos and decline.
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A titanic, a spiritual
struggle, unparalleled in its magnitude
yet unspeakably glorious in its ultimate
consequences, is being
waged as a result of these opposing
tendencies, in this age of transition
through which
the organized community of the followers of
Bahá’u’lláh and mankind as a whole are passing.
The Spirit that has incarnated itself in the institutions of a rising Faith has, in the course of its onward march for the redemption of the world, encountered and is now battling with such forces as are, in most instances, the very negation of that Spirit, and whose continued existence must inevitably hinder it from achieving its purpose. The hollow and outworn institutions, the obsolescent doctrines and beliefs, the effete and discredited traditions which these forces represent, it should be observed, have, in certain instances, been undermined by virtue of their senility, the loss of their cohesive power, and their own inherent corruption. A few have been swept away by the onrushing forces which the Bahá’í Faith has, at the hour of its birth, so mysteriously released. Others, as a direct result of a vain and feeble resistance to its rise in the initial stages of its development, have died out and been utterly discredited. Still others, fearful of the pervasive influence of the institutions in which that same Spirit had, at a later stage, been embodied, had mobilized their forces and launched their attack, destined to sustain, in their turn, after a brief and illusory success, an ignominious defeat.
This Age of Transition
It is not my purpose to call to mind, much less to attempt a detailed analysis of, the spiritual struggles that have ensued, or to note the victories that have redounded to the glory of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh since the day of its foundation. My chief concern is not with the happenings that have distinguished the First, the Apostolic Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation, but rather with the outstanding events that are transpiring in, and the tendencies which characterize, the formative period of its development, this Age of Transition, whose tribulations are the precursors of that Era of blissful felicity which is to incarnate God’s ultimate purpose for all mankind.
To the catastrophic fall of mighty kingdoms and empires, on the eve of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s departure, Whose passing may be said to have ushered in the opening phase of the Age of Transition in which we now live, I have, in a previous communication, briefly alluded. The dissolution of the German Empire, the humiliating defeat inflicted upon its ruler, the successor and lineal descendant of the Prussian King and Emperor to whom Bahá’u’lláh had addressed His solemn and historic warning, together with the extinction of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the remnant of the once-great Holy Roman Empire, were both precipitated by a war whose outbreak signalized the opening of the Age of Frustration destined to precede the establishment of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Both of these momentous events may be viewed as the earliest occurrences of that turbulent Age, into the outer fringes of whose darkest phase we are now beginning to enter.
To the Conqueror of Napoleon III, the Author of our Faith had, on the morrow of the King’s victory, addressed, in His Most Holy Book, this clear and ominous warning: “O King of Berlin! . . . Take heed lest pride debar thee from recognizing the Dayspring of Divine Revelation, lest earthly desires shut thee out, as by a veil, from the Lord of the Throne above and of the earth below. Thus counseleth thee the Pen of the Most High. He, verily, is the Most Gracious, the All-Bountiful. Do thou remember the one whose power transcended thy power (Napoleon III), and whose station excelled thy station. Where is he? Whither are gone the things he possessed? Take warning, and be not of them that are fast asleep. He it was who cast the Tablet of God behind him, when We made known unto him what the hosts of tyranny had caused Us to suffer. Wherefore, disgrace assailed him from all sides, and he went down to dust in great loss. Think deeply, O King, concerning him, and concerning them who, like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men. The All-Merciful brought them down from their palaces to their graves. Be warned, be of them who reflect.”
“O banks of the Rhine!” Bahá’u’lláh, in another passage of that same Book, prophesies,
The 1937 session of the English Bahá’í Summer School held at Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, England
Bahá’ís of Sydney, Australia, welcome a traveling friend from America, Mrs. Nellie French, seated between "Father and Mother Dunn,” the pioneers of the Cause in the Southern Hemisphere.
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"We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and so you shall have another turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.” . . .
Divine Retribution
The whole of mankind is groaning, is dying to be led to unity, and to terminate its age-long martyrdom. And yet it stubbornly refuses to embrace the light and acknowledge the sovereign authority of the one Power that can extricate it from its entanglements, and avert the woeful calamity that threatens to engulf it.
Ominous indeed is the voice of Bahá’u’lláh that rings through these prophetic words: "O ye peoples of the world! Know, verily, that an unforeseen calamity followeth you, and grievous retribution awaiteth you. Think not that which ye have committed hath been effaced in My sight.” And again: "We have a fixed time for you, O peoples. If ye fail, at the appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every direction. How severe, indeed, is the chastisement with which your Lord will then chastise you!”
Must humanity, tormented as she now is, be afflicted with still severer tribulations ere their purifying influence can prepare her to enter the heavenly Kingdom destined to be established upon earth? Must the inauguration of so vast, so unique, so illumined an era in human history be ushered in by so great a catastrophe in human affairs as to recall, nay surpass, the appalling collapse of Roman civilization in the first centuries of the Christian Era? Must a series of profound convulsions stir and rock the human race ere Bahá’u’lláh can be enthroned in the hearts and consciences of the masses, ere His undisputed ascendancy is universally recognized, and the noble edifice of His World Order is reared and established?
The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race had to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of manhood. Then will the human race reach that stature of ripeness which will enable it to acquire all the powers and capacities upon which its ultimate development must depend.
World Unity the Goal
Unification of the whole of mankind is the hall-mark of the stage which human society is now approaching. Unity of family, of tribe, of city-state, and nation have been successively attempted and fully established. World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is striving. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life.
"A new life,” Bahá’u’lláh proclaims,
"is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause, or perceived its motive.” "O ye children of men,”
He thus addresses His generation,
"the fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race. . . . This is the straight path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever it raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.” "The well-being of mankind,” He declares,
"its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” "So powerful is the light of unity,” is His further testimony,
"that it can illuminate the whole earth. The one true God, He Who knoweth all things, Himself testifieth to the truth of these words. . . . This goal excelleth every other goal, and this aspiration is the monarch of all aspirations.” "He Who is your Lord, the All-Merciful,”
He moreover, has written,
"cherisheth in His heart the desire of beholding the entire
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human race as one soul and one body. Haste ye to win your share of God’s good grace and mercy in this Day that eclipseth all other created days.”
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 the
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 executive, 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 and understanding
among the nations and races of mankind. In
such a world society, science and religion,
the two most potent forces in human life,
will be reconciled, will cooperate, and will
harmoniously develop. The press will, under
such a system, while giving full scope to the
expression of the diversified views
and convictions of mankind, cease
to be mischievously manipulated by
vested interests,
whether private or public, and will
be liberated from the influence of
contending governments and peoples.
The economic resources of the world
will be organized, its
sources of raw materials will be tapped and
fully utilized, its markets will be coordinated
and developed, and the distribution of its
products will be equitably regulated.
National rivalries, hatreds, and intrigues will cease, and racial animosity and prejudice will be replaced by racial amity, understanding and cooperation. The causes of religious strife will be permanently removed, economic barriers and restrictions will be completely abolished, and the inordinate distinction between classes will be obliterated. Destitution on the one hand, and gross accumulation of ownership on the other, will disappear. The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of human inventions and technical development, to the increase of the productivity of mankind, to the extermination of disease, to the extension of scientific research, to the raising of the standard of physical health, to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain, to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet, to the prolongation of human life, and to the furtherance of any other agency that can 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 moving.
"One of the great events,” affirms ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
"which is to occur in the Day
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of the manifestation of that incomparable Branch is the hoisting of the Standard of God among all nations. By this is meant that all nations and kindreds will be gathered together under the shadow of this Divine Banner, which is no other than the Lordly Branch itself, and will become a single nation. Religious and sectarian antagonism, the hostility of races and peoples, and differences among nations, will be eliminated. All men will adhere to one religion, will have one common faith, will be blended into one race and become a single people. All will dwell in one common fatherland, which is the planet itself.” "Now, in the world of being,”
He has moreover explained,
"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 spring-tide, and how heavenly was that gift.”
No less enthralling is the vision of Isaiah, the greatest of the Hebrew Prophets, predicting, as far back as twenty-five hundred years ago, the destiny which mankind must, at its stage of maturity, achieve:
"And He (the Lord) shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. . . . And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. . . . And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. . . . And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”
The writer of the Apocalypse, prefiguring the millennial glory which a redeemed, a jubilant humanity must witness, has similarly testified: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ ”
Who can doubt that such a consummation —the coming of age of the human race—must signalize, in its turn, the inauguration of a world civilization such as no mortal eye hath ever beheld or human mind conceived? Who is it that can imagine the lofty standard which such a civilization, as it unfolds itself, is destined to attain? Who can measure the heights to which human intelligence, liberated from its shackles, will soar? Who can visualize the realms which the human spirit, vitalized by the outpouring light of Bahá’u’lláh, shining in the plenitude of its glory, will discover?
What more fitting conclusion to this theme than these words of Bahá’u’lláh, written in anticipation of the golden age of His Faith—the age in which the face of the earth, from pole to pole, will mirror the ineffable splendors of the Abhá Paradise?
"This is the Day whereon naught can be seen except the splendors of the Light that shineth from the face of thy Lord, the Gracious, the Most Bountiful. Verily, We have caused every soul to expire by virtue of Our irresistible and all—subduing sovereignty. We have then called into being a new creation, as a token of Our grace unto men. I am, verily, the All-Bountiful, the Ancient of Days. This is the Day whereon the unseen world crieth out: 'Great is thy blessedness, O earth, for thou hast been made the
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foot-stool of thy God, and been chosen as the seat of His mighty throne." The realm of glory exclaimeth: 'Would that my life could be sacrificed for thee, for He Who is the Beloved of the All—Merciful hath established His sovereignty upon thee, through the power of His name that hath been promised unto all things, whether of the past or of the future.’ ”
(March 11, 1936.)
THE SPIRIT AND FORM OF THE BAHÁ’Í ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER
"And now as I look into the future, I hope to see the friends at all times, in every land, and of every shade of thought and character, voluntarily and joyously rallying round their local and in particular their national centers of activity, upholding and promoting their interests with complete unanimity and contentment, with perfect understanding, genuine enthusiasm, and sustained vigor. This indeed is the one joy and yearning of my life, for it is the fountain-head from which all future blessings will flow, the broad foundation upon which the security of the Divine Edifice must ultimately rest.”—SHOGHI EFFENDI.
FOREWORD
The 1926-27 National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada completed a task which, while pertaining to the outer and more material aspects of the Cause, nevertheless has a special significance for its spirit and inward sacred purpose. This task consisted in creating in a legal form which gives proper substance and substantial character to the administrative processes embodied in the Bahá’í Teachings. The form adopted was that known as a Voluntary Trust, a species of corporation recognized under the common law and possessing a long and interesting history. The famous Covenant adopted by the Pilgrim Fathers on the Mayflower, the first legal document in American history, is of the same nature as the Declaration of Trust voted by the National Spiritual Assembly. This Declaration of Trust, with its attendant By-Laws, is published for the information of the Bahá’ís of the world. Careful examination of the Declaration and its By-Laws will reveal the fact that this document contains no arbitrary elements nor features new to the Bahá’í Cause. On the contrary, it represents a most conscientious effort to reflect those very administrative principles and elements already set forth in the letters of the Guardian, Shoghi Effendi, and already determining the methods and relationships of Bahá’í collective association. The provision both in the Declaration and in the By-Laws for amendments in the future will permit the National Spiritual Assembly to adapt this document to such new administrative elements or principles as the Guardian may at any time give forth. The Declaration, in fact, is nothing more or less than a legal parallel of those moral and spiritual laws of unity inherent in the fullness of the Bahá’í Revelation and making it the fulfillment of the ideal of Religion in the social as well as spiritual realm. Because in the Bahá’í Faith this perfect correspondence exists between spiritual and social laws, the Bahá’ís believe that administrative success is identical with moral success; and that nothing less than the true Bahá’í spirit of devotion and sacrifice can inspire with effective power the world-wide body of unity, revealed by Bahá’u’lláh. Therefore it has seemed fitting and proper to accompany the Declaration of Trust with excerpts from the letters of Shoghi Effendi which furnished the source whence the provisions of the Declaration were drawn, and which furthermore give due emphasis to that essential spirit without which any and every social or religious form is but a dead and soulless body.
