The Mission of Bahá’u’lláh/Queen Marie of Rumania and the Bahá’í Faith

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who are single-minded in the love and service of truth. It was the unique distinction of Queen Marie that, living in a special sphere where the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are at their maximum, she accepted and held fast to the New Revelation. She was the first to walk in that narrow path in which, When it is made broader, all the kings and queens and rulers of the earth will follow her.

The time of an Advent is and ever has been an epoch of the severest test for humanity. “Who may abide the day of His coming P” cried the ancient prophet; “and who shall stand When He appeareth ?” For none is the test so hard as for the great and rich.

“Know ye in truth,” said Bahá’u’lláh, “that wealth is a nghty barrier between the seeker and his desire, the lover and his beloved. The rich, but for a few, shall in no wise attain the court of His presence nor enter the city of content and reszgnation.” For none among the great and rich is the test so hard as for royalty. Alone among those of royal blood, alone among her sister-queens, Marie of Rumania recognised the dawning of the Day of Days and acclaimed in Bahá’u’lláh the glory of the Father. Therefore this signal privilege has been accorded her; and the ornament which she presented as a sign of gratitude to the Bahá’í teacher who brought her the Divine Message is honoured With a place among the holy relics of the early heroes of the Cause who first upheld among man the Banner of the Manifest King of Kirigs.

Marie, the eldest daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, was born in the purple; but she had this special distinction that in her veins ran the blood of the only two royalties to whom Bahá’u’lláh, when He announced His Advent to the world’s rulers, addressed words of commendation. She was on her mother’s side the granddaughter of Czar Alexander II, who abolished serfdom, and on her father’s side of Queen Victoria; both of whom Bahá’u’lláh addressed in words different from the stem or minatory terms used by Him towards the King of Prussia, the Emperors of Austria and France, and the Sultan of Turkey and the Shah of Persia.

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She was herself an outstanding and radiant personality, vigorous and daring, devoted to idealistic and humanitarian projects. A traveller who in 1909, before her accession to the throne, visited her summer home in Sinaia, Romania, at a time when it was unoccupied by her, wrote afterwards in The Bahá’í Magazine:

“We were deeply impressed with the spiritual atmosphere of her living apartment furnished largely with her own handiwork, the carving of the furniture, the paintings, the beautiful altar, all made by herself and all indicative of a deeply spiritual nature. Her books, her thoughts, as one gleaned in a hasty passage through her home, were such as to indicate the kind and spiritual ruler she has become.” .

After her death, an old friend who had known her since they played as girls together in Malta in 1888 wrote of her as follows:

“No one who ever had the privilege of personal or intimate acquaintance with Queen Marie could fail to be impressed by the greatness of her mind and spirit. Her own life story reveals so well her ardent and joyous nature, the depth of feeling that accompanied every thought and action . . . The world is the poorer for the passing of such a noble lady, and a blank, impossible to fill, is left in the lives of those who knew her personally. She had passed through and suffered so much, even her wonderful health was too sorely tried and we must be thankful in spite of the great loss to us all that she is at rest and spared any further suffering. Her spirit’ is surely near us still and we must try to follow her noble example of great endurance and courage to face whatever may await us in these troublous times.”

—(Lilian McNeill, World Order, IV, 10).

The first tidings of the Bahá’í Teaching were brought to her in the early days of 1926 when her Majesty was in Bucharest and owing to personal sorrow Was living in retirement. Martha Root, the best known of the pioneers of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, sent her a short note with a copy of Dr. Esslemont’s Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era. The Queen accepted the book and was at once so keenly interested by its message that she sat up over it into the small hours, and the next morning she sent an invitation to Martha

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to visit her in the Palace on the following day at twelve o’clock.

So quick and strong was the impression made through that interview that the Queen gave it utterance that same year in many ways; public as well as private. She found aready response to her enthusiasm in the young daughter Ileana, afterwards Archduchess Anton, to Whom she taught these truths. She wrote to an American friend of hers in Paris, “I have found all my yearnings for real religion satisfied . . . I am now ready to die any day full of hope; but I pray God not to take me away yet for I still have a lot of work to do.” (Bahá’í World, VI, 580).

. In May and in September, 1926, The Toronto Daily Star published from her pen two glowing tributes to the Bahá’í Faith. “It is a Wondrous Message,” she wrote, “that Bahá’u’lláh and His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá have given us. They have not set it up aggressively, knowing that the germ of eternal truth which lies at its core cannot but take root and spread . . . I commend it to you all. If ever the name of Bahá’u’lláh or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá comes to your attention, do not put Their writings from you. Search out Their books and let Their glorious peacebringing, love-creating words and lessons sink into your hearts as they have into mine.”

To The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in September the same year she contributed an article on the Faith in the course of which she testified expressly to her acceptance of the truth of a succession of Revelations, a succession of Prophets—“Christ, Muhammad, Bahá’u’lláh,” she wrote; continuing, “those voices (of God) sent to us had to become flesh so that with our earthly ' ears we should be able to hear and understand . . .”

These three articles being syndicated were printed in nearly two hundred American newspapers, and afterwards appeared in several newspapers in the East.

The Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause gratefully acknowledged these spontaneous appreciations. “Moved by an irresistible impulse,” he wrote in the Bahá’í World for 1926-8, “I addressed her Majesty in the name of the Bahá’ís of both East and West a written expression of our icyous admiration and gratitude for the queenly tribute which her Majesty has paid to the beauty and nobility of the Bahá’í Teachings . . .”

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The following is the letter which he received in reply: Bran, August 27th, 1926. Dear Sir,

I was deeply moved on reception of your letter.

Indeed a great light came to me with the message of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. It came as all great messages come at an hour of dire grief and inner conflict and distress, so the seed sank deeply.

My youngest daughter finds also great strength and comfort in the teachings of the beloved masters.

We pass on the message from mouth to mouth and all those we give it to see a light suddenly lighting before them and much that was obscure and perplexing becomes simple, luminous and full of hope as never before.

That my open letter was balm to those suffering for the Cause is indeed a great happiness to me, and I take it as a sign that God accepted my humble tribute.

The occasion given me to be able to express myself publicly was also His work. For indeed it was a chain of circumstances of which each link led me unwittingly one step further, till suddenly all was clear before my eyes and I understood why it had been.

Thus does He lead us finally to our ultimate destiny.

Some of those of my caste wonder at and disapprove my courage to step forward pronouncing words not habitual for crowned heads to pronounce, but I advance by‘ an inner urge I cannot resist.

With bowed head I recognise that I, too, am but an instrument in greater Hands, and rejoice in the knowledge.

Little by little the veil is lifting, grief tore it in two. And grief was also a step leading me ever nearer truth, therefore do I not cry out against grief!

May you and those beneath your guidance be blessed and upheld by the sacred strength of those gone before you.

Marie. Martha Root also wrote to her Majesty, and in the reply which she received were these words: “. . . The beautiful truth of

Bahá’u’lláh is with me always, a help and an inspiration. What I wrote was because my heart overflowed with gratitude for the revelation you brought me. I am happy if you think I helped. I

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thought it might bring truth nearer because my words are read by so many . . .”

In the following year (1927) her Majesty gave another audience to Martha Root; a third audience in 1928 when with her daughter the Princess Ileana she was the guest of the Queen of Yugoslavia in Belgrade; and a fourth in 1929 in the Summer Palace at Balcic. She contributed an encomium of the Cause, charged with warm feeling and beautifully expressed, to the fourth volume of Bahá’í World; and another more brief but not less significant to the fifth volume. “The Bahá’í Teaching,” she wrote, “brings peace to the soul and hope to the heart. To those in search of assurance the words of the Father are as a fountain in the desert after long wandering.”

It had been for some time her Majesty’s wish and aspiration to visit in person the sacred shrines upon Mount Carmel and to meet in person Shoghi Effendi. In the year 1931 the opportunity, as it seemed, arrived. Accompanied by her youngest daughter her Majesty travelled to the Holy Land and arrived at Haifa with the intention of fulfilling her cherished desire. But fate had ruled otherwise. Unfriendly influences intervened. She did not reach her goal. In a sad letter to Martha Root dated June 28th, 1931, she told of her frustration and of the unwelcome pressure to Which she had been subjected.

“Both Ileana and 1,” she wrote, “were cruelly disappointed at having been prevented going to the holy shrines and meeting Shoghi Effendi; but at that time we were going through a cruel crisis and every movement I made was being turned against me and being politically exploited in an unkind way. It caused me a good deal of suffering and curtailed my liberty most unkindly . . . But the beauty of truth remains and I cling to it through all the vicissitudes of a life become rather sad.”

Early in 1934 her Majesty again received Martha Root in audience in the Controceni Palace in Bucharest and expressed her delight that the Rumanian translation of Bahá’u’lláh and The New Era had just been published in Bucharest and that her people were to have the blessing of reading this precious Teach-' ing. In the course of the interview the Queen told of an incident

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which had happened in Hamburg some months earlier when she was en route to Iceland. As she was driving down the street a girl tossed into the car a little note, and when her Majesty opened it she read the message, “I am so glad to see you in Hamburg because you are a Bahá’í.”

Martha Root’s sixth and final interview took place in February, 1936 in the same Palace, and was in some respects the most touching and significant of all. Her Majesty spoke of various Bahá’í books, for she used to purchase them as they came off the press. She spoke of the depth of the Iqa’n, and of the wonderful radiant force of Cleaning: from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh. “Even doubters,” she said, “would find a powerful strength in it if they could read it alone and would give their souls time to expand.” She told how in London she had met a Bahá’í, Lady Blomfield, who had shown her the message that Bahá’u’lláh had sent to her grandmother, Queen Victoria. She told, too, of a dear friend of her girlhood who lived in ‘Akká, Palestine, and knew Shoghi Effendi and had sent from there pictures of ‘Akká and Haifa. This friend (Mrs. McNeill) published afterwards a letter which the Queen wrote to her at this time:

“Dear ‘little’ Lilian,” it began, “it was indeed nice to hear from you and to think that you are of all things living near Haifa and are, as I am, a follower of the Bahá’í Teachings. It interests me that you are living in that special house; the Teachers so loved flowers, and being English, I can imagine what a lovely garden you have made in that Eastern climate. I was so intensely interested and studied each photo intently. It must be a lovely place and those south-eastem landscapes and gardens attract me with a sort of homesickness ever since our Malta days. And the house you live in, so incredibly attractive and made precious by its associations with the Man we all venerate . . .”

Four days after this, the Queen sent for The Bahá’í World, her last public tribute to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. It was in due course reproduced in facsimile as a frontispiece to Volume VI, 1936—38, and runs as follows:

“More than ever to-day when the world is facing such a crisis of bewilderment and unrest, must we stand firm in Faith seeking

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that which binds together instead of tearing asunder. To those searching for light, the Bahá’í Teachings offer a star which will lead them to deeper understanding, to assurance, peace and goodwill with all men.—Marie, 1936.”

The end was drawing near. Her health undermined by her many troubles began to fail. After some months of illness, in July, 1938, she passed away, and leaving this world where for all her royal rank she had known so much of grief and tears she entered that Great Beyond of which she had thought so often and so deeply.

Her death and obsequies were attended with all the ceremonial that. befits the passing of a Queen. But who can tell what was the greeting that awaited her on the other side where she learned in an instant how true had been her intuitions of the Manifestation of God and where she saw unobscured now by any mortal veil the white eternal splendour of the Truth that she, alone among the earth’s queens, had risen to acclaim.

The Guardian of the Cause and the Bahá’ 18 generally recagn sed the distinction of her spiritual station and the greatness cf her service to the Cause. In July, 1938, the Guardian on behalf of all the Bahá’ís sent a message of condolence to her daughter the Queen of Yugoslavia to which her Majesty replied expressing “sincere thanks to all Bahá’í followers.” To the Memorial Service held in the Cathedral of Washington, DC, U.S.A., the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada sent a tribute of flowers. The following sentences are from an account of that ceremony:

“On July 2 5th 1939, the first anniversary of the death of Queen Marie of Rumania, an impressive memorial service was held 1n her honour at the Cathedral of Washington 1n the national capital of the United States. In Bethlehem Chapel on this midsummer afternoon national dignitaries and humble citizens paid loving tribute to a royal personage whose name stands out with an especial lustre in the history of her time. The spiritual beauty of the service expressed the character of this noble Queen—the first member of royalty to embrace the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.

“Arranged by the Rumanian Minister, Radu Irimescu, the service was conducted by the Reverend Doctor Anson Phelps

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Stokes, canon of the Cathedral and former Secretary of Yale University. Among the diplomatists present were the British, French and Italian Ambassadors and representatives of other European embassies and legations. The Secretary of State, Honourable Cordell Hull, headed the American delegation which included government officials and representatives of the Army and Navy . . .

“Directly opposite the altar in this intimate chapel stood the imposing floral tribute ‘from the Bahá’í Friends of America’——a cross ten feet in height with a nine-pointed star at its centre. This emblem was designed by Charles Mason Remey and presented in consultation with the National Spiritual Assembly. It was beside the Bahá’í tribute that the Rumanian Minister stood at the conclusion of the service to greet the audience as they passed out, according to the Continental custom on such occasions.

“Not only did Queen Marie as the Dowager Queen of Rumania attest her faith in the Divine Cause through private letters; she claimed the spiritual bounty of calling the Teachings to the attention of others.”

In these dark and troublous times, this Day (or is it not rather this Night ?) of Judgment, when there is no open vision and when the gift of spirituality is not esteemed, the connection of Queen Marie with the Bahá’í Faith may seem to be but a small matter, the least episode among the multifarious activities of a crowded and brilliant life. But when this sleep in which the world’s soul is shrouded ends at last; when men’s spirits awakening behold the glories and the bounties and the opportunities that have lain about them, unwelcome and unregarded, all these many years, then they will look back upon the past with a new and horrified understanding. They will gaze with amazement and indignation and pity upon the incorrigible blindness of the mighty ones of Europe who, despite the manifold warnings of God, led their people through misery upon misery and flung them at last into the ultimate abyss of war. But amidst that universal darkness of failure and mismle that fills the palaces and Chancelleries of the world men will see one solitary light shining in lone splendour and will acknowledge the true majesty of that one reedeming soul whose high faith caught and reflected far the glory of the breaking Dawn of God.

In later times, when the prophecies of the Bible are fulfilled

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openly before the eyes of all, when the New Jerusalem is established in the top of the mountains and “the nations of them that are saved walk in its light and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it” ; then men will see treasured among the sacred relics of the first champions of the Bahá’í Faith one royal ornament, a brooch of silver and diamond, the memorial of the first Queen who recognised and acclaimed the Glory of Bahá’u’lláh; and the name and the deed of Queen Marie of Rumania Will be on the lips of men forever.