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BAHA'U'LLAH
Helen Pilkingion Bishop
* *
SEEING ADRIANOPLE WITH
NEW YORK EYES
Martha L. Root
THE NEW CATALYTIC
Dale S. Cole
* *
THE RACIAL MYTH
Edwin L. Mattern
* *
THE MEANING OF RELIGION
Dr. Mary Woolley
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| VOL. 25 | JUNE, 1934 | No. 3 |
1. Unfettered search after truth, and the abandonment of all superstition and prejudice.
2. The Oneness of Mankind; all are "leaves of one tree, flowers in one garden.”
3. Religion must be a cause of love and harmony, else it is no religion.
4. All religions are one in their fundamental principles.
5. Religion must go hand-in-hand with science. Faith and reason must be in full accord.
6. Universal peace: The establishment of International Arbitration and an International Parliament.
7. The adoption of an International Secondary Language which shall be taught in all the schools of the world.
8. Compulsory education—especially for girls, who will be mothers and the first educators of the next generation.
9. Equal opportunities of development and equal rights and privileges for both sexes.
10. Work for all: No idle rich and no idle poor, "work in the spirit of service is worship."
11. Abolition of extremes of poverty and wealth: Care for the needy.
12. Recognition of the Unity of God and obedience to His Commands, as revealed through His Divine Manifestations.
| CONTENTS | |
The Re-formation, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá | 91 |
The Mashriq’l-Adhkár | 93 |
Editorial, Stanwood Cobb | 67 |
The Social Principles of Bahá’u’lláh, Helen Pilkington Bishop | 70 |
The Critical Moment | 73 |
Seeing Adrianople with New York Eyes, Martha L. Root | 74 |
The New Catalytic, Dale S. Cole | 78 |
The University in 1959, Dr. Walter Dill Scott | 81 |
The Racial Myth, Edwin L. Mattern | 82 |
The Meaning of Religion, Dr. Mary Woolley | 86 |
The Vision of Henry George | 89 |
Current Thought and Progress | 95 |
The official Bahá’í Magazine, published monthly in Washington, D.C. By the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada STANWOOD COBB, MARIAM HANEY, BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK. . . . Editors
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This Unique Cycle . . . . . . . .
THE Faith of Bahá'u'lláh should indeed be regarded, if we wish to be faithful to the tremendous implications of its message, as the culmination of a cycle, the final stage in a series of successive, of preliminary and progressive revelations. These . . . have paved the way and anticipated with an ever-increasing emphasis the advent of that Day of Days in which He Who is the Promise of All Ages should be made manifest.
TO this truth the utterances of Bahá'u'lláh abundantly testify. A mere reference to the claims which, in vehement language and with compelling power, He Himself has repeatedly advanced cannot but fully demonstrate the character of the Revelation of which He was the chosen bearer. To the words that have streamed from His pen—the fountainhead of so impetuous a Revelation—we should, therefore, direct our attention if we wish to obtain a clearer understanding of its importance and meaning. Whether in His assertion of the unprecedented claim He has advanced, or in His allusions to the mysterious forces He has released, whether in such passages as extol the glories of His long-awaited Day, or magnify the station which they who have recognized its hidden virtues will attain, Bahá'u'lláh and, to an almost equal extent, the Báb and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, have bequeathed to posterity mines of such inestimable wealth as none of us who belong to this generation can befittingly estimate. * * *
ENOUGH has been said, and the quoted excerpts from the writings of the Báb, of Bahá'u'lláh and of 'Abdu'l-Bahá are sufficiently numerous and varied, to convince the conscientious reader of the sublimity of this unique cycle in the world's religious history. It would be utterly impossible to over-exaggerate its significance or to overrate the influence it has exerted and which it must increasingly exert as its great system unfolds itself amidst the welter of a collapsing civilization.
Vol. 25 June, 1934 No. 3
| “Regarding the economic prejudice: it is apparent that whenever the ties between nations become strengthened and the exchange of commodities accelerated, . . . universal benefits will result. Then why this prejudice?”—‘Abdu’l-Bahá. |
ONE OF the most amazing symptoms
of retrogression in world affairs
is the widespread movement
of economic nationalism. Each nation
is putting up tariff barriers to
prevent the importation of foreign
articles. The aim is to become as
far as possible economically self-sufficient.
When we consider how
world trade previous to the world
war was a constantly increasing influence
toward universality of culture,
it is a tragic thing to see this
desirable trend of world evolution
obstructed by the force and jealousy
of nations. These tariff rivalries
are not only ludicrously anachronistic
but they are also charged with
dynamite as possible causes of war.
The reasons for this economic nationalism are twofold. First, every nation of any claim to power is apprehensive regarding its supplies of raw materials and necessary commodities in case of another war; it is the fear of military isolation which urges every nation to become as far as possible self-sufficing. Secondly, the world depression with its terrific dislocation of world trade has compelled each nation to institute economic reforms within its own boundaries seeking to improve the consuming power of its own domestic markets. Attempts have been made, as in the London Economic Conference, to meet the depression with a united front and on a
world basis, but unanimity of plan or effort has proved impossible. Therefore each nation has by necessity had recourse to remedial efforts at home, despairing of any general improvement due to world planning.
Thus we have arrived at the anomalous situation, that in the Twentieth Century tariff barriers throughout the world are more severe obstructions to the flow of world commerce than at any time since the Middle Ages.
THIS regrettable situation is not
without its compensations, which
are also twofold.
In the first place, economic nationalism is a tremendous stimulus to industrial and economic effort within each country. It is strong medicine for that inertia which has in the past kept certain countries from developing industrially and from realizing their full potentiality of natural resources and man-power. Now we see a great wave of economic emulation sweeping through those countries which have been rather primitive agricultural civilizations. Russia is rapidly industrializing herself, as are other nonindustrial countries of eastern Europe. Turkey has a five year industrialization plan and is intelligently and efficiently working her way into the ranks of industrial nations.
China is on the road to industrialization. Ultimately it is probable that all peoples will combine, in their civilization, industrial with agricultural expression. This will be a benefit to each nation which thus progresses from a more primitive to a more advanced state of civilization. And although it will temporarily be a blow to the export trade of highly industrialized nations, the general prosperity resulting from universal industrialization would in time increase rather than diminish the prosperity of the now leading nations.
Secondly, and more important still, is the knockout blow that this new economic nationalism gives to the old economic imperialism which has been the prevailing world order for the last hundred years. This now defunct system of economic imperialism has been the cause of many wars including the World War, and the chief cause of the domination of the primitive agricultural Orient by the advanced cultured technological Occident.
So long as there were vast areas of low industrial culture, powerful nations of high industrial culture held as their goal of highest industrial efficiency the flooding of these low cultural areas with their own manufactured goods. As new industrial nations evolved to a degree of efficiency of production such as enabled them to compete powerfully for these low area world markets, it became apparent that this economic competition contained in itself the chief contemporaneous causes of war. It was a situation which grew more unstable year by year, eventuating in the World War. If continued, it would result in nothing
but future wars, catastrophic to civilization itself.
Furthermore, low areas of economic culture would not willingly submit forever to be flooded with manufactured goods of powerfully industralized countries. Thus the economic imperialism of the past century contained within itself fatal seeds of hatred between the Orient and the Occident, as well as the seeds of internecine strife between the Occidental countries themselves.
The efforts, then, of major countries of the world to find markets for their agricultural products and industrial goods within their own confines is a wholesome even if difficult correction and antedote to the fever of economic competition which resulted from basing national prosperity upon flooding the world with surplus goods.
HOW LONG will this tide of economic
nationalism flow? It may continue
so long as there is dread of
future wars. Certainly there must
be assurance of safety to each nation
before the various peoples of
the world will remit their energies
in the way of making themselves
self-sufficient in as many directions
as possible.
Secondly, there must be some concept of unity of interest and purpose strong enough to restrict and sublimate the self-seeking energies of individuals and nations. Even enlightened self-interest is not sufficient to bring economic unity to the world. This tragic fact was made evident by the complete failure of the London Economic World Conference.
Those who have dreamed that economic self-interest would obligate
world unity are sadly mistaken. The human emotions, whether expressed on an individual or on a national scale, are more powerful than human intellection. Self-interest, even when enlightened, is fundamentally selfish; and groups of people seeking only their selfish advantage, no matter how intellectual they may be, will never arrive at unity.
WHERE THEN is the solution to
this complicated problem? It lies
before us clearly defined in the new
World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Here
we find all forces working simultaneously
to produce world unity.
We find organization backed by
dynamic spiritual conscience working
for the abolition of war, simultaneous
limitation of armaments,
the establishment of world peace
and a world federation. All of these
new developments must come together.
No one of them can be established
separately for the reasons
above demonstrated, since economic
and military problems are so interwoven.
In the new World Order of Bahá’u’lláh there will be a truce to economic as well as to martial warfare. Tariff barriers will be eliminated,
as they were eliminated in the colonies of this country when they became merged into a Nation. Again will be restored that healthy flow of specialized world products from countries specially adapted to particular goods into countries lacking the normal facilities for their production.
One would find it difficult to assure any grounds for the reestablishment of world prosperity until such a World State is made effective. Then and then only will come cessation of war, cessation of economic nationalism, cessation of national rivalries which are destructive of world prosperity as well as of world peace.
Bahá’u’lláh threw this challenge to the world over seventy years ago. He portrayed what would be the result of causes then working throughout the world, causes derived from the selfishness and greed of human nature accentuated by the attenuation of spiritual restraints and ideals. That challenge still stands; and will stand, we may believe, until the world, with a new conscience, fulfills all the requisities for world reconciliation and world unity.
“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.”
The following is a chapter selected from the author’s Bachelor of Science thesis presented to the Division of Social Science, Reed College, Oregon. It deals with the establishment by Bahá’u’lláh of universal laws for a world civilization. The introductory chapter of this thesis was published in the April number under the title, “Persia-Ancient Land of Glory.” The accompanying bibliography for each chapter is exhaustive and scholarly. Lack of space precludes publication herein.
“We exhort mankind in these days wheat the countenance of Justice is soiled with dust, when the flames of unbelief are burning high and the robe of wisdom rent asunder, when tranquility and faithfulness have ebbed away and trials and tribulations waxed severe, when covenants are broken and ties are severed, when no man knoweth how to discern light from darkness or to distinguish guidance from error.”—Bahá’u’lláh.
SOCIAL ETHICS: During His imprisonment in ‘Akká Bahá’u’lláh wrote the greater part of the literary thesaurus which constitutes the Bahá’i Revelation. His works are voluminous; His style is matchless; but due to the paucity of good translations, a perusal of His writings tests the patience of the student. Categories of thought are so intimately linked with language that imperfect translations from Arabic and Persian are frequently obscure if not misleading.
True to His resolution in the Siyah-Chal, “. . . to concentrate all My forces toward the regeneration of these souls”—Bahá’u’lláh wrote the “Kitáb-i-Aqdás,” (Book of Laws). It contains those moral precepts which form the ethical backbone of the spiritual life. This emphasis upon individual morality inheres
in the conviction that society will eventually rise to the standards set by its superior individuals.
Not that the individual is the beginning in the pre-existent sense. The group and the individual are so interdependent that they cannot be dissociated except in an abstraction. Granting this, the Bahá’i point of view is that society is the beginning: the individual is the end. Laws and restrictions are imposed upon the individual in order that men can live. Reflecting upon this ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:
“ . . . the dissemination of the divine religion is owing to the perfecting of the individual, to goodness of disposition, to acceptable habits or customs and deeds proceeding from a spiritual mind. . . . Thus will the principal purpose of the revelation of holy, heavenly laws be attained—that is to say, the civilizing of this world, the purifying of the characters of men and the realization of the happiness of the next world.”
Since the individual perfects his humanity through association rather than isolation, his liberty to do is contingent upon the liberty of others. This regulation of personal liberty is an imposition unless it is voluntarily accepted by the individual. To impose upon one’s self the restrictions and obligations which were formerly imposed upon one by the group is to be self-ruled.
“The Book of Laws” gives generalizations: they are static until they are accepted by individual living initiative; then they become the
qualities of the art of living. To be specific; the Book forbids mendicancy, slavery (both chattel and industrial), gambling, the use of narcotics, and of intoxicating liquors as a beverage. Arson, theft, libel, and backbiting are prohibited and appropriate penalties are provided. Murder is unequivocally condemned; elsewhere Bahá’u’lláh assumes the attitude that it is better to suffer than to do evil: “It is better to be killed than to kill.” Suicide is also prohibited.
Asceticism of the nature of self-mortification and austerities is declared useless. Marriage to one woman is enjoined and adultery is condemned. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states the following problem:
“Cultivate your finer nature through your senses and your emotions, taking care meanwhile that they do not become your masters. . . . Sensations remain as abstractions in the mind, and, though so subtle that they can scarcely be recognized, exert an effective influence towards their own repetition. Yet while making earnest efforts to subjugate the senses man is liable to err; his nature is very complex, and to find the true path requires wisdom . . . . By asceticism worse evils will be encountered; for the effort may produce serious physical or mental disorders, perhaps insanity or death; or it may result in merely diverting the uneradicated evil tendency into some other channel where it may be even more injurious to the character; and it will in any case tend to foster selfishness, which is worse than sensuality.
“Therefore, the attractions of the senses must be met, not by running away from them, but directly, by a man’s will and the power which is within himself to resist evil when temptation arises. . . . Selfishness must also be rooted out, not only in its gross, but in its exceedingly subtle forms. . . . Lust and selfishness lead men ignorantly to evil acts, and evil acts in turn increase lust, selfishness, and ignorance.
“To learn one’s own nature is better than to seek for the unknown and the unknowable.”
Divorce is permitted after a preliminary separation of one year; a reasonable cause lies “in their aversion for one another.”
However, truthfulness, kindness,
courtesy and refinement of manners are imperative under all circumstances. A pleasing appearance, music and hospitality are favored. Cleanliness is endowed with spiritual implications; while legal impurities and taboos against association with other religions, or the perusal of their sacred books, are abolished. Prayers are to be offered in private, or in temples of worship—never while walking the streets. The confession of one’s sins to another is not sanctioned because “ . . . God does not wish for the humiliation of his servants.” Temples are not to be furnished with pulpits or adorned with images or pictures; moreover, congregational prayers are abrogated (i. e. only one voice may be heard). No pilgrimages to the tombs of the dead need be undertaken. During illness reputable physicians must be consulted.
The laws of the government under which one resides must be obeyed. . . . Special mention is made of the payment of taxes the performance of useful labor and willing participation in the sharing of wealth. The acquirement of arts and science is encouraged, the education of one’s children or proteges is enjoined, a responsibility which is assigned to the community when parental obligations are forfeited. Kindness to animals is taught; the over-loading of beasts of burden is taboo.
A distinction is drawn between personal enemies and those who prey upon society: the former should be forgiven and shown magnanimity and love, but recourse to law must be had against the latter.
A unique prohibition is that making “religion a source of livelihood,”—no
priesthood exists; no class may be granted the prerogative of serving the Bahá’i Faith for lucrative benefits.
The rationale of an ethical code may be sound; but that does not ensure its adoption. Moral conduct is less a matter of reason than of desire; and it is because of this that religion has proved to be the most effective and widespread basis of ethics. Religion has stirred man’s desire to do good.
TEACHINGS on Culture: Baha’u’lláh
teaches a new philosophy of history—the
Prophetic Cycle. With a
periodicity analagous to natural law
the appearance of the Prophets of
God has preceded every great culture.
By creating a common basis
of unity among men, they have released
forces, heretofore directed to
personal aggrandizement, into channels
which would enrich the whole.
The appearance of Muhammad and
the rise of Arabic civilization offers
a dramatic example.
Religion is subject to an immutable law of change. The religions of the past were revealed for isolated peoples and nations, hence, they are inadequate to the needs of the modern world. Civilization has culminated in institutions which necessitate the “Prophetic return.” The success of material enterprise largely depends upon the willingness, the integrity and enthusiasm of men—qualities which have been nurtured by religion. Can social legislation and social control of themselves check the disintegrative
tendencies which accompany the decline of religion? Coercive measures depend for their execution upon officials who are free from bribes: there is a dearth of such men in irreligious societies. Consequently, selfish interests take precedence over community welfare and lawlessness prevails. Moreover, through the decline of religion, mankind is robbed of much of life’s deeper meaning. World-weariness overtakes the people; indifference to community interest is general. Inaccurately informed, indifferent to injustices which do not obtrude their ugly features directly upon them and impair their immediate security, the people are carried on by a trend which can end only in chaos.
The existing religions have become effete: they can no longer fecundate the new institutions for a world-culture; and yet, institutions can be effective only when they are rooted in sentiments, ideals, emotion, all of which inhere in religion. Bahá’u’lláh says:
“All things of the world arise through man and are manifest in him, through whom they find life and development; and man is dependent for his (spiritual) existence upon the Sun of the Word of God.”
The truths taught by the Prophets of old have been restated by Bahá’u’lláh to meet the needs of today: the basis of culture has reappeared. Its goal is world peace—a peace which the religion of the Prophets anticipates and underlies. World peace lies within the possibility of human endeavor when human action becomes animated by the spirit of a vital religion.
a new revelation is required and a new life wanted. The minds and hearts refute the veracity of ancient opinions. New ideas are called for and new principles are urgently demanded which may fill the requirements of this age, be as the spirit of this century and as the life of this period.”
The following suggestions of Shoghi Effendi, as inscribed by his secretary to an American Bahá’i, strikingly demonstrate that in the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh will be found today the only solution of world problems.
ALL the spiritual and social movements existing in the world, and undoubtedly there are many of them, have some spark of the divine truth. Their very existence shows that they have something to offer to man and fulfill some purpose. But what the world needs, at such a critical moment in its history is not a mere palliative. It needs a movement that goes deep into its spiritual and social illness and brings about a complete fundamental change—a change that will include in its scope both the social and spiritual reform of man. But such a movement cannot be inaugurated save by a Messenger of God revealed by Him for that very object. In similar critical moments that have punctuated the history of man in the past, a Zoroaster, a Moses, a Christ, and a Muhammad appeared. And in this day, the Baha’is declare Bahá’u’lláh has been revealed.
“Just as in the past the Prophets
were persecuted and their Mission was ridiculed so has the message of Bahá’u’lláh been scoffed at as a mere impractical idealism. From His earliest youth He was put in chains, expatriated and persecuted. But what do we observe in this day, less than forty years after His death, the principles He advocated are the only solution for practical politics, the spiritual truths He voiced are the crying needs of man and the very thing he requires for his moral and spiritual development.
“He does not ask us to follow Him blindly. As He says in one of His Tablets, God has endowed man with a mind to operate as a torch-light and guide him to truth. Read His Words, consider His teachings, and measure their value in the light of contemporary problems and the truth will surely be revealed to you.”
This pen picture of so interesting a city—by Miss Root, international Bahá’i lecturer, teacher and writer—carries its own message. The article was published on the front page of “Milligazete”, a daily paper in Adrianople.
AS a journalist from the United States, I have long had the wish to stop over in Adrianople and see this city which is the front door to Turkey. All summer I have been working hard, so now that I have come to your city, I am calling this trip my vacation.
Perhaps you ask me: “How do you like our city?” I reply: “I like it immensely because it is typically Turkish and is full of interesting suprises. Constantinople and Ankara are fine but more westernized. Adrianople has a charm all its own, it is the real Turkey.
Perhaps other Westerners, just like us, hestitate to come to Adrianople because they do not know about the place, because the train arrives in the night, the station is a little distant from the city. We did not know about hotels and did not know what languages are spoken here. Also, we didn’t know if you would like us—you have had so many wars with Westerners.
However, we came and this is how I found Adrianople: my friend, Miss Marian E. Jack, an artist from St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, and I, arrived on the night train. The officials at the Customs’ office were very thorough, sincere and trustworthy; the chief spoke French. After they looked at our baggage they came down the steps with us to find a carriage. An impression,
too, of Turkey that I shall always remember was when the porter an older man, left the valises to help me down the steps and called to the others to bring the light. They saw us safely into the carriage, shook hands with us and said: “Hotel de l’Europe, Madame Marie.”
The drive was along a good paved road lined with beautiful trees mystic in the shadows and as we came over the Martiza bridge, lovely in the moonlight, the lights of Adrianople gleamed a welcome.
The driver kept standing up and looking back keenly. I did not know what was behind to which he turned his searching glances, but I did not feel afraid, because he smoked with calm composure. If he was not nervous or afraid, why should we be! As we came to the entrance of the hotel we discovered that it was our bags placed in a second carriage to which he had been directing his attention.
A bright Turkish boy showed us to our rooms in the hotel. Next morning imagine my surprise when suddenly from my window I saw the Sultan Salim Mosque in all its glory! This mosque is so beautiful that my artist friend Miss Jack and I go to see it every day; she likes to have a view from different points so she gets out of the carriage to see it from the river or
halts the carriage, to catch new views from the hillside. One reason she came to Adrianople was to paint this mosque. All the mosque architecture here is so marvelous, indeed well worth a visit.
It was satisfying and pleasing to me that when I went into the Sultan Salim Mosque and the Mouradiyyih Mosque to pray, the caretakers did not treat me as a foreigner. As I came out if I could have spoken Turkish I would have told them I found God very near when I prayed in their sacred mosques. I believe that Jesus Christ and Muhammad were World Teachers; I have learned to love and to appreciate the Qur’an. Each World Teacher down through the cycles has ushered in a great new spiritual culture and each time the first great art as a fruit of this new Spiritual culture is new architecture.
PERHAPS YOU ask if people have
been good to us in Adrianople? I
reply: “Yes, every one whom we
have met has helped us graciously.
Madame Marie has interpreted, and
really she has treated us as if we
were friends in her home.
Mustafa, the driver who takes us about, has shown us a lot of Adrianople. He interests us too, because he truly tries to show his city. If all drivers were like him, tourists would carry away memories of many interesting vistas that probably they would not have known about otherwise. The caravansaries here are like a glimpse into another epoch when Adrianople had the most luxurious caravansaries to be found anywhere. I have stayed in caravansaries in the East when sudden snow storms have halted our
--PHOTO--
Sultan Salim Mosque
motor car journey, but I never dreamed that caravansaries so elaborately de luxe as these existed anywhere in the world.
We have found the people of this city not only kind to show us the way to all places we wished to visit, and they did it similingly as if we were indeed sisters, but we have found how honest is the Turk. Miss Jack, one of the first days, when out sketching in a garden lost her English money. The man who discovered it knew from his mother whose money it must be for it was just where the painter had been making her sketches; he brought it immediately to the hotel. She said to me that night: “I am glad I lost the money for it is an admirable example of the honesty of the Turk who has not always been fairly spoken of in some parts of the world.”
A Queen on a throne in Europe once said to me: “I find the Turk a very lovable character.”
--PHOTO--
Muradiyyih Mosque
WE HAD tried to come to Adrianople several weeks earlier but were so busy and so hindered we couldn’t get started. When we had the great joy of being here on October twenty-ninth, the tenth anniversary fete day of the Republic of Turkey, how glad we were that we had been delayed, otherwise we should have missed this greatest day in the year in Adrianople. The days here preceding the twenty-ninth had been so full of preparations that we had caught the enthusiasm. It was like our Fourth of July at home (our Independence Day), only I tried to think what it would be like in our United States if it were only our tenth anniversary and if our enemies had in our lifetime brought four different wars upon our cities and if everything almost had been bombarded and much demolished, and if our houses, vineyards, fields had been so destroyed that no one had
much courage to build or to plant the fruits all over again until George Washington, the “Father of our Country” had been so strong and powerful that we felt our country would be safe.
What impressed me most at the splendid fete here on Sunday, October twenty-ninth was that we all heard the voice of the Ghazi Kemal Pasha the “Father of the Republic of Turkey” speaking to his thousands of citizens here in such a way that each one felt he was speaking personally, directly to him alone! The power of that voice, the tender sympathy, the good counsel: No one could hear that voice and not feel sure that the man who spoke had unbounded power to continue this Republic and evolve it educationally, socially, materially to a high place in the galaxy of nations. Every man and woman and all the youth here had a new light in their eyes, a new courage, a new determination after they heard that speech. We liked to think that our representatives of Adrianople, those three hundred students, boy scouts and girl scouts who had marched so proudly through the streets here on Friday in the dress parade would be standing at attention in Ankara to do homage to the Ghazi Kemal Pasha while we were hearing the speech here.
Other impressions at the fete were how carefully dressed, how fully prepared with flowers and flags, how orderly, how dignified was the crowd in Adrianople; how fitting to wait in respectful silence to hear the message of the President before beginning the program here! It was most interesting to see the Governor of the Province Salim
Ozdemir Big Effendi cordially salute the assembled throngs and walk among them to inaugurate the festivities.
Then representatives from the forty thousand and more inhabitants marched in front of the Governor and in passing saluted him as he stood with the Mayor, the Army Officials, the Director of the Evkaf, the Prefect of Police, and the representatives of the different Consulates. It was a moving picture of the life, the hopes the spirit of the Turks, demonstrating their character as well as their industries. It was a touching tribute of gratitude that first came the soldiers who had been wounded in battles and they were cheered and showered with flowers as were the soldiers who followed them.
Most of the girls in that procession marched with perfect rhythm and the stride of the young men proves the Turks are musical, sure of themselves; and that they have a great love of art was seen in their decorations. I liked the fine faces of the teachers. It was so interesting to us from other countries to see the representatives of all the industries. It was sad to see how many orphans in Adrianople
1 The Bahá’i World, Vol. 4. 2 Bahá’i Magazine, Vol. 21, p. 75.
will not have the help of parents to direct their lives. The music of the fete, combining both the Turkish and the Western melodies seemed typical of the role that Adrianople is to play in the destiny of world culture. Adrianople, the city about which we knew so little a few days ago has become so loved we are sorry we are leaving.
MAY I CLOSE with a quotation of
something that I wrote about Turkey
which appeared in a book1 published
in New York City, and in a
Magazine2 published in Washington,
D. C.: “Turkey, the new Republic
under the powerful courage of the
Ghazi Kemal Pasha, has contributed
a mighty forward impulse to
world understanding, to the union
of the East and the West. This
great President, and he is the same
man who as Commander of the
Army blocked absolutely the Dardanelles
to a warring world, has
opened wide the mental dardanelles
so that the East and the West may
come and go, so that there may be
Arabic Latinized script, so there
may be co-education, great freedom
and progress for women in this
eastern-western republic, and so
there may be genuine free thinking,
and freedom for all religions.”
“Whew the light of Muhammad dawned, the darkness of ignorance was dispelled from the deserts of Arabia. In a short period of time those barbarous peoples attained a superlative degree of civilization which with Baghdad as its center extended as fat westward as Spain and afterward influenced the greater part of Europe. What proof of prophethood could be greater them this, unless we close our eyes to justice and remain obstinately opposed to reason.”
“I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble, or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered at my feet.” (Sir Isaac Newton.)
UNDER dark clouds, against driving winds and mountainous waves, a great ocean liner forges ahead, ever on the true course towards its destination. What an example of the play and interplay of forces—controlled and uncontrolled.
In the realm of physics there is a law which states that to every action there is a reaction. The interplay of forces in the physical world has its counterpart in the lives of men, for are not our waking hours made up of actions and reactions? Is not existence a continual series of responses, in some form or other, to stimuli? Our responses are either passive or active, but whether we act or remain adamant, we consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, assume certain attitudes towards affairs and these color our existence. These attitudes can be either positive or negative, their polarity determining, in a large measure, the nature of the response.
These terms, “positive” and “negative” are relative as are our responses. There seems to be inherent in life a series of great contrasts: positive and negative, good and bad, light and darkness, health and illness, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance. These conflicting ideas are of great interest, for our understanding of them
* There has been all down the ages a limited group action, in times of danger and at other times, but the author here intends, evidently, a united action as based on the acceptance of the Oneness of Mankind set forth as a religious principle.
influences our attitudes towards many events.
Furthermore, the attitude of a group is the synthesis of the attitudes of the individual members of the group and little appreciated is the tremendous potential and dynamic power of concerted thought, concerted feeling and concerted action. It is as yet almost untried.* It is one of those instruments for good, which, somehow, man has failed to use, but one which he can use and one which is attracting attention on as possessing enormous possibilities.
This power of concerted action can only become operative in the world when the fundamental Oneness of Mankind is realized and When the Principle of Unity is the motif of endeavor. The exigencies of the times, both as regards short range and long range contingencies, is bringing about a knowledge of the imperative necessity for cooperation on a broad and comprehensive basis.
FORTUNATELY, we have recently
had some reassuring evidence of
what government agencies can do
under the lash of necessity. Sectional
and partisan interests can be
surrendered to the best interests of
the whole, when the partisans desire
to do so—as they do in the
presence of a great common danger.
Is it not strange that it seems to require a threat of disaster to instill the cooperative attitude into the hearts of men? As long as there is no danger–we bicker. When ruin looms—we agree.
Every individual has some degree of responsibility with reference to the affairs of the world but our collective responsibility is great. Action is requisite to solving our difficulties and to renovating our environment. In order to act with wisdom the right attitude must prevail and this attitude must be positive, constructive and just. A new understanding of essential relationships is required.
Returning to the idea of contrasts, what is darkness? We do not measure it and have no instruments for so doing. We can and do measure light. Darkness is then, simply the absence of light. Light is positive—darkness negative.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has explained these relationships most clearly.
“Evil does not exist. Death is only the lack of life; therefore death does not exist. Darkness is only the lack of light. Evil is only the lack of good. Ignorance is only the lack of knowledge. Poverty is the lack of wealth. Misleading is the lack of guidance. Miserliness is the lack of generosity. The non-existence of light is darkness. The lack of sight is blindness. The lack of hearing is deafness. All these things are non-existent. God did not create any evil thing. God did not create a man poor. Poverty is only the lack of wealth. Guidance is the gift of God, and if man is deprived of it, he will be misled; but he is not misled by God—it is only the result of the lack of guidance.”*
HERE IS a basis for faith, hope, courage and action—action not fettered with a limiting sense of frustration and impotency, of predestined failure. Here is justification for relegating some old and outworn conceptions, some old fears and apprehensions “to the limbo of
* Bahá’i Scriptures, paragraph 800.
the obsolete.” Here is freedom to act courageously.
In these impulsive times it is frequently very hard to be unbiased, to suspend judgment, to be tolerant, calm and tranquil. But it is also a very wise attitude to achieve. It lifts one above petty impulses to a vantage point of seeing matters in true perspective. Is it not preparation for Divine Guidance?
How then are we to know what is wise, true and just? By studying the Revealed Word of God.
Divine Guidance is available for everyone. For this present advanced age it is contained in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh.
IN TRYING to apply these teachings
to life, it must be remembered
that we are dealing with world affairs,
not merely local, state or national
ones. Hence principles to be
just have to include all, they have
to be universal in every sense. We
need not expect to find a detailed
solution given for some petty misunderstanding
between two people
under a certain set of conditions.
We need not necessarily expect to
find detailed directions for the solution
of personal problems, although
many are given. We do find the
broad, general principles of love and
justice sounded. By living in accordance
with the great, positive,
Divine Laws for this day, we will
obviously eliminate the causes for
many of our troubles, both large
and small, and if they no longer occur,
detailed solutions are not required,
or become apparent, as the
need arises, from our knowledge of
the basic principles.
An infinite variety of beautiful
and useful plants are the result of the great and mysterious law of life and growth. They are the detailed evidences of the operation of the fundamental law. They manifest the power of this law, and we accept, enjoy and use them without necessarily understanding many of the detailed procedures, actions and reactions involved. As the plant develops, from seed to fruit, so will the details of Divine Law unfold as stages of progress follow one another.
The span of a human life on earth is but a tiny increment of eternity. But we are living in eternity. The trivial vexations of these passing years pale into insignificance when it is realized that we are “building for eternity”—a tremendous and glorious task, worthy of our best efforts.
However, even a small degree of perfection is difficult to attain and it will be necessary for mankind to consider carefully its steps–to seek true guidance for all time to come. We can, though, try our best to live in accordance with Divine Law, and when we do, we will find that many of life’s problems seem to solve themselves or dissolve into nothingness. The accent changes from the negative, doubting, halting, fearful attitude, to one of faith and assurance, to a positive, constructive, cooperative endeavor to “live life whole.”
THE BAHA’I Revelation sounds
those broad principles upon which
the spiritual civilization of the present
and the future rests. It places
* Bahá’i Scriptures, paragraph 965.
the accent on the positive deeds. It defines the attitude which each should have if we are to contribute our maximum to the continued upward evolution of humanity. Perhaps what we, as individuals, need. is a new “catalytic” to bind us more closely together and to make our efforts effective collectively. This “catalytic” must have “celestial potency” It is Love.
“The greatest gift of man is universal love, for this love is the magnet which renders existence eternal, attracts reality, and diffuses life with infinite joy. If this love penetrates the heart of man, all the forces of the universe will be realized in him, for it is a divine power which transports him to a divine station; and man will make no real progress until illumined by the power of love.”*
““If one possesses the love of God, everything that he undertakes is useful, but if the undertaking is without the love of God, then it is hurtful and the cause of veiling one’s self from the Lord of the Kingdom.”
“If this divine love penetrates the heart of man, all the forces of the universe will be realized in him . . .” What a tremenduous possibility!
Man must needs reflect the attributes of God in his attitudes and actions, thereby flooding the distracted world with the light and warmth. of the Breaths of the Holy Spirit, thereby reawakening the powers of recuperation and growth. Man must attain to the attitude of spiritual nobility, for “it is possible” said ‘Adbu’l-Bahá, “to so adjust oneself to the practice of nobility that its atmosphere surrounds and colors every act.”
Once the catalytic of this love becomes operative in human life, the noble attitude will cast everlasting glory on mankind and his deeds.
The University in 1959
WALTER DILL SCOTT
President, Northwestern University
UNIVERSITIES are among the most enduring of all social institutions. The oldest universities are definitely older than the forms of the governments of the nations in which they are located. Although universities may survive many centuries, they are subject to changes quite as much as other forms of social institutions.
THE changes in social institutions of all types are going forward at an increased rate of acceleration. The indications are that the changes in American universities in the next twenty-five years will be as great as in the preceding seventy-five years. . . . Our policy in the future may be to concentrate on a few functions, and hence to drop many or even most of our schools.
IN America, however, universities serve in the main three functions: to preserve, disseminate and discover truth; to train men and women to serve human needs; and to develop men and women. . . . It is entirely possible that we may concentrate more and more on one of these, or change to a function not now recognized as of fundamental importance, such as the development of human relationships. We have heretofore been predominantly interested in cultural and technical training. Most of America’s difficulties at the present time lie in the field of human relationships. During the next twenty-five years we may expect a great expansion of all sorts of training having to do with cooperative effort and thinking. We may in the future concentrate much more effectively on social training, looking toward better human relations in a democratic society.
ONE of the greatest improvements in instruction of the future will result from a better understanding of the learning process and what is involved in the adequate development of the students’ abilities. That is, instructors will utilize in the future not merely improved instruments and methods for presenting materials, but will develop also a new science of education.
LEADERSHIP in religion is difficult today in the home, the church and the university. Nevertheless, our faculty, definitely religious, in its interests, is striving for a new integration and through such integration for a leadership above any conflict between science and religion, a leadership guided by broad conceptions of science and motivated by a faith profoundly religious.*
* Northwestern University Alumni News, May 1934.
than “a review” of the book entitled “The Racial Myth.” As his great interest is in racial harmony, peace and good will among all peoples, he has, in response to our request, presented herewith what he considers the salient points of this book.
Humanity has been “running to and fro after knowledge,” to a greater degree in the past one hundred years than in previous centuries, and there is no gainsaying the fact that race and race relations have been subjects given marked attention by anthropolgists, scientists, advanced thinkers,—and their findings have awakened deep interest among research scholars, welfare workers, students, religionists and others. As the dynamic teachings of Bahá’u’lláh—creative in their effect because emanating from a divine source—have been more widely spread, humanity in increasing numbers have been dedicating themselves to these noble ideals of world unity and world peace, even when unconscious of the Supreme Light which was their Source. It is well known that one of the greatest principles, considered fundamental in the Bahá’i Cause, is the
Oneness of Mankind. Its importance cannot be overestimated or sufficiently stressed.PROFESSOR Paul Radin, anthropologist at the University of California, has essayed the task of carefully analyzing the claims to superiority of certain races and nations and in his book gives conclusions that are worthy of serious consideration.
There is no doubt that mankind early became overwhelmed by the life about him, the author believes. Instead of freeing himself from the demoralizing complexities of life he made it more complex. He created something that more and more engrappled him and threatened his very existence but without destroying his sense of power to control. In spite of adversities suffered, this egotism survived, and with each fresh survival man’s consciousness of superiority grew. He did not always ascribe this wholly to his own genius, but as, for example, in the case of the Jews, he believed himself specially favored by God. Consequently, they were the “chosen people”. They held to this belief
1 ”The Racial Myth” by Paul Radin. McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 330 W. 42nd St., New York City, $1.50.
2 Daniel 12:4.
for thousands of years and each new victory over some menacing tribe wedded them more strongly to it. Defeat and captivity did not destroy it. The Messiah would surely come and redeem them from their enemies. Though scattered and without national status the orthodox among the Jews still have the conviction that they are God’s favorites whose superiority will in time receive His recognition in a way to convince the world.
THE GREEKS evidenced a similar
mode of thought. A person was
either a Greek or a nobody—a barbarian,
bearded one, Alexander
conquered these aliens but thereupon
they made themselves Greeks by
adopting their language and culture.
Origin then played no part in the
constitution of a Greek and so there
was no chance for any declaration of
Greek superiority for, to their
minds, no one lived with whom to
make comparison.
Then Rome developed. In due
time the Romans became race conscious, they boasted national superiority, the purity of their stock. They were a pastoral people, and despised Greek culture and Etruscan civilization because they did not know what it was all about. They rejoiced in simple tastes and homely virtues but as soon as they had reduced Greece to a dependency, they lost their pride in these and rapidly absorbed Greek manners and learning. The foundations for national or racial egotism were swept away for they were no more Romans but Graeco-Romans.
And thus, too, the fall of Rome meant no extirpation of Roman culture. The shell we call Empire passed away but those wild men who swept down from the north readily recognized the excellencies of her ways of life and incorporated them into their own political and social structures.
So, also, have the fabrics of nations been woven down to the present. The web may be native but the woof is contributed by outsiders. The patterns have become so intricate in these days that they defy disentanglement. We are all part of each other. Even our languages are impure. We deliberately take, without asking leave, words or laws or methods—anything that promises advantage to ourselves, and use it to exalt our peculiar self-pride, often claiming it as our own discovery. Everything in the domain of civilization is inextricably fused. and confused. No nation is responsible for all, nor is there any race that has not added its due portion to the whole. We are so arrogant and boastful, all of us, nations and individuals,—and individuals are
but the reflection of their nation,–that we lose sight of the fact that the greatest gifts to civilization came, perhaps, from prehistoric man. Who presented us with the lever, the most utilized principle of mechanics, for instance?
BUT PROFESSOR RADIN is most concerned
with what he calls the Nordic
Myth or the Illusion of the Late-Comers.
He subjects the Nordic
claims to superiority to searching
analysis and finds them sadly wanting.
He ridicules the theory of a
Nordic or German race with its cultivation
of exclusiveness or “desire
to eat alone”, as he expresses it.
The great periods of history of the
German people, he asserts, coincide
with those in which they were most
influenced by foreign thought
and culture. Their assumptions
that everything good in the world
today was of Germanic origin; that
all the benefactors such as Dante, da
Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo,
Valesquez, Murillo, Voltaire,
Gounod and Tasso were descended
from real Teutons wither away
under the keen analysis of the author,
who declares such unfounded
claims as sheer nonsense. The doctrine
of specific German qualities is
only another mirage. So-called national
differences depend rather upon
whether a Frenchman is looking
at a German, or whether an Italian
or an Englishman is observing him.
In essential characteristics human
beings are largely alike.
According to Professor Radin races have always been mixed, the white more than any other. While the Negro is overwhelmingly long-headed and the Mongolian equally round-headed, the Caucasian is
both. Purity of race remains always a doubtful quantity. Human heredity cannot be dictated like that of cattle.
The accent upon Aryan race is roundly assailed. An Aryan race never existed, and doubtless never will. There was an Aryan language but surely the Teutonic tongue is not its offspring. Here again, even admitting the Germanic contention, mixture and not purity is the order.
Chinese invented the compass, movable type, rag paper and gunpowder; Arabs and Jews kept alive the Greek tradition, particularly in medicine; India passed on to the Arabs numerical notation and algebra, the bases upon which modern mathematics rests, as well as the concept of zero. Trade and the capitalistic system came from Jews, Italians, English and Spaniards; mathematics was developed by Italians, French, English, north Germans and Jews; physics, until the nineteenth century, by Italians, English, French and Dutch, and later by Germans and Jews as well; chemistry originally by English and French but in Germany it later achieved some of its most conspicuous advances; biology started in Italy and at the same time progressed in Germany, Holland and England but, at the present time, its accomplishments are due to the latter countries and America. Germany must be given credit for its contributions to music, but many of her innovators in this field are not Aryans, according to the modern definition. Once again national egotism has the props knocked out from under it.
In the sixteenth century, there was substantially but one religion in Europe. When this split into two
and separate national entities arose, European culture became English, French, Spanish or Italian and nationalism, came into being. The Church had “plumbed the art of emotions to its very depths, but the art of thinking it had neglected”. The Renaissance had brought back man to the art of thinking and reinstalled, Graeco-Roman civilization. Henceforth, universalism must express its aims within the boundaries of nations. So it came about that there is an English science, a French science,—each nation had its this and that, and each boasted its own variety. Like school-boys, all that is mine was exalted; all that is yours, degraded. This blind appraisal has led to extravagance, untruth, intolerance, sensitiveness to criticism, selfish aggrandizement, war.
By specific examples the argument proceeds to show that neither race, nation nor religion determines the advent of a great man. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” To cause one of pre-eminent ability to appear in any particular country is beyond human ability. God operates no monopoly in behalf of any nation. The Spirit cannot be confined within a wall of conceit.
The place of the Jew in the modern world is handled effectively. The debt of civilization to the Jew is itemized down to the last achievement—an impressive schedule of contributions. That he should be persecuted and driven from any country is a tragedy completely incomprehensible to the liberal and
sicentific mind. Inheritance may mean much in the development of humans, but is environment without influence?
AFTER ALL, what definition can
without injustice separate the inferior
races from the superior?
What nation excels another? Color
is no criterion. Civilization has
been common to all; culture likewise.
The Mongolian for ages led
the world, and Japan, leaving its
chrysalis stage less than a century
ago, advanced to a front-position
by adaptation and imitation of
western accomplishments. Surely
one cannot brand the Japanese as
inferior because of his color or the
shape of his eye-lid. The Negro,
what of him? He has never built
any great civilization, his critics
say. They forget, however, that
within three hundred years since he
was forced to come to America, he
has produced the only distinctly
original music and literature of our
land. Northern Europeans reached
no such achievements in twice that length of time, unhampered though they were by a state of bondage. The conclusion is irresistible that races as well as peoples are not altogether good, for we have not yet reached the millenium, nor altogether had, as we are still on the upward trend, and there is no method yet devised that can accurately tell which is superior or inferior to the other.
The authtor’s hope lies in Russia, the Americas and the Jews. Only time can tell whether or not that hope has been justified. That we are tending in the direction of some type of co-operative state, recent events prove. What its final form will be is pure conjecture, Professor Radin believes. But, whatever, it be, we know that it must banish into everlasting oblivion not only nationalism but individualism and racial superiority, for in a world like ours all these are figments of selfish imaginations. By that path alone can we regain our lost souls.
“This human plane or kingdom is one creation and all souls are the signs and traces of the divine bounty. In this plane there are no exceptions; all have been recipients of their bestowals through the heavenly bounty. . . . All humanity are the children of God; they belong to the same family, to the same original race. There can be no multiplicity of races since all are the descendants of Adam. This signifies that racial assumption and distinction is nothing but superstition. . . . God did not make these divisions. These distinctions have had their origin in man himself. Therefore as they are against the plan and purpose of the Reality they are false and imaginary.”
The following is a recent address by Dr. Woolley in Washington, D. C., at the “All University Religious Service”, Howard University, the largest institution of learning in the world devoted to the higher education of colored youth.
“Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty; they shall behold the land that is very far off.” (Isa. 33:17.)
TWO thousand six hundred years into the past,—that is the backward look which I am asking you to take with me this morning. I am calling your attention to a graphic picture, a picture drawn with words, words that are both beautiful and appalling. Note the rapid transitions in the chapter, which is our morning lesson: “Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee!” “O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee; be thou their arm every morning, our Salvation also in the time of trouble.”
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among as shall dwell with everlasting burnings?” “Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty; They shall behold the land that is very far off.”
IT IS not difficult to understand
the dark side of the picture; we
have only to recall the situation of
Judah 700 B. C. to appreciate the
reason for gloomy utterances. The
great Powers of Assyria and Babylon
and Egypt filled the national
life of Israel and Judah with uncertainty
and foreboding and sometimes with tragedy. Isaiah was statesman as well as prophet and saw infinitely more clearly than the politicians just what dangers confronted his country. Beyond that, he saw the shortsightedness of the political philosophy of his people. They, “looking through their dark glasses at life”—to quote a famous scholar, said, “Life is simply a war in which the strongest prevail, a game which the most cunning win.” So they made fast their alliances, and were ready to meet the Assyrian, or they fled in panic before him, according as Egypt or he, seemed the stronger. Isaiah saw that with Assyrian and Jew another Power was present—the real reason of every change in politics, collapse or crash in either of the empires–the active righteousness of God. Assyrian and Jew had not only to contend with each other. They were at strife with Him. We now see plainly that Isaiah was right. Far more operative than the intrigues of politicians or the pride of Assyria, because it used these simply as its mines and its fuel, was the law of righteousness, the spiritual force which is as impalpable as the atmosphere, “yet strong to burn and try as a furnace seven times heated.”
Isaiah preached, as we are reminded, that “Righteousness is the atmosphere of the world” and our
task, if I may interpret, is to bring ourselves into harmony with this righteousness: First, by our relations to one another, as a group, a community, a nation, a world; second, by our relations to our selves, that is, by our lives as individuals.
First, by our relations to one another, as a group, however small, or large, that group may be. Our age is critical from the group point of view, beyond any other age in the history of the world, because never before were groups brought together in such close relationship. In other words, the situation in the modern world raises to the nth power the importance of the attitude of individuals to one another. A Robinson Crusoe might be characterized by ill-will and suspicion and distrust and, with the exception of Friday and the reaction upon Robinson Crusoe himself,—it would not matter particularly. The absence of a social attitude doesn’t count on a desert island! But we are not living on a desert island today, far from it.
Ruth Nichols spoke at Mount Holyoke College a few days ago to an eager audience, on the would-be aviators of the future, and in the course of her remarks said that the time was coming when planes would be as truly within the reach of the average person as Fords are today. A remark like that is fraught with meaning. It is a superficial understanding that sees in it only increased opportunity for sport, for commercial intercourse, for scientific expansion. It means also annihilating space, weaving the world into an even closer fabric. That is not the conception of a visionary; it is going on before our eyes, day
by day. And it presents a situation appalling from one point of view, inspiring from another.
I HAVE SAID more than once that I
expected to learn a great deal from
my six months in Geneva, but that I
did not expect to learn religion. Yet
that is just what I did learn. How
could one help it when, in the
speeches of the representatives of
the governments, the changes were
rung on the supreme importance of
good will among the nations as the
best security? When the blocking
of agreement is so clearly the result
of mistrust and suspicion and fear
and ill-will? The significance of
religion for international understanding,
for a new international relationship,
based on reason not on
brute force; on cooperation, not on
competition; on good will, not on
ill-will;—never was that significance
so clear. There is a new meaning
to religion in this day in which
we live, religion defined not in terms
of creed, or ecclesiasticism, or
ritual, but religion defined as the
“way” of him “that walketh righteously
and speaketh uprightly; he
that despiseth the gain of oppressions,
that shaketh his hand from
holding of bribes, that stoppeth his
ears from hearing of blood, and
shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.”
That is the normal humanity, the normal world which is the creation of God; all else is abnormal. The tragedy of the international situation, of the clash of class with class, of race with race, is that it is not necessary. There are great catastrophes that cannot be prevented by any human agency, the devastations of nature, hard to understand and impossible to control. But human
catastrophes need not be: the clash of will, the greed of self, the blight of hate. And the meaning of religion today is to make clear that truth, to help human beings to become normal not to leave them abnormal in their relationships with one another.
May I turn the shield to ourselves as individuals rather than as members of a group, forgetting, for the moment, that “none of us liveth to himself?” What is the meaning of religion for the “me”, as well as for the “us”? What is it that the individual particularly needs in this day in which we are living? There are many answers,—we cannot even list them all. I should like to suggest two. The first is the answer that I think the majority of a typical audience of this age would give, and that is courage. Courage to meet the present, to face the future. Do we need it, you and I? The question answers itself! Down through the ages the assurance comes: “He shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be munitions of rocks.” Seven centuries afterward came the reaffirmation: “Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.
“And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock.”
THE MEANING of religion? It
means courage; it means also vision.
“Where there is no vision, the people
perish.” “Thine eyes shall see
the King in his beauty; they shall
behold the land that is very far off.”
Again, the words come down to us over the ages, from the seers of visions. A vision is not something that is visionary, in our usual definition of the word. The greatest powers in the physical world today are the intangible, the ones that we neither see with our eyes nor feel with our hands.
I spent an hour and a half in our physics laboratory the other day, having explained to me, as far as explanation is possible, some of the marvels of the electrical world, those marvels which within our lifetime, have become commonplaces. The vision of the scientist is the working power of our every day life. It is a mystery? Yes, but because the power is a mystery, we do not refuse its use in our living.
“The scholar who visioned and verified electron structure”,—my eye fell upon that heading in the daily paper as I was preparing this talk for you. “Visioned and verified”—in the physical world,—we see and accept that fact every day of our lives. “Visioned and verified” in the spiritual world is surely not less essential to the human soul.
- “For my feet have stood upon the
- mountains,
- And I have seen a vision of beauty;
- And though my heart be cast down
- again,
- Yet will I lift up mine eyes unto the
- heavens;
- For he that worketh in Heaven
- Worketh also in me;
- As He has lifted up the mountains,
- So will he lift up my soul,
- That I may behold the beauty of His
- work in the heavens,
- And on the earth in the hearts of
- men.”
The following remarkable passage with which Henry George concludes his Progress and Poverty (first published in 1879) bears restatement at this critical period of social, economic and political change.
Here was a man who devoted his life with the utmost of self-sacrifice and idealism to the concept of a better age when social justice should rule. As John Dewey says of him: “It would require less than the fingers of the two hands to enumerate those who, from Plato down, rank with Henry George among the world’s social philosophers.”
IT is not the Almighty, but we who are responsible for the vice and misery that fester amid our civilization. The Creator showers upon us His gifts–more than enough for all. But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire—tread them in the mire, while we tear and rend each other!
“In the very centers of our civilization today are want and suffering enough to make sick at heart whoever does not close his eyes and steel his nerves. Dare we turn to the Creator and ask Him to relieve it? Supposing the prayer were heard, and at the behest with which the universe sprang into being there should glow in the sun a greater power; new virtue fill the air; fresh vigor the soil; that for every blade of grass that now grows two should spring up, and the seed that now increases fifty-fold should increase a hundredfold. Would proverty be abated or want relieved? Manifestly no! Whatever benefit would accrue would be but temporary.
“This is not merely a deduction of political economy; it is a fact of experience. We know it because we have seen it. Within our own times, under our very eyes, that Power which is above all, and in all, and through all; that Power of which the whole universe is but the manifestation; that Power which maketh all things, and without which is not anything made that is made, has increased the bounty
which men may enjoy, as truly as though the fertility of nature had been increased. Into the mind of one came the thought that harnessed steam for the service of mankind. To the inner ear of another was whispered the secret that compels the lightning to bear a message round the globe. In every direction have the laws of matter been revealed; in every department of industry have arisen arms of iron and fingers of steel, whose effect upon the production of wealth has been precisely the same as an increase in the fertility of nature. What has been the result?
“Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus misappropriated with impunity? Is it a right thing that labor should be robbed of its earnings while greed rolls in wealth–that the many should want while the few are surfeited? Turn to history, and on every page may be read the lesson that such wrong never goes unpunished; that the Nemesis that follows injustice never falters nor sleeps! Look around today. Can this state of things continue? May we even say, ‘after‘ us the deluge!’ Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun.
“The fiat has gone forth! With
steam and electricity, and the new powers born of progress, forces have entered the world that will either compel us to a higher plane or overwhelm us, as nation after nation, as civilization after civilization, have been overwhelmed before. It is the delusion which precedes destruction that sees in the popular unrest with which the civilized world is feverishly pulsing only the passing effect of ephemeral causes. Between democratic ideas and the aristocratic adjustments of society there is an irreconcilable conflict. Here in the United States, as there in Europe, it may be seen arising. We cannot go on permitting men to vote and forcing them to tramp. We cannot go on educating boys and girls in our public schools and then refusing them the right to earn an honest living. We cannot go on prating of the inalienable rights of man and then denying the inalienable right to the bounty of the Creator. Even now, in old bottles the new wine begins to ferment and elemental forces gather for the strife!
“But if, while there is yet time,
we turn to Justice and obey her, if we trust Liberty and follow her, the dangers that now threaten must disappear, the forces that now menace will turn to agencies of elevation. Think of the powers now wasted; Of the infinite fields of knowledge yet to be explored; of the possibilities of which the wondrous inventions of this century give us but a hint. With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age of which poets have sung and high-raised seers have told in metaphor! It is the glorious vision which has always haunted man with gleams of fitful splendor. It is what He saw whose eyes at Patmos were closed in a trance. It is the culmination of Christianity—the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace.”
“The world of existence is continuously progressing and developing and therefore assuredly the virtues characterizing the maturity of mam must likewise expand and grow. The greatest bestowal of God to mam is the capacity to attain human virtues. Therefore the teachings of religion must be reformed and renewed because past teachings are not suitable for the present time. . . . The laws of the past are being superseded because they are not applicable to this time.”
THE REFORMATION
of humanity is undergoing a reformation.”
FROM the beginning to the end of his life man passes through certain periods or stages each of which is marked by certain conditions peculiar to itself. For instance during the period of childhood his conditions and requirements are characteristic of that degree of intelligence and capacity. After a time he enters the period of youth in which his former conditions and needs are superseded by new requirements applicable to the advance in his degree. His faculties of observation are broadened and deepened, his intelligent capacities are trained and awakened, the limitations and environment of childhood no longer restrict his energies and accomplishments. At last he passes out of the period of youth and enters the stage or station of maturity which necessitates another transformation and corresponding advance in his sphere of life-activity.
SIMILARLY there are periods and stages in the life of the aggregate world of humanity which at one time was passing through its degree of childhood, at another its time of youth but now has entered its long presaged period of maturity, the evidences of which are everywhere visible and apparent. Therefore the requirements and conditions of former periods have changed and merged into exigencies which distinctly characterize the present age of the world of mankind. That which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race could neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day and period of newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former degrees of limitation and preliminary training. Many must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moralities, new capacities.
THIS is the cycle of maturity and reformation in religion as well. Dogmatic imitations of ancestral beliefs are passing. . . . Heavenly teachings applicable to the advancement in human conditions have been revealed in this merciful age. This reformation and renewal of the fundamental reality of religion constitute the true and outworking spirit of modernism, the unmistakable Light of the world, the manifest effulgence of the Word of God, the divine remedy for all human ailment . . .”
--PHOTO--
THE BAHA’I TEMPLE (see opposite page)
The following communication, written by the Guardian of the Bahá’i Cause, has been printed previously in the pages of this magazine. It is here reprinted by request. This great House of Worship is being erected in Wilmette—near Chicago, Ill. Its architectural beauty and great religious and humanitarian significance attracts thousands of visitors.
HOWEVER inspiring the conception of Bahá’i worship, as witnessed in the central Edifice of this exalted Temple, it cannot be regarded as the sole, nor even the essential, factor in the part which the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, as designed by Bahá’u’lláh, is destined to play in the organic life of the Bahá’i community. Divorced from the social, humanitarian, educational and scientific pursuits centering around the Dependencies of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, Bahá’i worship, however exalted in its conception, however passionate in fervor, can never hope to achieve beyond the meagre and often transitory results produced by the contemplations of the ascetic or the communion of the passive worshipper. It cannot afford lasting satisfaction and benefit to the worshipper himself, much less to humanity in general, unless and until translated and transfused into that dynamic and disinterested service to the cause of humanity which it is the supreme privilege of the Dependencies of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár to facilitate and promote. Nor will the exertions, no matter how disinterested and strenuous, of those who within the precincts of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár will be engaged in administering the affairs of the future Bahá’i Commonwealth, fructify and prosper unless they are brought into close and daily communion With those spiritual agencies centering in and radiating from the central Shrine of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár.
NOTHING short of direct and constant interaction between the spiritual forces emanating from this House of Worship centering in the heart of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, and the energies consciously displayed by those who administer its affairs in their service to humanity can possibly provide the necessary agency capable of removing the ills that have so long and so grievously afflicted humanity. For it is assuredly upon the consciousness of the efficacy of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, reinforced on one hand by spiritual communion with His Spirit, and on the other by the intelligent application and the faithful execution of the principles and laws He revealed, that the salvation of a world in travail must ultimately depend. And of all the institutions that stand associated with His Holy Name, surely none save the institution of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár can most adequately provide the essentials of Bahá’i worship and service, both so vital to the regeneration of the world. Therein lies the secret of the loftiness, of the potency, of the unique position of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár as one of the outstanding institutions conceived by Bahá’u’lláh.
When The Divine Sun Shines . . . . . . .
IN the divine Holy Books there are unmistakable prophecies giving the glad-tidings of a certain Day in which the Promised One of all the Books would appear, a radiant dispensation be established, the banner of the Most Great Peace and reconciliation be hoisted, and the oneness of the world of humanity proclaimed. Among the various nations and peoples of the world no enmity or hatred would remain. All hearts were to be connected one with another. These things are recorded in the Taurat or Old Testament, in the Gospel, in the Qur’án, in the Zend Avesta, in the Books of Buddha, and in the Book of Confucius. In brief, all the Holy Books contain these glad-tidings. In all of them it is announced that after the world has been surrounded by darkness, then radiance shall appear. For just as the night, when it becomes excessively dark, precedes the dawn of a new day, so likewise when the darkness of religious apathy and heedlessness overtake the world, when human souls become negligent of God, when materialistic ideas overshadow idealism and spirituality, when nations become submerged in the world of matter and forget God—at such a time as this shall the Divine Sun shine forth and the Radiant Morn appear.
DURING the years when the darkness of heedlessness was most
intense in the Orient and the people were so submerged in imitations
that nations were thirsting for each other’s blood, considering one
another as contaminated and refusing mutual association—at such a
time as this His Holiness Bahá’u’lláh appeared. He arose in the Orient,
uprooting the very foundations of superstition and brought the dawn
of the Light of Reality. Various nations became united, because all
desired the Reality. Inasmuch as they investigated the Reality of religion
they found that all men are the servants of God, all are the posterity
of Adam, all are children of one household, and that the foundations
of all the Prophets are one. For inasmuch as the Teachings of the
Prophets are Reality, their foundations are one. . . . Through Bahá’u’lláh
the nations and peoples grew to understand and comprehend this. . . .
After centuries of hatred and bitterness the Christian, Jew, Zoroastrian,
Muhammadan and Buddhist arose for amity—all of them in the utmost
love and unity. They became welded and cemented because they had
all arrived at Reality.”
creed or color. We must wipe out the feeling of intolerance whenever we find it—of belief that any one group can go ahead alone. We shall all sink together unless we go ahead together. I think the day of selfishness is over. The day of working together has come.”
ART is the outpouring of the spirit: painting, sculpture, music, more than anything else is this outpouring. It knows no creed, no color, no stupid narrow-minded prejudice. It is talent that counts. I hope sincerely, yea fervently, that this concert (at Howard University, Washington, D. C., institution for higher learning for colored youth), may not just be a successful concert, but another step forward in the removal of race prejudice.”—Dr. Hans Kindler, Conductor, National Symphony Orchestra.
“THE INFLUENCE of Geneva is striking upon all who long reside there and have close relations with the League. The spirit of internationalism there prevailing is something amazingly distinct from public sentiment in any other corner of the world. There is, in fact, a nascent language not of Geneva but of the League, which at first, makes local discussion either public or social well nigh unintelligible to the newly arrived stranger, and Sir Arthur speaks that language.”—Frank H. Simonds in his review of “The United States of Europe” by Sir Arthur Salter. The Saturday Review of Literature.
“THERE LIE the test and peril before which every university, every college, stands today . . . the Changes are swift, tempestuous, and one might well say incalculable. But they are real, and they are almost raucous in the demands which they shout at the institutions of higher learning. . . . The college will train its subjects not so much in the accumulation of knowledge as in the desire and capacity to know. . . . It will train their minds, but it will realize that its chief function is to discipline their personalities into the conquest of life.”—From address of Dr. Joseph M. M. Gray at his inauguration as Chancellor of The American University, Washington, D. C.
“THE WORLD of Science has opened up all around us, vast possibilities of swift connections. The physical world has become small and manageable, but the mind of man has still its dark and unknown continents. Old habits of thinking paralyze him; old antagonisms warp him. He needs a Raleigh or Drake of the mind to push out on to the nearly chartless seas.
That human nature does not change, is the most destructive of fallacies.”–Phyllis Bottome in review of her book, “Private Worlds.” The Modern Thinker.
“EDUCATION in the past has been concerned with emphasis of skills, but education in the future should train young men and women to the highest possible independence in thinking, especially in the field of social relationships.”—Dr. James R. Angell, President of Yale University in an address at the University of Hawaii.
“I RENOUNCE war.” “Rather than sanction another war, directly or indirectly, I’ll see you in prison first.” . . .
“Gen. Sherman came nearer the truth than these war glorifiers when he said ‘War is hell’”
“Men cannot have Christ and war at the same time. I renounce war!
“I renounce it because of what it does to our men. I’ve seen it. I stimulated raiding parties to their murderous tasks. Do you see why I want to make it personal?
“I lied to the unknown soldier about a possible good consequence of the war. There are times when I don’t want to believe in immortality—the times I want to think that the unknown soldier never can realize how fruitless was his effort. The support I gave to war is a deep condemnation upon my soul.
“I renounce it, and never again will I be in another war.”—Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Riverside Baptist Church, New York.
AS KEYNES [English economist] has eloquently insisted, it is no longer the problem of man’s capacity to create wealth, but that of his will to
control it, which bars his way to Utopia. It is not a matter of material equipment, but of knowledge and faith. The economic problem is at last solved, in the sense that man can produce easily and abundantly; hence Utopia need not remain a dream. Its realization seems to depend chiefly upon human collaboration—which is hardly likely to be furthered by a feverish competitive scramble by isolated, mutually suspicious and heavily armed nations, even though they may think that, each in their own way, they are all engaged in the search of Utopia.”—Harold Callender, New York Times.
“BUT NO poem, no play, no novel of first-rate quality has been so stupidly insensitive to the human qualities that we have so laboriously built since the end of the Dark Ages, as to celebrate violence as an end in itself. Only politicians, fanatics, sadists, neurotics, and a stupidly impressionable populace are capable of that sin against the Holy Ghost.—Editorial, The Saturday Review of Literature.
“THE BAHA’I Magazine” for March, just received, contains the usual good selection of high-toned articles, reviews, notes from Bahá’i writings, and extracts illustrating current thought and progress along lines of spiritual and social uplift among mankind. No periodical that comes to our desk is equal to this magazine in thought-arousing subject matter.–John, O’Groat Journal, Scotland.
THE PROMULGATION OF UNIVERSAL PEACE, being The Addresses of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in America, in two volumes. Price, each, $2.50.
BAHÁ'U'LLÁH AND THE NEW ERA, by Dr. J. E. Esslemont, a gifted scientific scholar of England. This is the most comprehensive summary and explanation of the Bahá'í Teachings as yet given in a single volume. Price, $1.00; paper cover, 50 cents.
THE WISDOM TALKS OF 'ABDU'L-BAHÁ in Paris. This series of talks covers a wide range of subjects, and is perhaps the best single volume at a low price in which 'Abdu'l-Bahá explains in His own words the Bahá'í Teaching. Price, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
BAHÁ'Í SCRIPTURES. This book, compiled by Horace Holley, is a remarkable compendium of the Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. It contains a vast amount of material and is indexed. This Paper Edition (only ¾-inch thick) Price, $2.50.
THE BAHÁ'Í WORLD, a Biennial International Record (formerly Bahá'í Year Book). Prepared under the auspices of the Bahá'í National Assembly of America with the approval of Shoghi Effendi. Price, cloth, $2.50.
All books may be secured from The Bahá'í Publishing Committee, Post office Box 348, Grand Central Station, New York City.
FIVE MONTHS' subscription to a new subscriber, $1.00; yearly subscription, $3.00. Two subscriptions to one address, $5.00. Three subscriptions to one address, $7.50. Ten new subscriptions to one address, $25.00 (in United States and Canada). If requested, the subscriber may receive one or more copies and have the remaining copies sent to other addresses.
Two subscriptions, one to come each month, and one to be sent in a volume bound in half-leather, at the end of the year, $5.75 of the two subscriptions; postage for bound volume additional.
Single copies, 25 cents each; ten copies to one address, $2.00. Address The Bahá'í Magazine, 1000 Chandler Bldg., Washington, D. C.
The Herald of the South, G. P. O. Box 447 D, Adelaide, Australia.
Kawkab-i-Hind (Published in Urdu), Karol Bagh, Delhi, India.
La Nova Tago (Published in Esperanto), Friedrich Voglerstrasse 4, Weinheim, Baden, Germany.
Sonne der Wahrheit (Published in German), Stuttgart, Germany.
[Page iv]
LEADERS OF RELIGION, exponents of political
theories, governors of human institutions, who
at present are witnessing with perplexity and
dismay the bankruptcy of their ideas, and the disintegration
of their handiwork, would do well to turn
their gaze to the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh and to
meditate upon the World Order which, lying enshrined
in His teachings, is slowly and imperceptibly
rising amid the welter and chaos of present-day civilization.
They need have no doubt or anxiety regarding
the nature, the origin or validity of the institutions
which the adherents of the Faith are building
up throughout the world. For these lie embedded
in the teachings themselves, unadulterated and unobscured
by unwarrantable inferences, or unauthorized
interpretations of His Word."
