Tomorrow and Tomorrow/Chapter II

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CHAPTER II

There Was a Man

Bahá’u’lláh is the most extraordinary spiritual figure, and the greatest progressive, that the nineteenth century produced. His life story is dramatic. He was born in Teheran, Iran, in 1817, scion of a noble and wealthy family. His father was a Minister of State under the Shah.

He was a brilliant youth, with an extraordinary power of attraction that was felt by all. He never attended school or college, receiving the mere rudiments of education in the home. He was, nevertheless, early in life distinguished by extraordinary wisdom and knowledge as well as by a universal kindliness and generosity.

Bahá’u’lláh, as the oldest son, was expected to follow the family career of statesmanship. He chose instead that path of religious and humanitarian reform which eventuated in a great world movement; but which led also along a thorny path of persecution, exile and life imprisonment. The corrupt Islamic clergy of Iran did not relish the powerful blasts of reform which Bahá’u’lláh directed toward them; and possessing control both of the church and of the law they were able to effect the banishment of the prophet to the Turkish penal colony of Acre, Palestine. In that city whose pestilential climate few prisoners could long survive Bahá’u’lláh was held a prisoner from 1868 to 1892 —confined at times in a foul dungeon, at times in a residential compound.* When Bahá’u’lláh died in 1892, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the eldest son, became by Bahá’u’lláh’s designation the leader and expounder of the newly born Bahá’í World Faith, the teachings of which reached

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this country for the first time in 1893 at the Conference on World Religions held at the World’s Fair in Chicago. ‘Abdul’-Baha remained also a prisoner at Acre until 1908, when the Turkish Revolution freed him. In 1912 he spent a year in this country in a missionary tour from coast to coast.'l'

The central core of Bahá’u’lláh’s universal message was peace and world unity. This, before 1860, was something that neither Europe nor America was awake to, far less the Orient. Religious leaders everywhere had no conception that peace was the most crying need of the world. But Bahá’u’lláh had a prophetic eonviction that world peace was the will of God for humanity in this age; and that as such it would be achieved, regardless of human obstructions and in spite of human weaknesses.

The development of this vision led Bahá’u’lláh to make further pronouncements in delineation of subsidiary factors of a great world civilization which would be the culminating achievement of a humanity at last come of age-—mature enough to follow a planetary

• Bahá’u’lláh had such a power of winning the love of the

Turkish governors of Acre that they had to be changed frequently by the Sultan. To one of these governors who became friendly Bahá’u’lláh presented a pen that had been the humble instrument of revelation. This governor's son, Professor Fikrct Bey of Robert College, Constantinople, showed me this pen, in 1908, as one of his most cherished possessions.

’rThe writer had the privilege of visiting ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in February, 1908, while he was still a prisoner, and again in 1910, when he was at last a free soul and residing at a more wholesome elevation on the slopes of Mt. Carmel-—spending on the first occasion three days as his guest, and on the second, a week. Later on the privilege of close intimacy with this great spiritual leader—who seemed the very essence of wisdom anal lnve——was renewed in Paris, Washington. lloslon and New York.

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program, and to construct the long-dreamed-of edifice of world brotherhood which prophets have forecast, philosophers discussed and poets dreamed of.

He chose the rulers of the western world as the recipients of this peace message. To them individually and collectively were addressed epistles of appeal and great authority, calling them in the Name of God to cease from war and to establish world peace, world federation and world brotherhood. Warnings were repeatedly sounded of the complete disintegration and collapse of the contemporary civilization unless the bedrock of Divine standards of morality were reestablished as the basis of human society.

The wealth of subject matter, the sublime dignity of these epistles is an illuminating searchlight on the path of history from the nineteenth century through today. A fragmentary excerpt may serve as an indication of the tenor of this message:

“Fear God, 0 Kings of the earth. . . . Observe the injunctions laid upon you in His Book. . . . Tread ye the path of justice. . . . Compose your differences and reduce your armaments, that the burden of your expenditures may be lightened. . . . Heal the dissensions that divide you and ye will no longer be in need of any armaments except what the protection of your cities and territories demandeth. . . .”

“O Banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore inasmuch as the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And we hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.”

To the rulers of Great Britain, Russia, Turkey, Iran. France, Germany, Austria, the United States and to the Pope, this Prisoner addressed messages from Adrianople, and continued to do so even after the final incarceration in 1868 placed Bahá’u’lláh behind the seven—feet thick walls of the ancient fortress-prison of

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Acre in Palestine, famous throughout centuries as Acca of the Crusades. Each missive was safely delivered into the hands of its august recipient, and the tone of authority was weakened not one iota by reason of the author having penned these messages from behind prison bars.*

At the time of Bahá’u’lláh’s imprisonment, Acre was notable as a pestilential fever-ridden spot where the chances of survival were slight. Bahá’u’lláh and family and disciples, numbering about eighty-four people, were imprisoned in the army barracks in dirty and crowded conditions. Malaria and dysentery soon broke out, and some died. Two years were spent in the barracks and seven in a house that at first was almost as bad as the barracks.

Yet not only were the messages to the world’s rulers completed in this dreadful spot. But also a wealth of teachings on education, economics, sociology, evolution, immortality; beatitudes, meditations, prayers and prophecies,———all poured from Bahá’u’lláh’s inspired pen, creating a design and standard for a spiritualized one-world society.

It must be realized that Bahá’u’lláh did not elaborate this world plan. It came, it was distinctly stated, as a revelation. Neither the spiritual nor the world-organization teachings of Bahá’u’lláh were mere syntheses of past or contemporaneous thought. Bahá’u’lláh pre "" Where today are the dynasties whose heads received those missives? Russia? Germany? Austria? France? Turkey? Iran? Only in Great Britian, in spite of major upheavals. the same dynasty still reigns. Queen Victoria was the individual member to receive the message, Her grand-daughter, Marie of Roumania. was later to write of Bahá’u’lláh’s Faith: “It gathers together all those who have searched the words of hope. The germ of eternal Truth which lies at the core cannot but take root and spread."

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sented this World Reform movement not as a philosopher, but as a Prophet; not in an advisory and hortatory capacity, but as a compulsive agent of Destiny. It was not from personal desire, but from a definite spiritual conviction that this mission to reform humanity was accepted. In the epistle to the Shah of Iran Bahá’u’lláh states: “O King, verily I was as any one among mankind, slumbering upon my couch. The gales of the All—Glorious passed by me and taught me the knowledge of what hath been. . . . And He bade me proclaim between the earth and the heaven. . . . I have not studied those sciences which men possess, nor have I entered colleges. . . . This is a leaf which the breezes of the Will of thy Lord have stirred. . . . causing me to speak for His Celebration amidst the nations. . . .”

What did this extraordinary personage look like?

We owe the description of Bahá’u’lláh’s appearance to the only Occidental who ever visited the Prophet, Professor Browne, famous Orientalist of Cambridge University, England. This visit was made in 1890, two years before Bahá’u’lláh’s passing. Professor Browne wrote: “The face of him on whom I gazed I can never forget. Those piercing eyes seemed to read one’s very soul; power and authority sat on that ample brow. . . . No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might envy and emperors sigh for in vain.”

And what did Bahá’u’lláh say to Professor Browne? A brief statement, pregnant with hope and assurance to this war-ravaged planet, was quietly voiced in 1890 to this scholar from England-—like a benediction upon a humanity that had shown Bahá’u’lláh little but scorn, cruelty, imprisonment and impoverishment.

“We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations. That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of

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affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religions should cease, and differences of race be annulled. What harm is there in this? Yet so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the Most Great Peace shall come. . . . Is not this that which Christ foretold? . . . These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family. . . . Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.”

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Bahá’u’lláh died at the age of seventy-five in 1892. The Prophet’s tomb at Bahjí is already a place of world pilgrimage. His teachings since then have become spread throughout the world. Especially publicized are the great principles for a one-world social consciousness and organization, which may be summarized as follows: Unity of all religions

Oneness of the human race

Independent investigation of truth

Religion must be the cause of unity

Freedom from prejudice of all kinds——national, political, racial, religious and class

Equality of men and women

Universal education

Reconciliation of science and religion

A universal auxiliary language

Solution of the economic problem, spiritually and practically

A universal tribunal for settlement of international problems

World Peace

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These principles are not new today, but they were very new in the 18605. Now they have impregnated the thinking and actions of all progressives the world over. Bahá’u’lláh breathed the spirit of this age, which is the dawn of the age of the Commonwealth of Man. Tolstoy once wrote to a friend, “We spend our lives trying to unlock the mystery of the universe, but there was a Turkish prisoner, Bahá’u’lláh, in Akka, Palestine, who had the key.”

Bahá’u’lláh’s followers are numbered from every race and religion. Organized groups exist in over two hundred countries. Bahá’í literature has been translated into over one hundred languages, and is at present being translated into many more additional languages.

This world movement has demonstrated a unique ability to draw into its fold followers not only from every nation but also from every race and religion. And it has won from many world leaders words of sympathetic praise. The following chapters are designed to bring to the general reader a brief description of the chief factors of Bahá’u’lláh’s New World Order.