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[Page 1]

World Order

A Bahá’í Magazine

Winter 1966

Bahá’u’lláh to the Christians

by WILLIAM S. HATCHER, D.Sc.

Of Law, Order and Love

by ANSELM SCHURGAST, M.D.

[Page 2]

World Order

VOLUME 1 NUMBER 2 ● PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER is a publication of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States. It is intended to stimulate, inspire and serve thinking people in their search to find relationships between contemporary life and contemporary religious teachings and philosophy.

Editorial Board:

DR. FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

DR. HOWARD GAREY

MR. MONROE E. MICHELS

MRS. MURIEL MICHELS

Editorial Advisers:

DR. EDRIS RlCE-WRAY

MR. ROBERT HAYDEN

MR. CLARENCE L. WELSH

Yearly subscriptions: $3.50 per year in U.S., its territories and possessions; foreign subscriptions $4.00 per year. Address any correspondence or checks for subscriptions to World Order, c/o Mrs. Muriel Michels, 1 Cove Ridge Lane, Old Greenwich, Conn. 06870. Single copies available $1.00 each.

Copyright © 1966, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

Manuscripts and suggestions for articles and subjects to be treated editorially will be welcomed by the editors. All will be acknowledged.

CONTENTS

Reflections from the Editors ............ 3

Point a Loving Camera

by ROGER WHITE .................. 4

Human Rights of Parents and Children

by EDRIS RICE-WRAY, M.D. ......... 9

Is the Prophetic Voice Stilled?

by ELENA MARIA MARSELLA ....... 13

Of Law, Order and Love

by ANSELM SCHURGAST, M.D. ...... 20

Bahá’u’lláh to the Christians

by WILLIAM S. HATCHER, D.Sc. ..... 25

A Review of The Autobiography of

Malcolm X by

GLENFORD MITCHELL ............. 34

Excerpts from

The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh ...... 40

Selected Poetry

by ROBERT HAYDEN .......... 19, 33, 39

Poems by Robert Hayden are from his book, Selected Poems, and reprinted by permission of its publisher, October House, Inc., 134 East 22nd St., New York, N. Y. 10010.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, nor of the Editorial Board.

[Page 3]

Mirror,

mirror

on the wall...

No differentiators of persons or points of view,

mirrors reflect whatever comes before them, cut to the

heart of what they see and find few if any differences.

Would that people had been given this eye of truth

and discernment.

We view with rising wonder the often unseeing eye of man,

the unhearing ear, the unresponding force within the

human framework, the spectacle of business as usual while

nation moves against nation, state against state, church

against church, and finally to the least common

denominator, man against man.

Standing innocent at our mother’s knee, before the time of

our understanding, we were simply told to “love thy

neighbor as thyself.” How pure a precept. How much better

would we have learned it, had we but seen it in action.

Little did we sense, nor were we truly taught that to deny love

to another is to deny it to one’s self.

As on the wall, there is a mirror in man's eye.

In men of open mind and spirit, it reaches to

the heart of whomever comes before it,

finds few if any differences.

REFLECTIONS FROM THE EDITORS

[Page 4] POINT A LOVING CAMERA

By Roger White

Without admitting to schizophrenia in the clinical sense, I will perhaps be understood if I say the two of me recently visited Nassau, and took along a camera.

There is the “culturally bound” me, the part that grows nostalgic remembering early Shirley Temple movies, the original Flash Gordon comic strip, carousels, Christmas trees and Cole Porter songs, and a limitless array of penny candy that made choice a harrowing experience; the me of a simpler time when cars seemed to be of only two kinds, big and baby Austin; when love was something that happened regularly on the silver screen to Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy, and when heaven was to be able to dance like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; the me that succumbed to ads offering Little Orphan Annie secret code rings and Dick Tracy badges; that withered under Charles Atlas’ scathing denouncement of 98 lb. weaklings; that acknowledged the virtue and likelihood of retiring to Florida (like the smug, pictured Wilkinsons of Peoria, Illinois) on $186.00 a month; that grudgingly conceded that the girl who used Ponds was indeed lovelier and deserved to be engaged; and that today wrily muses (under current onslaughts and with 40 approaching), is it too late to come alive in the Pepsi generation? Would I really fight than switch? Could I continue to feel worthy if my child were to wailingly confront me with the accusation that there is no more Zee?

That part came to Nassau—perhaps even led me there—for how could I resist relating to the bronzed languid figures in the travel folders, indolently taking possession of the glistening palm-fringed beaches, an innocent authority and power emanating from every line of their lithe bodies? How entitled I was to go to Nassau! I possessed the time, plane fare, skin of the approved color (highly susceptible to bronzing)—and I even owned a camera. Nassau would be mine.

And there came to Nassau, too, that part of me of which I seek to have Bahá’u’lláh take possession—the central part, the essential me. Here are found the roots of faith, the beginning of a dim consciousness of eternal life. If I am to know myself, it must be this part. If I am to be reached to reach others, it must be from here.

The Bahamas are all they are pictured to be, a bracelet of jewels in the warm Atlantic south of Florida. The climate is perpetually June. Hibiscus, bougainvillaea and oleander grow profusely. A golden sun warms beaches of fine powdered sand and the soft air is laden with the scent of flowers. The town of Nassau, capital of the island of New Providence, stretches for about a mile along the beach with architecture that is quaint, partly intrinsically, partly by contrivance. The shore at either end of town yields to luxury hotels and vast private mansions owned by whites where as many as ten gardeners are found working on the estate grounds. But all is not well in Paradise.

[Page 5] Everywhere there is a tension born of racial prejudice and economic injustice. Excruciating extremes of wealth and poverty exist side by side, the contrast magnified by the island’s tiny size. The native Bahamians, once Negro slaves from Africa, do not lightly endure the invasion by tourists, many ill-behaved. Their fear and contempt make every encounter a difficult one. The “yes, sir” of the cab-driver, waiter, store clerk, customs official and police officer is like a stinging slap in the face. There cannot exist the anonymity which usually cloaks those who serve in these professions. The simple transaction of ordering coffee becomes a war of nerves. The waiter, with an impassive face, places it before you and at intervals timed to have the appearance of innocence, slowly returns with the sugar, later the cream, eventually the check. My companion inadvertently turns down the wrong street late one evening and is turned back by youths wielding switchblades. Everywhere the tourist is ridiculed with varying degrees of subtility. The street hawker jeers, “Too cheap to buy a straw hat, mister?”

My camera is trained on an Israeli ship marked “Haifa” at the public dock. A Bahamian some feet away and not in the range of my lens springs forward, almost striking the instrument from my hand—“Don’t you take pictures of me!” It is as though one keeps running into invisible barbed wire. The tourists retaliate by exerting their own particular brand of tyranny. There are all the problems of two races who do not know the human race is one. The words of the Tablet of Ahmad . . .“calling the believers in the Divine Unity . . . informing the severed ones” . . . take on new meaning.‘

Because none of the hurt is personally directed, one can readily reject the technique and with effort, command a basis of mutual respect and acceptance which comes sometimes freely, sometimes not. With experience it grows easier and even in the briefest exchange “Would you please direct me to a telephone?”, by putting oneself fully in every word, a communicative bridge, however fleeting in duration, can be built. But the requirement to do so is constant.

Near my hotel a young man and his female companion accost me suggesting a commercial transaction of the flesh. This is more difficult, the fear and hostility being proportions greater by virtue of the nature of the offer—the caricatured distortion, the travesty of love. It became enormously important in the ensuing ten minutes to reject the suggestion and affirm the dignity and value of the individual. After a struggle, finally a bridge. I turn to go. The call that follows me down the midnight street is almost that of a child, and contains a curious mixture of relief and rage: “All right, curse you, be nice—see if I care!”

So begins my vacation. Is Bahá’u’lláh right? In this day, is there no place to go?

For the visitor to Nassau the solution is simple. He confines himself to the white tourist ghetto—frequents the private white beaches and bars of the luxury hotels (inoffensively designed to remind him of home,) takes the carefully supervised white tours of native clubs where he democratically dons a straw hat, drinks native rum and dances calypso. (Does one conquer Hawaii for the Master by wearing a lei; Samoa, by acquiring a lavalava; Fiji, by masquerading in a sari? Children's games!) He is able to return home safe in the conviction that Nassau isn’t so bad—not very different from Miami, Palm Springs, or Waikiki.

For the Bahá’í, this does not seem to be adequate if we are to take literally the injunction to be engaged in delivering the message of the coming of One Who summons all mankind to the recognition of oneness. In the atmosphere of entrenched hostility in Nassau, one asks with a new intensity, is there “a power in this Cause that far transcends the ken of men and angels?” Can we become channels [Page 6] for it? For it is only this power of universal love that can conquer the citadels of men’s hearts. Without it, we are like my bronzed authoritative people of the travel folders, meaningless mannequins against a painted backdrop.

The question of how to achieve the quality of universal love has long held my attention. In Nassau, from a simple young man I received the gift of the knowledge that love begins with recognition.

The travelling Bahá’í probably is experiencing a new awareness everywhere: Dorothy, the Greenwich Village stenographer says, “I am concerned about my country’s image abroad; I don’t want to be thought of as an ‘ugly American’; how interesting that this young religion assigns such a significant station to North America”; the sculptress from Winnipeg exclaims, “O yes, Bahá’í—I visited a beautiful garden in Haifa where I met a woman who could well have been a saint; I have never felt such peace”; the Philadelphia executive comments, “There is an active group in my town; I’ve been meaning to look into it—I like their thinking”; the Puerto Rican landscaper nods, “Yes, a united world—this is the truth, it will have to come.” But on the 4th day, as I sat at the airport contemplating defeat, I met Sam, and found the key to Nassau. Strangely, a camera precipitated the incident.

Sam, a native Bahamian, and his family of small children shared a bench with me. My presence was ignored in a studied manner and my acknowledgment of the smile of one of the children gingerly scrutinized. A white tourist with borrowed courage speaking too loudly and defensively (only later did I pause to consider the tourist’s fear and the inevitability of his action) descended on us, announced “those kids are cute as a bug's ear and I want a picture”—simultaneously clicking and darting away. Sam winced. I knew I had witnessed something hurtful and ugly. I said the Greatest Name. In the next instant when Sam’s eyes locked with mine he sensed a shared rage—we had been photographed in an offensive manner, like inanimate objects. In a flash born of the pain of the moment (for Sam, I am sure, a familiar pain) Sam recognized me—saw beyond my color, to me. Barriers, self-consciousness gone, the gates of communication swung open and we spoke from the heart. We had less than an hour together, but every moment seemed wonderfully weighted with significance for both of us. He said, in effect, he felt no one who loved him, who saw him, would indiscriminately point a camera and shoot; he wanted to be selected, singled out, recognized for his essential self. We spoke of the need to teach ourselves not only to see the world from one another’s eyes (it will not be enough to exchange one cultural prison for another) but to see with the eye of God, as it were, Who sees only the whole.

I was asked why I took pictures. “In part,” I said, “I take pictures wherever I travel so my friends at home can see that man is one family.” Sam beamed: “Would you like one of us for the family album?” I will not readily forget him. He left me with the pleasing words, “I’m so sorry we didn't meet the day you arrived; I could have shown you my island.” And this week he writes, “—now I plan to visit Canada, for I feel I have a true brother there.”

A rich enough experience for a four-day visit! I came away reflecting on the bounties available to those who will be able to respond to the appeal of the Universal House of Justice in its Riḍván message for a band of intercontinental travelling teachers. I remember the words of some of the friends (who could not be accused of having failed to succeeed in functioning in their own society). The Hand of the Cause said, “I long to return among the Canadian Indians and to feel their peace, their love, their silence.” The Auxiliary Board member recalled, “I will always remember the Africans; they taught me that what is warm, is [Page 7] beautiful.” The believer, addressing the National Convention says, “It was in Yucatan that I learned what this Faith is about.” Another friend remarks, “Among a group of French Canadians, speaking only their language, I had the first total experience.” A veteran teacher sighs, “I found my home among the gentle people of Thailand.” I remember personally a morning among the brown-skinned people of Samoa when the children brought me much, much more than gardenias at breakfast.

What is the value of travel-teaching to the individual? Perhaps part of it is a heightened appreciation of the wholeness of this Cause, and a glimpse of Bahá’u’lláh’s World Order when its membership is drawn from large numbers of the world’s population with the special gifts and qualities they will contribute. As yet, our local communities are embryonic and lopsided—a brave and necessary beginning, but not yet representative of a world order. In direct proportion to this, we on the homefront feel impoverished, unsatisfied. The Bahá’ís universally share this handicap. We are all as yet children of the half light. No existing society adheres to Bahá’u’lláh’s standard; we all are surrounded by our inherited ghetto and the spiritual bankruptcy of the disintegrating existing systems. The coming of Bahá’u’lláh marked the end of ghettos and the beginning of a new universal order. He called into being a new creation, a new race who would be the lovers of mankind. These people in each corner of the world will raise a world culture, the first. Can we believe it will be easy? Can we believe there is any alternative? Speculate, if you dare, about the course of history if the races continue to see one another as “the problem,” rather than the gift!

Another part of the value may be this: We always know when a person is describing an experience he has never had. In the Prayer for Canada, Abdu’l-Bahá invites us to pray, “. . . make me sincere in Thy religion, firm in Thy love. . .” Let the travelling teacher, addressing a meeting, perhaps through an interpreter, in a foreign land where his cultural props and gimmicks fail him, try answering the question: Who is Bahá’u’lláh, and why should I believe in Him? “Let the doubter arise.”

I think of Sam now, whenever I use my camera, which has become a symbol for the resolution to try to recognize the essential reality of things. My camera helps me see better. Looking through the ground glass viewing mechanism of a sensitive unit is a profound experience. The subject is selected, looms in clear focus, unaffected by extraneous distracting elements; there is a moment before the shutter snaps when the face of the subject looks more defenceless than a butterfly impaled on a pin. Defences, reserve, hostility drain away—the expression left says something like “be kind.” My task is now to acquire the capacity of recognition with my naked eye and to apply it in daily life. For Sam was right: our world will be changed only through the power of universal love, and the beginning of love is recognition.

If we doubt Sam’s word about this power, we can look at the life of our Exemplar. Reread “Portals to Freedom,” the portion where Ives describes a private audience with the Master into which he went bristling with questions and heavy with need, to emerge exclaiming “For the first time in my life, somebody looked at me!” That fact altered the course of Ive’s life and launched him into a lifetime of service.

It begins, as Bahá’u’lláh tells us, with a recognition of ourselves—do we know who we are? We have His warning about the fate of the one whose days are spent in total ignorance of his true self. Reread the Hidden Words. Do we recognize ourselves? This peerless book deserves our closest attention; it is the distilled essence [Page 8] of all religious utterance. The picture its Author paints of man and of human nature is noble and exalted. If he be in apppearance a “pillar of dust” a “fleeting shadow,” yet he is in his true being a “child of the divine and invisible essence,” a “companion of God’s throne.” Do we know this? “Turn thy sight unto thyself, that thou mayest find me...” (H.W.13.)

And turning from self to the arena of human relationships and service, how do we fare? If it is not difficult to “recognize” Sam in dramatic circumstances, or see the real self of a friend with a physical handicap, what do I “see” when I examine a Bahá’í committee, my local assembly? If I see only an old lady with a loose upper plate and a penchant for Presbyterian hymns, an aggressive fearful woman who is prone to tension headaches and a fear of being alone, a compulsive talker with a gravy-stained necktie, a blue-jeaned youngster with unkempt hair and a facility with the jargon of the psychedelic drug set, a dictatorial man who turns from a world that might contradict him, a pun-ridden runabout whose emotional need compels his unrequited attendance at every function, an alienated girl whose theatrical makeup cannot conceal her despair—if I see only that, then I have failed to recognize them. Do I suppose I can love someone I cannot see? Consult with him? Can I do either, if I have not recognized myself? And if I cannot see, can I be seen? It lies within the power of each individual to recognize, and be recognized. Here, perhaps, is the beginning of love.

It is a curious idiocyncrasy of mine to suppose, when I read the statements of Bahá’u’lláh and Abdu’l-Bahá about love, that they were intended for somebody else: My hostess at the Feast should have remembered I take my coffee black; I should have been invited to that meeting; my motion was unnecessarily mutilated by the committee; I’m not invited to read frequently enough; my friend wasn’t in when I dropped in unannounced . . . I’m sure my list of grievances is longer than anyone’s. But of course it only matters that I love. I cannot seriously deny that Adbu’l-Baha’s question is directed to me: “Hast thou love?” Hand of the Cause Collis Featherstone put it succinctly: “Radiate love. Be radiators, not sponges.”

The Master began one of His talks with the words, “The foundation of Bahá’u’lláh is love.” The individual believer is at the foundation. As he acquires the capacity to recognize, and grows in love, the foundation is strengthened, and all that rests upon it—the local assemblies, the national assemblies, the Universal House of Justice, that supreme institution described by Shoghi Effendi as “the last refuge of a tottering civilization.” The last refuge! Dare we fail?

We have the words of Abdu’l-Bahá:

“There is only one hope for humanity today and that is to see all human beings as rays of one Divine Sun which is God...” (SWII.46)

and of Bahá’u’lláh:

“Thy sight is My sight, do thou see therewith...” “Ye that have eyes, behold and wonder.” (HW.44.22)

[Page 9]

HUMAN RIGHTS OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN

By Edris Rice-Wray, M.D.

Edris Rice-Wray, MD. is Director of the Maternal Health Association Clinic, Mexico, D.F. After 10 years in the private practice of medicine, Dr. Rice-Wray went to Puerto Rico as director of public health programs. She then spent two years in Mexico as a Medical Officer of the World Health Organization. She saw that the accomplishments of the health programs were completely offset by the population growth, and so shifted her sights and energies to the problem of the birth rate. She describes here Mexico’s first family planning program, of which she is the founder and director.

She had provoked four abortions within the year and thought she was pregnant again. For eight years she had been aborting regularly every time she became pregnant until she had lost count. Now, she was worn-out and frightened and she began to cry. “Dios mío,” she sobbed. “Por qué sera posible que me castigues con otra criatura?” (Oh, God! How can it be that you punish me with another child?)

Somehow she had learned about the Asociación Pro-Salud Maternal in Mexico City and had come to us for contraceptive advice. Sympathetic questioning brought out her story. In thirty years of marriage she had given birth to nine children. Eight had lived. Her husband was a laborer and when he worked he earned the minimum wage. The social-service workers at the clinic had heard it all many times before, the one-room home without sanitation or ventilation or privacy; the original two beds, one for parents and one for children, beds that soon had to give place to crowded mats on the floor; the diet of beans and tortillas that may ward off hunger but not malnutrition and anemia, the continually diminishing individual share of food as each new baby arrived. There is a Mexican saying that each baby is born with a “bolillo” (a roll) under his arm. They also say that “where one eats, two can eat.” They can indeed, by adding more water to the soup.

Statistics are cold and remote and therefore meaningless to many people. Headlines about mass misery are all too often passed over by those of us who live secure within our own situation. Let’s come down to the individual low income Mexican families, as we see them every day and in ever increasing numbers.

[Page 10] In the families of the poor there soon are five or six children, born at yearly intervals. There may be many more. In one poor suburb which I have visited, the average is twelve. Of course the children are ragged, dirty and hungry; yet as sweet and appealing as your own clean, well-cared for children.

What happens to these families? In desperation the mother prays to the Holy Virgin to protect her from conception. She may try to refuse her husband. Too often male pride responds by beating her into submission. Or the man may simply leave her for a more compliant house mate. If the woman finds herself pregnant again, knowing that she cannot educate or even feed or clothe another child, she turns wildly to any way of escape. She may try some crude method of abortion suggested by her neighbors and friends, or she may put herself into the hands of an ignorant midwife. Many times she ends up near death from hemorrhage in any of the various city maternity services. In one Mexico City hospital there are each day, 22 full-term deliveries and ten curettages to save lives after unsuccessful abortions. It is estimated that the total of abortions is equal to the number of births. There is no way to know how many women do not get to the hospitals to stop the hemorrhaging in time, and of course successful abortions are never reported. One series of 1000 women interviewed in the Clinic included 307 who freely admitted to having induced from one to twenty four abortions. One woman who came crying and begging for help had ten living children, and had nearly died as a result of her eighteenth abortion.

Even when the wife is submissive to her husband's demands, there is no assurance that he may not walk out one day, simply to escape the intolerable burden of the increasing family. Too often he feels no responsibility for the children he has sired and dreams only of the comparative ease of another home where, at least for a while, there will not be too many mouths to feed. Then the long-suffering, but still nearly always responsible and devoted mother, is confronted by two equally frightening alternatives. If she stays at home to care for the little ones, who will buy food and pay the rent? If she goes off to work, she may have to leave the children locked in the house, or under the care of the eldest, who may be only eight or ten, with a prayer that no catastrophe will befall them before her return.

Is it any wonder that these women are eager to learn and use some method less dangerous and painful than abortion in order to limit their families to the number of children they can take care of? Abortion is not only a sin according to their religion but a crime under the laws of the state. Should not the ignorant and poor have access to information that will protect them from taking the only way out that they know?

Experts from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations have made very clear that even though food production on a world scale is steadily increasing, population is increasing faster, so that per capita production is actually decreasing. Widespread famine is predicted for Latin America within ten years and for India within months. In 1966, to prevent mass famine in India, the U.S. sent 9 million tons of wheat. Now wheat stocks in the U.S. are running low. When a starving man has to watch the gradual death of his children for lack of food, even when he has the love and courage not to run away from his responsibilities, can he be blamed when he reaches the point of not caring whether he lives or dies? What is there to make him care whether the rebellion which offers a chance of change—any change—involves violence and blood, or even death? The Indian father who recently threw his two children into the river, because he could not bear to see them starve, is much too miserable to be able to distinguish truth from lies in the words of the shouting demagogue.

[Page 11] There are other considerations besides sheer poverty which make it desirable to limit the size of one’s family. Some years ago, a pretty, well-dressed woman of twenty eight came to the clinic, desperate to avoid another pregnancy. A devout Catholic who had thought it wrong to practice contraception, she had borne nine children in ten years. Now she told me, “I’ll kill myself if I get pregnant again. There just isn’t room in our house for another crib.” When I suggested teaching her the rhythm method, she burst out crying. “Doctor, how can I tell what my cycle is? I haven’t menstruated since I got married.” This woman made it clear to me that not only were her material resources exhausted by so many babies in so short a time, but that her emotions were depleted, too. She could not welcome another child—probably she had not welcomed the last four or five.

There often is a direct relationship between infant health and being wanted. The Yale-New Haven Hospital recently reported the entrance of an average of two children a month “who don't thrive.” When no disease was discovered to explain the failure of growth and development, one such group including family and home conditions, was investigated extensively. It was found that most of them came from seriously disorganized homes, or had for other reasons never been wanted. Some had been born when the mother’s physical and emotional resources were already taxed to the breaking point, and many were resented even before they were born. The importance of feeling loved and wanted by both parents as a basis for lifelong stability and emotional security has been stressed again and again by psychologists and psychiatrists. For lack of such security the child becomes prey to impulses of rebellion against authority. He feels that the whole world rejects him as his parents do, and so falls into the ranks of the juvenile delinquents and criminals.

In 1958 with the help of a few Mexican friends, I founded the clinic now called the Asociacion Pro-Salud Maternal. I had no way of knowing then whether planning for family limitation would be acceptable in Mexico. In our first month of operation only sixteen women sought our aid. The next month there were twenty. We had no publicity; in fact I never allowed myself to be interviewed about this work until the last year when the subject of the need to slow down population growth in Mexico became so widely discussed. In less than eight years, the clinic has registered more than twelve thousand women, and it receives in the main clinic and its six auxiliary clinics about three thousand nine hundred each month.

The Asociacion Pro-Salud Maternal is a demonstration project—a pilot project —a research center and training ground for Latin American doctors who can institute such programs in their own countries. We know well that a population problem like Mexico’s cannot be solved by treating twelve thousand women. For two new little Mexicans are born every minute. Services such as are given in our clinic, and in a few others, must be extended widely if we are to avoid the disastrous results of too many people for the resources of the country. And we ask ourselves if the problem can be dealt with, without an all-out government program.

Very often I am asked, “How is it possible to introduce a program of family limitation into a Catholic country?” In my view, too much emphasis has been put on Catholic opposition to family planning. There are Protestants and Jews who are opposed to our program, also. But, happily, there are in every group, individuals who are willing to face the reality of Mexico’s situation and who care enough to do something about it. Many liberal Catholic clerics, not only in Mexico but elsewhere, have a social conscience and the courage to face the very real and overwhelming problems brought to them by their parishioners. Many of these [Page 12] find individual and valid reasons for giving women permission to use “the pill.” One young priest in Mexico who feels a personal commitment to the solution of the human problems is authorized by his bishop to cooperate with our clinic in education for responsible parenthood.

The liberal Catholics should be, and I sincerely think will be, the ones to spearhead the movement for family planning in Latin America. In many countries, desire for action on the part of government is paralyzed by conscious or unconscious fear of Catholic opposition. Not only are Catholics the logical ones to allay this fear and to spark support of government efforts, but they will do it with more conviction and sincerity than any one else. Such action will require courage because it means a certain degree of sacrifice and the faith to stand up to criticism and opposition from the conservatives within their church.

In a small way, we see this happening in our clinic. For some years we have been surrounded and supported by a group of volunteer women who help in many ways, from fund raising to actual day-to-day work in the clinic. At the beginning these women were predominantly English-speaking. Recently we have extended our “orientation course” of six weekly lectures to Mexican women also, giving these lectures and film showings in Spanish. I have been gratified with the ever-increasing number of Mexican women who have attended the course and with those who subsequently have volunteered to help, especially since we have great need of Spanish-speaking people.

President Diaz Ordaz, in his second Report to the People on September 1, based his program for the future on better education and more opportunity for all Mexicans, confident that he was expressing the will of the great majority of the people. By all means let us direct our energies and our public monies to the urgent problems of housing, food, employment and education.

Can we not also win for parents the freedom to have their children when they want them and in the number they can care for? The mushroom cloud of the population explosion not only in Mexico but all over the world, is as awful and portentous for the future as was the cloud that first appeared over Hiroshima. And time is running out. Whatever we do tomorrow should have been done yesterday.

Until such time as broader action can be achieved, this is something in which all of us can participate, across a hedge or across a national boundary. Support for health and medical services already existing, encouragement of those who advocate government action, spreading the message of family planning wherever you go—these are things that every one can do.

I would like to challenge all those of good conscience to an act of imagination. Go in thought to spend twenty-four hours in a poor home with many children. Sleep on the floor with them, eat their meager food, shudder away from the cockroaches and rats, endure the lack of sanitary facilities and the absence of privacy. Listen to little children ask for food when there is none. Share the desperation of the mother who cannot provide for those children she has, and who is carrying yet another life within her body. Do you think that you could deny her the right to control her destiny and the fate of her family by using safe and scientific means to limit its size? Do you think that you could do this and return to your own easy life with an untroubled heart?

[Page 13]

IS THE PROPHETIC VOICE SILENT?

By Elena Maria Marsella

The late Adlai Stevenson once made the remark that some people have to be “dragged screaming into the twentieth century.” That statement, though made of politics, applies equally well to religion, for history shows that, with the appearance of each new Teacher, mankind has had to be dragged screaming into a new spiritual era. Though much has been made of the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, there was nothing unique in their attitude toward him. Noah had previously been ignored; Abraham was driven out of Ur of Chaldea, Moses encountered the opposition of Pharaoh and his people, and Muhammad was heaped with ridicule.

Openly and covertly—in the present era, Christians are beginning to wonder what has happened to their religion. They and their Church leaders are puzzled by marked waning of interest in religion and a concurrent increase in moral laxity, crime, and juvenile delinquency.

In an article in Look Magazine, of September 24, 1963, Dr. J. Robert Moskin, Senior Editor, asked some questions about religion and morality which are as valid now as they were then:

Have Bigness, the Bomb, and the Buck destroyed our old morality?

Do we need a new code to solve our crisis of immorality?

Have our churches failed?

Has money become God?

Is sexual morality gone?

According to Dr. Moskin, morality is the “most intensely discussed subject in the United States. We argue about Elizabeth Taylor's love life, Billie Sol Estes’s deals, Bull Connor’s brutalities, Adam Clayton Powell’s junkets, Nelson Rockefeller’s divorce, Jimmy Hoffa's power. We debate stealing by youngsters in Darien, Conn., sterilization by doctors in Virginia, welfare restrictions by politicians in Newburgh, N.Y., the right to lie by officials in Washington, slant well digging by Texans in Texas, and gouging by slumlords in Chicago.”

Americans, Dr. Moskin asserts, are adrift without answers. “We are groping, painfully and often blindly, for new standards that will enable us to live morally and decently. The experts feel strongly that we cannot turn back to earlier, more rigid behavior patterns. Almost all the thoughtful, worried people I talked with believed that, unlike people in so many past ages, we have achieved some freedom of choice. We have choices to make about power, money, sex, prejudice, and our role in the world. We must find a new moral code that will fit the needs of the new society we live in.”

Whence will come such a new code? More and more Christians, laymen and clergymen alike, are realizing that the churches—traditional strongholds of morality in all its forms—are failing and cannot provide anything new.

The Rev. E. Gene Vosseler, pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Kailua, Hawaii, frankly asked in one of his sermons: “Is Protestantism worth saving? Is it already dead?”

[Page 14] In answer to his own questions he stated, “The goal of the deified religious system is a watered down, status quo respectability. The prophetic voice is silent.” “The institutional Church—as such—is dead?” “Why use the past tense in referring to the death of the religious institution?” he asked. “Because the death is an accomplished fact. Only the burial remains.”

“One looks in vain,” goes on Dr. Vosseler, “for genuineness, love and truth in the religious establishment only to find sterility, barrenness, and a no-man's land of devastating unconcern....The religious system has abstracted from life. It is cold, impersonal and unfeeling.”

That which could save a shattered world, Dr. Vosseler believes, is love. Not the “shoddy, sterile, sentimental slush that’s advertised as Christian”; not “pious preachments,” nor “Utopian panaceas” which are destined to be exposed as “phoney and unreal”; not love as spoken about by “functionaries in the institution” who don't know what love is and are therefore incapable of demonstrating it in life. But love at the “gut” level where people hurt, hunger, and hope for love and understanding.

Rev. Vosseler’s candid comments stress one facet of Christianity's failure to satisfy the needs of the modern age. In a commencement address to graduates of the Northern Baptist Theological Seminary a year ago, Dr. Edwin T. Dahlberg, former president of the National Council of Churches, pointed out another facet. What is needed today, he said, is a “prophet” to confront the world with “both a personal and a social gospel.” “If,” he explained, “we have evangelism without a social gospel, we have a religion in an ethical vacuum—a church wrapped up in its prayers, feeling pure and agreeable in the presence of God, but failing to be baptized into a feeling of the conditions of the people.”

Dr. Dahlberg believes the world to be on the brink of a religious awakening, and in support of this he cites three conditions which have always preceded spiritual revivals:

1. A growing sense of discontent and concern regarding moral trends of the time.

2. A yearning for something better.

3. The appearance of a messenger, or prophet, who speaks with a voice of authority, and whose accent the people will instinctively obey.

Says Dr. Dahlberg, “The first two of these three conditions are already in operation. We have yet to welcome the messenger, who will give voice to the higher conscience of the nation and the world.”

In a remarkable book-length critique of Christianity called “The Comfortable Pew,” Canadian author Pierre Berton notes that if a spiritual awakening occurs it will not stem from the theological schools, nor will it be sparked by modern persecutions of Christendom. “If it does come,” he states, “it is likely to come as the result of the actions of one man, of some spiritual genius, perhaps yet unborn, who will take all the incredible laws, postures, and myths of today’s Church and turn these inside out, so they have some relevance in the New Age. Such a man, seeing through the murky varnish of wealth, snobbery, self-seeking, and apathy, which overlays the Church, to the essential message at its core, would by sacrifice and total commitment work his modern miracles.

“He would have to be a man of vigour, humour, passion, concern, guts and, above all, action. It is fairly certain that he would not move with the elders of the Church but with its youth; it is probable that he would not mingle with the leaders of society but with the rejected; it is predictable that he would be a master of contemporary methods of communication, but that his real communication [Page 15] would be through his own commitment to his Faith. It is axiomatic to say that he would be reviled as the most dangerous of heretics for slicing through the labyrinth of myth and dogma in which the Church is currently enmeshed: it is more than likely that, being an enemy of the establishment—religious, social, and political— he would be denounced as a traitor. And it is in the cards that society would find some modem means of crucifying him.

“Ragged, cast out, abandoned, denied, and finally extinguished, he would seem to his contemporaries to have failed miserably in his obviously vain task. Yet there would be one or two who, at the moment of his death, would be moved to the point that they would commit their own lives to his ideals. It is possible to believe that this number might grow into the Christian Church of the New Age.

“It does not follow that it will necessarily be called anything of the sort. It is possible that it may have a new name, incorporating the name of the man who sacrificed himself that it might flourish anew. But names are immaterial. Like titles and offices, vestments and priestly uniforms, ecclesiastical façades and human shells, they are important only to those who put more trust in outer garments than in the spirit within.”

Dr. Dahlberg states that we have yet to “welcome” the messenger. Mr. Berton remarks that he may as yet be unborn, and that if he had already appeared he would have been denounced as a traitor. It is an historical truth that no messenger has ever been “welcomed” at the start of his mission by more than a handful. And, as Mr. Berton pointed out, almost every one has been termed a traitor, cast out, abandoned, denied, and finally extinguished in one way or another.

In view of the fact that Jesus predicted his return as a “thief in the night,” warning the faithful to “watch” lest they miss him, it is possible that the may already have been born, that he may already have appeared in the silence of a spiritual nighttime, that he may have brought with him a revelation which bears a “new name, incorporating the name of the man who sacrificed himself that it (his religion) might flourish anew.”

On September 23, 1893, the Rev. George A. Ford of Syria, acting on behalf of the Rev. Henry H. Jessup, D.D., Director of Presbyterian Missionary Operations in North Syria, read a paper to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. It closed with these words:

“In the Palace of Bahji, or Delight, just outside the Fortress of 'Akka, on the Syrian Coast, there died a few months since, a famous Persian sage, the Babi Saint, named Bahá’u’lláh—the ‘Glory of God’—the head of that vast reform party of Persian Muslims, who accept the New Testament as the Word of God and Christ as the Deliverer of men, who regard all nations as one, and all men as brothers. Three years ago he was visited by a Cambridge scholar and gave utterance to sentiments so noble, so Christlike, that we repeat them as our closing words: ‘That all nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of 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. Do not you in Europe need this also? Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.’”

Born in Persia in 1817, Mirza Husayn 'Ali, known today to millions of people as Bahá’u’lláh, was a native of Nur in the Province of Nazindaran.

His herald, a youth of Shiraz, known as the Báb (Gate), arose in May of 1844 [Page 16] and proclaimed himself to be not only a Prophet of God in his own right, but a precursor of One mightier than he who would appear. So great was the dismay of the ecclesiasts, as thousands of Persians flocked to the youthful Prophet, that they subjected him to six years of ceaseless imprisonment and persecution. Finally, unable to stem the rising tide of enthusiasm, they executed him in the Barracks Square of Tabriz on July 9, 1850. There followed a blood bath unparalleled in the history of religions in which twenty thousand followers of the Babi Faith laid down their lives.

Though Bahá’u’lláh immediately proclaimed himself a Babi, he was not at first persecuted. Bahá’u’lláh was later imprisoned in an underground dungeon in Teheran. When finally released four months later, he was too ill to walk unaided. Ragged, emaciated, his neck cut and bleeding from the weight of the iron collar he had worn, Bahá’u’lláh found that his home had been plundered, his estates expropriated, his possessions and even his clothing stolen.

He needed only to recant his Faith in order to have all honor, prestige, and possessions restored. Refusing to do this, he was shortly thereafter exiled to Baghdad. Within a few years, under the aegis of Bahá’u’lláh, the Babi Faith was again such a threat to the clergy of Persia and Iraq that they entreated the Turkish Government to remove him to Adrianople. Four years in Adrianople convinced the governments of Persia and Turkey that his power and authority were only enhanced by exile. Their final attempt to stamp out the dreaded “sect” resulted in their imprisoning Bahá’u’lláh in the Penal Colony of ’Akka, then in Turkish Syria. This was, in their estimation, the death sentence which they had somehow been withheld from imposing upon him, for, so pestilential were conditions in the prison-city, that even the strongest seldom survived.

Bahá’u’lláh survived 24 years, long enough to pen with his own hand laws for a world society for a thousand years to come, long enough to address epistles to the kings and rulers of the earth announcing himself as the Promised One of All Ages, long enough to write or to dictate works of incomparable beauty for the guidance of mankind.

Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed himself to be—not a reformer under the shadow of Islam or of any other established world religion—but that World Redeemer whose coming had been forecast in the Scriptures of all the ancient faiths. He declared that the mightiest proof of his authenticity as a Messenger of God was the regenerating power of the Word revealed through him. The first effect of this Word was to create a world-embracing love, a love which had long since disappeared from the dogma-encrusted structures of the older Faiths.

The Rev. J. Tyssul Davis, in a “League of Religions,” expressly described the Bahá’í Faith to be a religion of love, “love for the neighbors, love for the alien, love for all humanity, love for all life, love for God.”

What effect has that love upon a Church formalism so deplored by the Rev. Vosseler that he labelled it “dead”? Still another minister, the Rev. Frederick W. Oakes, after visiting the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh at Bahji, came away in such an ecstatic state that he reminisced: “And this Pilgrim came away renewed and refreshed to such a degree, that the hard bands of formalism were replaced by the freedom of love and light that will make that sojourn there the prize memory and the Door of Revelation never to be closed again, and never becloud the glorious Truth of Universal Brotherhood. A calm, and glorious influence that claims the heart and whispers to each of the pulsating leaves of the great family in all experiences of life, ‘Be not afraid, It is I.’”

And what of that new code necessary for this day, the modern code mentioned [Page 17] in the article in Look? The Rev. J. Tyssul Davis stated: “The Bahá’í religion has made its way—because it meets the needs of its day. It fits the larger outlook of our times better than the rigid exclusive older faiths.”

The Bahá’í Faith is as personal in its relationship to the spirit of man as any of the previous revelations. Yet it is not, as the Rev. Dahlberg expressed it, “religion in an ethical vacuum.” It is also an up-to-date social gospel, dealing head-on with all the problems which currently afflict man individually and collectively. The following are some of the principles laid down by Bahá’u’lláh nearly a hundred years ago:

1. The oneness of mankind. The earth is one country and mankind its citizens.

2. Independent investigation of the truth. Each person must find the truth for himself, unfettered by the opinions of friends, relatives, or ecclesiasts.

3. The oneness of religion. There is but one God, and therefore but one religion. The revelations of Krishna, Buddha, Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, are like chapters in a single Divine Book.

4. The harmony of science and religion. Science and religion must join hands. Religion which denies science ends up in superstition. Science which denies religion ends up in materialism.

5. Equality of men and women. Men and women are like the two wings of a bird. For balanced flight both wings must be strong.

6. Abolition of prejudice. Prejudice of all types, religious, racial, national and social, must be abandoned. The peoples of the earth are like the flowers of a garden, diverse in color, size and fragrance. A garden without variety would be devoid of beauty.

7. Universal compulsory education. All people, regardless of their economic standing, should be educated so that the talents they inherently possess may be utilized for their own benefit and [or the benefit of mankind.

8. A spiritual solution of economic problems. All laws legislated for the solution of economic problems will prove fruitless until man learns to love his neighbor more than himself.

9. A universal auxiliary language. A universal language must either be invented, or chosen from among existing ones, and taught in all the schools. Each person will then speak his own native tongue and the universal language.

10. Universal peace. War must be abolished forever, and universal peace upheld by a world government, a world court, and a world police force.

On April 11, 1963, while the Bahá’ís of more than 270 countries and territories of the world were preparing for the election of their first Universal House of Justice at Haifa, Israel, the late Pope John XXIII issued his last Encyclical, “Pacem in Terris” (Peace on Earth). For this letter he received universal acclaim. Nearly one hundred years earlier, Bahá’u’lláh had covered, in even greater detail, every point contained in the Encyclical. But for the Letters which he addressed at that time to the monarchs and ecclesiasts of the world, he was rewarded with torture, imprisonment, exile, denial and ridicule.

In his Tablets to the kings Bahá’u’lláh laid down a Plan for permanent and lasting peace. Further, he made a fervent plea to Christendom’s most powerful cleric, Pope Pius IX, to examine his cause, to espouse it himself, and then to proffer it to the world.

He wrote: “O Pope! Rend the veils asunder. He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds, and the decree hath been fulfilled by God, the [Page 18] Almighty, the Unrestrained...He, verily, hath again come down from Heaven even as He came down from it the first time . . . Dwellest thou in palaces whilst He Who is the King of Revelation liveth in the most desolate of abodes? Leave them unto such as desire them, and set thy face with joy and delight towards the Kingdom . . .Arise in the name of thy Lord, the God of Mercy, amidst the peoples of the earth, and seize thou the Cup of Life with the hands of confidence, and first drink thou therefrom, and proffer it then to such as turn towards it amongst the peoples of all faiths.”

Bahá’u’lláh summoned the monarchs of the East and of the West to come together at the conference table, there to arbitrate in justice the problems of the world. All of the nations of the earth, whether powerful or weak, should participate in these deliberations. He urged the nations to disarm, to maintain only those forces necessary to preserve peace within their own borders. All decisions arrived at should be achieved by a majority vote (no veto), and such decisions to be enforced by a World Police Force. Any nation attempting to disrupt the peace should be prevented from doing so by united effort of all the others, and its government (not its peoples) be destroyed.

Not a single sovereign addressed by Bahá’u’lláh investigated his Peace Plan, nor, outside of Persia, did any of the ecclesiasts investigate the claims of One who proclaimed himself to be the Voice of God for this Age. In consequence, the Prisoner of ’Akka declared: “From two categories of men power hath been seized —kings and ecclesiasts.”

A firm and lasting peace which, according to Bahá’u’lláh, could have been achieved during his lifetime, was thus delayed. Of their own free will, men relinquished the founding of the Kingdom of God on Earth to the Peters, the Pauls and the Miriams of the modern day. Two thousand years earlier Jesus had described these social nobodies as the “meek” who shall “inherit the earth”.

One of the most remarkable of Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablets was addressed to Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. When he cast the first of these letters behind him in disdain, Bahá’u’lláh addressed another to him: “For what thou hast done, thy kingdom shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thine hands, as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought. Then wilt thou know how thou hast plainly erred.”

Within two years, Napoleon had reason to know that he had, indeed, erred.

Pope Pius IX, virtually the ruler of all Italy when Bahá’u’lláh revealed to him the responsibility of recognizing and obeying the returned Christ, became the first prisoner of the Vatican, watching in grief and despair the decline of the Papacy which had once set up and deposed kings and emperors at will.

A fate no less calamitous awaited the Head of Sunni Islam, the self-styled Vicar of Muhammad. Ignoring the summons of Bahá’u’lláh, he was first divested of his temporal power by the abolition of the Sultanate, only shortly thereafter to witness the extinction of the Caliphate as well. Shorn of both temporal and spiritual sovereignty he fled from Constantinople in exile.

These were not the only temporal and spiritual sovereigns to be toppled from their lofty thrones. History provides ample evidence that, with the appearance of Bahá’u’lláh and the declaration of his mission, nation after nation dispensed with rulers they could no longer revere, while the masses of the world, finding that the fountains of living water had ceased to flow, strayed farther and farther afield from the spiritual shepherds who once had led them.

More than 2500 years previously Isaiah had predicted: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones that are on [Page 19] earth, and the kings of the earth upon the earth.” (Isaiah 24:21). And, speaking specifically of the Redeemer, he had prophesied: “We shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people.” (Isaiah 2:3).

From the prolific writings of Bahá’u’lláh comes the following: “We have fixed a time for you, O people! If ye fail, at the appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every direction. How severe indeed is the chastisement with which your Lord will then chastise you!”

Speaking for himself, Bahá’u’lláh testified, “We verily have not fallen short of Our duty to exhort men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God, the Almighty, the All-Praised. Had they hearkened unto Me, they would have beheld the earth another earth.”

Yet, according to the Prophet, there will be an end to the darkness in which the world is now enveloped. Early or late, before or after suffering and chaos, the Kingdom of God on Earth will be established. These “ruinous wars” and these “fruitless strifes” shall pass away and the Most Great Peace shall come. “The whole world”, he emphatically proclaims, “is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings.”

Is the prophetic voice truly silent? The Bahá’ís of the world believe that, for those with ears to hear, it has been thundering out with power and authority for more than a hundred years.

---

DAWNBREAKER

by Robert Hayden

Ablaze

with candles sconced

in weeping eyes

of wounds,

He danced

through jeering streets

to death; oh sang

against

The drumming

mockery God’s praise.

Flames nested in

his flesh

Fed the

fires that consume

us now, the fire that

will save.

[Page 20]

OF

LAW

ORDER

AND

LOVE

---

“HE THAT SPARETH HIS ROD HATETH HIS CHILD:

BUT HE THAT LOVETH HIM CHASTENETH HIM BETIMES.”

Proverbs X111, 24

---

By Anselm Schurgast, M.D.

Anselm Schurgast, M .D., is Psychiatrist-in-Chief at The Meriden Hospital in Connecticut, was certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in 1956.

As psychiatrists, we have the dubious distinction of being considered experts on almost everything relating to human problems. Whereas, on the one hand we are almost completely discredited as impractical theoreticians who do not have enough sense to straighten out our own lives, we are nevertheless called upon to give expert testimony as to whether our fellow citizens are legally responsible, dangerous or conducting themselves in a rational manner. It is somehow assumed by a large segment of the educated population, that we have a quasi-magical ability to see the deeper meanings of things in general, and to come up with specific solutions to the problems of child development, juvenile delinquency, crime, racial prejudice, and divorce, in particular.

Fortunately for us, we are not so all-knowing, and all-wise. We do, of course, occasionally come up with some ideas, and for what one individual’s thoughts are worth, I would like to address myself to the problem of freedom versus discipline in the raising of children. My laboratory is my office, through which flows a constant stream of disturbed, destructive, and emotionally sick children, and their distraught parents who plead for solutions, and for an answer to the question: “What can we do?”

My interpretations are my own, though I am deeply indebted to, and heartened by, the expressions of Martha Weinman Lear, Al Capp, and Sam Levenson. I have also been stimulated by the provocative ideas of A. S. Neill, and his book, “Summerhill,” and by Dr. Thomas Szasz, and his book, “The Myth of Mental Illness.”

I cannot answer the question as to whether there is more mental illness now than 50 years ago, but I have the distinct impression that there is more lawlessness among adults, and more violence, and gross malfunctioning among children than [Page 21] there was even 20 years ago. There are large numbers of grossly psychotic children for whom there are no treatment facilities, and the Child Guidance Clinics throughout the land, as well as private offices such as my own, are inundated by requests for treatment of children whose behavior has become so grossly disturbed as to be unbearable to their families and teachers. Why is all this? Is there something wrong with our generation? Are we failing our children somehow? I feel that we are.

I feel that as a generation of adults, we have so preoccupied ourselves with being “good parents,” and with attempting to make up to our children what we ourselves lacked, that we have lost our perspective. We are besieged with articles in magazines telling us that we should “reason with” our children rather than punish them, and that above all we must “understand” our children. We should, so the articles say, “explain” to our children why we are cutting out television for three whole days, or why they cannot have a new sports car till next month.

The results are astounding. Whole families are intimidated by an upset child who will “go all to pieces” if he is not allowed to have his own way, and police departments receive angry letters of complaint for stopping the automobiles of youngsters at 2 A.M. to check on the degree of intoxication of the drivers, as they cross the state line. The police are accused of harrassing the youngsters, and of interfering with their rights.

Teachers are made to explain disciplinary actions against their pupils, and are brought to court for defending themselves against 160-pound children who have attacked them with knives. (Such attacks occur so frequently in some sections of our large cities, that they are not even reported, unless the incident is unusual.)

What is wrong, is that we are in many instances allowing our children to dominate, and often run our lives and our homes. Under these conditions, it is not at all strange that they lose their respect for us, and become wild, unmanageable hooligans.

It has been my experience that most children need, and even want some restraints placed on their actions. They need to be told, “No!” “Not today, and not for any reason except that I say so, and I am your father” (or mother or aunt). Most children deliberately test their parents (teachers, etc.) to see just how far they can go, to ascertain just how much they can get away with. This seems to me to be a natural propensity of normal children, not a sign of emotional disturbance. If limits are not set firmly, and reasonably consistently, the children go wild. They begin to order their parents around, demand privileges and money or a new car, and exhibit ear shattering (and furniture shattering) temper tantrums when they are not given their way. These tantrums are not a sign of mental illness, or of loss of contact with reality. They are signs of loss of control, and loss of what used to be referred to as “good old common sense,” on the part of parents. In brief, they are signs of spoiled children. Spoiled rotten. When such children are brought to Child Guidance Clinics, it is carefully explained to the parents, that they are “expressing repressed hostility.” It is implied, and often stated by child experts of various sorts, that such children should not be punished, as they are “sick,” “emotionally ill,” etc. They should be handled calmly by rational explanations, and above all not with angry retaliation. So the story goes, and so the articles say. What the articles do not make clear is just what the parents are supposed to do when the children start burning the house down. (A frequent threat.) Pathetically, many parents ask, “But what can we do? He’ll get all upset, and there won't be any peace in the house for weeks, if we don’t give in to him. We just can’t stand to see him in that mood!”

[Page 22] The basic question that must be answered relates to the problem of ultimate values, and ultimate authority. Who should wield the final authority in a home? The father? The mother? All of the members of the household by a majority vote? A few basic presumptions are assumed to be commonly accepted, in the posing of these questions: It is assumed that all children need large amounts of love and affection, and that they prosper in an atmosphere in which their individual needs, and individual differences are respected and taken into account. It is assumed that if a child is encouraged to express individual initiative and imagination, rather than being forced into a common mold, he will become a more happy, fulfilled, and creative individual in his adult life. It is assumed that special talents and individual creativity should be encouraged, and that each child should be treated in such a way as to take into account his dignity as an individual human being. It is further assumed that it is the duty and responsibility of parents to provide a home with such an atmosphere, and to see to it that their children are educated to the fullest extent of their ability as well as being fed and housed and clothed.

What is not so commonly agreed to is the delegation of restraint in the household, and the delineation of final authority. Many parents seriously question how much right they have to interfere with the freedom of their children, and many are afraid, that if they are too strict, their children will become inhibited, frustrated, and neurotic children. Many more fear that if they are too strict, their children will not like them, and will turn against them. In an effort to avoid this, many parents attempt to become “buddies” to their children, and to put themselves on the same level with the children.

I hold to the archaic notion that the parents should be in charge, and should make the final decisions. I feel that parents have certain fundamental prerogatives, simply because they are the parents, and because law and order cannot be maintained in a household that is run by children. Perhaps, I am hopelessly old- fashioned, but I have the idea that law and order are necessary. It is a basic security to children to grow up in a situation in which law and order prevail, in which limits are set, and in which a certain amount of basic discipline and basic courtesy are maintained.

Children need to feel that their parents have a sense of identity of their own; that they are separate human individuals, not simply fathers or mothers. This suggests that parents should not attempt to be buddies to their children, but should rather establish themselves as authoritarian adults. Children need a model or image with which to identify themselves, and after which to pattern themselves. These models do not need to be perfect or without fault, but they need to be definite.

It is, perhaps, the fear of doing something wrong or taking a wrong stand that makes so many parents these days take no stand at all, and this is tragic. Our children need for us to take a stand right or wrong; they do not need for us to be perfect. The strength of character, and the mental health of our future generations depends heavily on the effectiveness with which we take this stand.

The maintenance of basic discipline may sometimes require the use of force. People are frequently shocked when I, as a psychiatrist, suggest this, but I feel strongly that it is so. Children occasionally need to be spanked, big boys paddled, and driver’s licenses need to be revoked. Privileges have to be withheld, and young children, at times, need to be shouted at, even screamed at, rather than always being handled with reason and calm, and quiet explanations. The alternative is anarchy. The alternative is a household in which the children largely do as they [Page 23] please, and in which the father has a heart attack when his daughter marries a grossly undesirable boy because she is pregnant.

I feel that law and order cannot be maintained in a city or in a state or in a nation, unless it be maintained in the individual homes of the citizens. It follows logically (as out of style as this way of thinking may be these days) that the same principle of law and order needs to be applied to the relationships of the nations to each other if there is ever to be law and order in the world in which we all live.

What then is required to establish law and order and sanity in our homes? First, we need to believe in it, and in ourselves. We need to remind ourselves that we have the “right” to make rules in our houses, and to enforce them. This is, as I see it, a fundamental, God-given right which needs no explanations or apologies, or unconscious motivations. I think that the father should in most instances be the head of the household, and that husband and wife should consult privately without asking the consent or opinion of the children on such basic issues as the place of residence, the expenditure of funds, and the placement of fixtures in the bathroom. I think that homes should be run by parents. Interestingly enough, most parents seem to agree with me in this. They say so. But when faced with the management of their own children, these same parents often throw up their hands and ask hopelessly, “But what can we do, if she won’t listen to us?” “If we insist, she may just run off and get married to spite us, and we do want her to finish college.” “If we press the point, she will never speak to us again.” “She gets upset so easily.”

When parents ask such questions, they are demonstrating that their children, not they, are in control of the situation, and I find it necessary to remind them that they should be laying down the ground rules; they should be setting the conditions. In brief, they, the parents need to gain and hold the initiative, even if it means at times taking it away from their children by unfair means such as the threat of withholding funds.

The repetitive plea seems to be, “But do we have the right to be so arbitrary?” Yes, you have the right, and the obligation. Your children need for you to exercise this right, and they demonstrate by their demanding talk, and their senseless actions that they are, in fact, begging you to exercise your right. They will respect you more, not less, and eventually, they may even listen to you.

We seem to live in an age in which statesmen have lost their statesmanship, policemen have lost their authority, and everyone else has lost the ability to say yea, or nay, to a simple resolution. Perhaps, it is time for the parents of the world to take the reins back in their hands, and accept the proposition that they, after all, have somewhat more wisdom, and judgment, and experience, than their overindulged, overstimulated children.

I do not mean to speak against youth in its vigor and its enthusiasm, and its joyous spirit. Far from it. It is this vigor and enthusiasm that leads to new discoveries, new frontiers, and new vistas of the human imagination. I feel that mental health and social health are a matter of balance. I feel that in all things there needs to be some moderation, and some final authority. This authority needs to be exercised by the parents, even though their children may be brighter, and better informed, and better educated than they were.

It is only too evident that we live in an exciting new age in which the advances of technology are breath-taking, and the elimination of poverty and hunger and disease is a real possibility for the first time in human history. One can feel an excitement in the air as one watches the, by now, routine launching of an Atlas Rocket into the stratosphere, and the imagination is stimulated by the [Page 24] possibilities of what may be next.

A Golden Age, we are told, lies ahead of us with unimaginable splendors and promises. And so it may be, but where is our golden age if we cannot, and our children cannot learn to control themselves? Who will benefit from the new discoveries, and the new freedoms, and the new riches if our world becomes one grand summer beach riot? Who will pay the bills after all the banks are robbed, and who will provide the food for the young poets after all the grocery store windows have been smashed by beer bottles? Who will suggest the moral values, and provide the leadership...establish the guidelines? Probably, this task will fall on us, the parents, the dreary ones, the squares. Perhaps, we could save ourselves, and our off-spring a great deal of trouble by applying a few basic principles now.

[Page 25]

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH TO THE CHRISTIANS

By William S. Hatcher, D.Sc.

We are in a new age. Whatever may be our philosophical or religious convictions, it is a matter of fact that, since the middle of the nineteenth century, a new age has dawned in human history. Its most characteristic feature is the unprecedented acceleration of scientific progress which has taken place in the last 100 to 150 years.

Sir James Jeans, the late British astronomer, has pointed out that there has been greater scientific progress in the last century than in all the previous history of this planet, a duration of approximately four billion years. Ninety percent or more of our knowledge in the domain of mathematics, physics and other sciences was obtained during this recent period. Other less ancient disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, have been either born or almost wholly developed during the last century and a half.

Consider the following analogy, based on a comparison drawn from J. H. Rush in “The Dawn of Life.” If we assume the life span of the planet earth to be one year long, then (1) the first living forms appear in August or September, (2) plants and animals appear about the end of October, (3) the first humans appear on the 30th or 31st of December, (4) the Roman Empire occurs on December 3lst at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 52 seconds, and (5) the last hundred years are represented by one second, the last second of the last hour on December 31st. Yet, in terms of our analogy, we have had more scientific progress in this one second than during the entire preceding year.

Human society has been affected in two basic ways by this tremendous rate of scientific progress: the world has physically become one, and atomic power has given us infinite power of destruction. Overnight the world has become a neighborhood. Through what the historian Arnold Toynbee calls the “annihilation of distance,” brought about by technology, the social offspring of science, the world, with its varying cultures and religions, has been thrown together. It is unquestionably clear that different cultural traditions have interacted at various times in history, but it is difficult to trace in any exact manner the lines of reciprocal influence. Much evidence has vanished forever in the smoke of time. But it is a fact that, for whatever reasons, the world of the year 1800 had become solidified in a number of different, more or less distinct cultural entities, or societies, which existed side by side. The Muslim in the near East tried to live his life very much as if the Christian did not even exist, as did the Hindu in India and the Buddhist in China. The European assumed that his culture was the apogee of all human history and that Christianity was the only true religion.

Now, more than 150 years later, these different cultural entities have been spilled together, in effect transforming the “solidified” world of 1800 into a fluid world in which the lines of cultural interaction are many and profound. During this transition these societies are being forced to seek some common ground of understanding by which they can live cooperatively in one world. The Christian can no longer escape from a world in which the Muslim, the Hindu and the Buddhist are integral and vital parts. The Ecumenical movement is a response to the problem of finding a reconciliation of the diverse elements within Christianity itself.

The second significant result of the progress of science is that mankind has been given the possibility of destroying itself through the release of the awesome [Page 26] force of atomic power. The whole of mankind, for the first time in history, is involved in a common life-and-death challenge. Those who optimistically point out that history has witnessed survival crises before fail to appreciate that these crises threatened only a particular race or nation. Today, it is the whole of mankind which will perish or survive together.

This does not imply that humanity is more evil today than in past centuries. Technology has simply given to man infinitely greater possibilities of expressing whatever evil intentions he may have. Today the egotism and character weaknesses of men have the potential of exercising a profound influence on the whole of mankind, whereas those same imperfections would have exerted only local or indirect influence in previous ages.

The situation is identical for East and West. Indeed, it is the same for all men. Therein lies the essence of the great challenge which our age must resolve to insure that our history shall continue at all: how to create a unified and harmonious society out of a physically united, but mortally endangered world.

There are those who have realized the gravity of the problem posed by this challenge and who have a keen sense of the urgent necessity of a solution. The Christian Century wrote editorially a few years ago: “...the highest duty which the church can render the nation today is to call the people to almighty God in prayer, that He will send a leader or leaders who will guide our thoughts in a wholly new direction and we will pray, night and day, that when that leadership appears, we will have the courage to follow it and not to crucify it.”

In the same vein, Albert Schweitzer wrote in the “Quest of the Historical Jesus”: “What the ultimate goal towards which we are moving will be, what this something is which shall bring new life and new regulative principles to coming centuries, we do not know. We can only dimly divine that it will be the mighty deed of some mighty original genius, whose truth and rightness will be proved by the fact that we, working at our poor half-thing, will oppose him might and main —we who imagine we long for nothing more eagerly than a genius powerful enough to open up with authority a new path for the world, seeing that we cannot succeed in moving it forward along the track which we have so laboriously prepared.”

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH AND THIS AGE

Bahá’ís believe that in Bahá’u’lláh, Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, the leadership which mankind awaits has appeared. Bahá’u’lláh Himself claimed to be a Revelator of God of the same station and nature as Christ. He foretold that great upheavals would afflict mankind. In 1868 He wrote specifically: “A strange and wonderful instrument exists in the earth; but it is concealed from minds and souls. It is an instrument which has the power to change the atmosphere of the whole earth, and its infection causes destruction.” Bahá’u’lláh warned 100 years ago that if this power were discovered before mankind became morally mature, then there would be serious consequences.

Bahá’u’lláh linked the great world upheavals of our time to the evolutionary, creative design of His own Revelation. “The world’s equilibrium,” He wrote, “hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System—the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.”

Bahá’ís believe that the very growth of science which characterizes our age is, [Page 27] in part, a result of the spiritual power released by the coming of Bahá’u’lláh. The crisis which mankind faces was brought about by God, in His justice, to cleanse a wayward and divided humanity and discipline it for the establishment of the spiritual and organic unity of the entire human race. Bahá’u’lláh taught that this unity is an inevitable forward step in human evolution, the God-willed, God- directed goal of human history on this planet.

Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation, contained in more than 100 books and tablets, preserved in original manuscripts, includes, not only abundant teachings on the individual spiritual life prayer, life after death, the soul's relation to God) but also detailed plans for the economic and social well-being of humanity. Bahá’u’lláh regarded His social laws as “divinely ordained” and the only medicine capable of effecting a remedy for the ills of society. “The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind. He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy.”

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH AND CHRIST

How can we view the relationship between the Bahá’í Faith and Christianity?

Bahá’ís believe that Bahá’u’lláh is none other than the “returned” Christ promised in the Old and New Testaments. It is important to realize that this is not a station which over-zealous Bahá’ís confer on Bahá’u’lláh. It is a claim which Bahá’u’lláh Himself made over a period of forty years. He wrote in this regard: “O Pope! Rend the veils asunder. He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with clouds, and the decree hath been fulfilled by God, the Almighty, the Unrestrained...He, verily, hath again come down from Heaven even as He came down from it the first time. Beware that thou dispute not with Him even as the Pharisees disputed with Him (Jesus) without a clear token or proof.

“I am the One Whom the tongue of Isaiah hath extolled, the One with Whose name both the Torah and the Evangel were adorned...”

“...Jesus, the spirit of God...hath once more, in My person, been made manifest unto you.”

“Say! O followers of Jesus, is it my name which holds you from recognition of me? Why do you not reflect? Night and day you have called upon your Lord, the Self-subsistent, and when He came from the heaven of pre-existence in His greatest glory, you neither approached Him nor concerned yourselves with Him ...We have come among you and We have endured the abominations of this earth for the sake of your salvation. Would you flee from Him who has sacrificed His very soul for your life?”

PROGRESSIVE REVELATION

Bahá’u’lláh taught that God’s revelation of His will to mankind is not chaotic or accidental. No, rather, God’s Self-Revelation to man is orderly, designed and progressive. It is accomplished through a succession of Messengers or, as Bahá’u’lláh called them, Manifestations of God.

From age to age, and in different cultures, God has sent a manifestation Who is directly inspired by God Himself. These manifestations of God are unique figures, men who walk the earth and take part in history. They are special beings whose natures are inherently endowed with qualities and capacities which ordinary humans cannot possess. They are capable of a total awareness of God’s will and the ability to live according to that will. We, as men, are capable [Page 28] of acquiring knowledge, of knowing the presence of the spirit of God and of attaining virtues, but all this in a degree infinitely inferior to the manifestations. Our capacities differ in an essential and quantitative way from theirs.

The followers of each of the higher religions have claimed that their particular Founder is somehow not only unique, but also superior to all other religious Founders, thus creating the theological basis for the history-long strife between the followers of different religions. Bahá’u’lláh teaches us that, in reality, the nature of these Founders is the same. The Manifestations, says Bahá’u’lláh, “...abide in the same tabernacle, soar in the same heaven, are seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech and proclaim the same Faith.”

In an analogy illustrating this essential identity of the Manifestations, Bahá’u’lláh likens God, the Creator, to the sun; the Holy Spirit to the rays of the sun; and the manifestations to pure and perfect mirrors turned toward the sun (God). Though the individual mirror of Christ (His human personality) differs from the individual mirror of Bahá’u’lláh, the light reflected in them is the same.

This analogy also explains such seemingly opposed words of Jesus as, “If you knew me, you would know my Father also,” (John 8:19), and “I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me,” (John 8:28).

The Mirror, though perfect and pure, owes its heat and light, not to Itself, but to the Sun which is reflected in it. To gaze at the Mirror of the Manifestation of God is to see the divine Sun reflected in it and is thus to know the qualities of the Sun.

The Divine Light, Bahá’u’lláh teaches, has been reflected in every manifestation. The light is the Logos of Biblical terminology, the eternal Word of God.

Bahá’u’lláh teaches that God, the Sun in our analogy, never descends to become incarnate in the human personality of the manifestation. It is rather His attributes or qualities, the rays of the sun, that are revealed to us through the mediation of the manifestation. “The human temple that has been made the vehicle of so overpowering a Revelation must, if we be faithful to the tenets of our Faith, ever remain entirely distinguished from that ‘innermost Spirit of Spirits’ and ‘Eternal Essence of Essences’—that invisible yet rational God Who, however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in the concrete and limited frame of a mortal being.”

Though each Manifestation has all knowledge, the Revelations of the Manifestations are relative to the age and the culture in which They appear. This relativity is to be attributed to man’s current development and not to a Manifestation’s spiritual endowment or to any implied difference in the capacities of these great Beings.

“These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems have proceeded from one Source, and are rays from one Light,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh of the great Revelations. “That they differ one from another is to be attributed to the varying requirements of the ages in which they were promulgated.”

Bahá’u’lláh teaches that the Revelation of each Manifestation has two aspects, a spiritual and a social. The spiritual law, that of love and unity, is restated by each Manifestation, but with progressive elaboration fitted to man’s evolving ability to comprehend more profound implications of that law. This spiritual law is essentially changeless and eternal, but human comprehension of it changes and expands.

In addition to the spiritual law, each Revelation incorporates certain social laws, which are directed towards specific needs of the particular society to which the Manifestation comes. These are subject to abolition by the next or succeeding [Page 29] Manifestations because they are not beneficial when the specific problems in question no longer exist.

The Jewish dietary and hygienic laws are examples of the social aspect of the Revelation of Moses. These laws were partly scientific and psychologically useful for a nomadic people living in a hot climate, but modern technological advances have rendered many of them unnecessary. On the other hand, most of the ten commandments are examples of Moses’ statement of spiritual law.

Each Manifestation is the impetus for a great culture. The Manifestations are, in fact, the very wellspring of all civilization, material as well as spiritual. The arts and sciences are due to the regenerating influence of the spirit released by Their coming. Every major civilization had its basis in a higher religion. The laws of Moses created a culture which was the apogee of its age. Similiarly, the teachings of Zoroaster were the basis of the glory of ancient Persia. Arabic civilization, based on Muhammad’s Revelation, was the highest mankind had yet experienced. Many sciences, notably algebra, were developed by the Muslims. It was largely due to Islam's influence that Europe finally made its escape from the “dark” ages.

Concerning the influence of Christ, Bahá’u’lláh gives the following eulogy of Jesus: “Know thou that when the Son of Man yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused into all created things. Its evidence, as witnessed in all the peoples of the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded, the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by the most potent rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive and resplendent Spirit.”

Bahá’u’lláh promises that His own coming is the basis for a new world civilization “such as no mortal eye hath ever beheld or human mind conceived.”

THE WEAKENING OF TRADITIONAL RELIGION

Bahá’u’lláh taught that each of the higher religions, though pure at its beginning, has been corrupted through centuries of traditionalism, clericalism, and the interjection of extraneous practices. The present forms and practices of these religions do not represent the teachings as expounded by the Founder. In the case of Christianity, one could cite the Christian Church's fourth century persecution of “heretical” Christians such as the Arians, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, or Calvin’s order to burn Servetus, as examples of practices which were contrary to the explicit teachings of Jesus, but which were carried out in the name of Christ, and by exponents of Christian institutions.

As the traditional religions gradually strayed from their true basis, they lost not only the meanings of the original teachings but the spirit of the early followers as well, much as water escapes from a broken vessel. It is this spirit alone which regenerates the moral and social life of man. Without it the influence of religion on society is weakened. Once weakened, only the potency of a new Revelation from God, a new outpouring of this spirit, can regenerate the life of mankind.

THE RETURN OF CHRIST

An examination of the Holy Scriptures of the higher religions reveals that they all speak in highly symbolic language of the “latter days” of human history. The latter days, or “the time of the end” represent the “Day of Judgment,” “the [Page 30] end of the world,” or the consummation of human history. Furthermore, every one of these religions teaches that at this Day of Judgment there will appear a Great World Redeemer.

The Buddhists await the “Fifth Buddha,” the Hindus the return of Krishna. The shiah Muslims expect the return of the Imam Husayn, and the Zoroastrians the coming of the Shah Bahram. The Orthodox Jews await their Messiah, “The Lord of Hosts.” And well over one-third of the Christian New Testament is centered on this eschatological theme. The early Christians looked confidently for the Second Coming of Christ and the advent of His Kingdom.

Traditionally, the followers of each religion have interpreted the apocalyptic events as being of such a nature as to vindicate their religion above all religions. Since their religion has, in their eyes, absolute truth, the promised return will vindicate the “saved” (themselves) over the “unsaved” (others).

Bahá’u’lláh teaches that He is none other than the great World Redeemer mentioned in each of these Books and that His mission is to unite rather than to divide. There is only one truth and there is, in reality, only one religion, the religion of God, even though this one faith has been called by different names in different cultures. In this age of the unity of mankind, however, it is God's purpose that the peoples of the world unite in a common faith.

Bahá’u’lláh declares: “That which the Lord hath ordained as the sovereign remedy and mightiest instrument for the healing of all the world is the union of all its peoples in one universal Cause, one common Faith. This can in no wise be achieved except through the power of a skilled, an all-powerful and inspired Physician.”

It is clear, then, that the return of Christ does not mean anything like that which literal and materialistic interpretations of the Bible have taken it to mean. It is not the physical return of the same body that Jesus had, and it does not represent the literal end of history, a physical Day of Judgment, etc. It represents, rather, a profound transformation of human society brought about by the coming of a great messenger of God Whose nature is the same as Christ’s, but Whose Revelation is even more complete, owing to the increased need of our age. It is the coming into history of the Logos, and Bahá’u’lláh is its vehicle.

It should be quite evident that the Bahá’í teachings give symbolic interpretations to the apocalyptic passages of the Bible. In fact, according to Bahá’u’lláh, narrow and literalistic interpretations of the symbolic passages of the Holy Writings have frequently been great causes of past religious strife. Each Manifestation of God has been severely persecuted and often because of narrow interpretations given by the priests of a former religion.

Several of the interpretations Bahá’u’lláh which gives to these highly symbolic passages are most impelling.

First, “the end of the age” means the end of a corrupt age. It does not mean the earth is to be destroyed, but rather indicates the beginning of a profound transformation in the lives of men. It is the end of a “prophetic” cycle in man’s development (prophetic in that it looked forward to a completion), the end of childhood and adolescence and the beginning of the cycle of maturity, the manhood of humanity.

The “day of judgment,” states Bahá’u’lláh means a time of decision in the Day of the new Manifestation of God. Those who humbly seek the truth, free from pride and preconceptions, will recognize Him. Others will reject and even persecute Him. His coming brings a “judgment” to all humanity, for each human being is measured implicitly according to his reaction to the new Message, [Page 31] and existing social patterns will stand or fall on their ability to conform to the new standards.

On the issue of the “return of Christ,” the Christian churches split in their views as recently as 1954, when the World Council met in Evanston, Illinois. The European theologians interpreted the “return” as an eschatological, historical event, while the Americans interpreted it as the ”return” of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the individual believer, perhaps ultimately to be on a worldwide scale. There has never been within Christianity a reconciliation of these points of view. American liberals may have failed to see that their understandable repugnance for literalistic and materialistic interpretations does not form a logical basis for rejection of all eschatological content from the “prophetic” Biblical passages. It is quite possible to believe that the Biblical passages concerning the “latter day” theme were written with an inspired anticipation of the shape of future events without believing that these passages constitute any reasonable basis for narrow “predictions” of future events. Certain literalistic and materialistic interpretations to the symbolic and highly abstruse language of those passages have resulted in a major Christian dilemma.

Other points concerning the Bahá’í Faith often arise in discussion with Christians:

(1) There are those who, having heard that the Bahá’í Faith has “something to do with the unity of religion,” say that the Bahá’í Faith is an “eclectic” religion, implying that the Bahá’í Teachings consist of gleanings from other religions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Bahá’í Faith had a Founder, Bahá’u’lláh, Whose life and writings constitute the Bahá’í Revelation. Unschooled in any of the educational institutions of His time, He poured forth a wisdom unmatched by other men. The world unity principles and social laws of Bahá’u’lláh are not to be found in the Qur’án or in any other Holy Book.

(2) Nor does Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching on the oneness of religions constitute syncretism. It is not an attempt to compromise conflicting systems of belief, either by choosing to disregard well-known and irreconcilable differences of creed or practice, or by illogically combining divergent beliefs. Instead, Bahá’u’lláh calls humanity to recognize a basic unity in the great world religions which has always been there. He shows how the essential spiritual and moral teachings of these religions are in agreement with one another. He explains that strife between them can occur only when the followers reject their common moral content or overemphasize institutional practices.

(3) A third superficial comment sometimes made is that the Bahá’í Faith is a sect of Islam. To some it appears as a “universalized Islam” brought up to date, to others a heresy.

The partly-informed might arrive at such views because Bahá’u’lláh appeared in a Muslim country (Persia), and His early followers were mostly from a Muslim background. The same relationship holds between Christianity and Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, Islam and Judaism or Christianity. No one regards these three religions today as “sects” of their respective preceding religions. It would be historically inaccurate to do so. Indeed, Toynbee refers to the Bahá’í Faith as “the most tolerant of the Judaic religions” and “a portent of the future.”

Although there are many recognized sects within Islam, the Muslims do not consider the Bahá’í Faith one of these. On May 10, 1925, a Muslim religious court in Egypt handed down an opinion containing these words: “The Bahá’í Faith is a new religion, entirely independent, with beliefs, principles and laws of its own, [Page 32] which differ from, and are utterly in conflict with, the beliefs, principles and laws of Islam. No Bahá’í, therefore, can be regarded as a Muslim or vice-versa, even as no Buddhist, Brahmin, or Christian can be regarded as a Muslim or vice-versa.”

A CHALLENGE TO THE CHRISTIANS

There are thinking men everywhere who recognize the possibility that a living God might well choose to reveal Himself anew to a broken humanity. And they realize the importance of examining the evidence that He has indeed done so in the Person of Bahá’u’lláh. Clearly, a Faith which holds such promise for mankind, and which has already so forcefully demonstrated its moral power, deserves thoughtful examination.

Much has been left unsaid in this article. The remarkable history of the Bahá’í Faith, so well-documented by observers from the Occident and the Orient, has not been touched upon. That unique historical phenomenon which was the Life of Bahá’u’lláh, us well as the lives of the heroes and martyrs who surrounded Him, has been consciously overlooked. The details of Bahá’í law and the Bahá’í Administrative Order, given by Bahá’u’lláh Himself, have not been considered. Nor have we even sketched the glorious vision of the future of mankind forecast by Bahá’u’lláh.

Let it be said that, though the immediate future of mankind may yet be dark with untold suffering, the God of creation, Who guides human evolution as a loving Father guides His offspring, is acting even today to bring this evolution forward to a glorious consummation. “Soon will the present-day order be rolled up,” states Bahá’u’lláh, “and a new one spread out in its stead.”

The new world civilization, foretold by Bahá’u’lláh and anticipated in Sacred Scriptures, will be the very Kingdom of God on earth. It will take the form of a universal, just and peaceful society from which the present blatant and afflictive evils—social, economic and moral, will be eliminated.

The present-day Bahá’í Community is the embryo of this future world commonwealth. It is truly universal, established now in every corner of the globe and with followers from every conceivable background. It is a modern “Noah’s ark” leaving behind the evils of racial, religious and national prejudice. In India, in the southern United States, in Africa, in Latin America—indeed, in many places all over the world—the Bahá’í Faith has dramatically demonstrated its capacity to unify and heal, to give dynamic and living answers to the deepest social problems of our time.

For the Bahá’ís of this world-wide Community there is the assurance that the world is moving on to its destiny. The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, has, in His own words “lent a fresh impulse and set a new direction” to the vast process for human unity and progress now operating in the world. Whatever may happen in the immediate future, the late Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith wrote, “the flames which His (God’s) Divine Justice has kindled cleanse an unregenerate humanity, and fuse its discordant, its warring elements as no other agency can cleanse or fuse them. It is not only a retributory and destructive fire, but a disciplinary and creative process, whose aim is the salvation, through unification, of the entire planet ...God’s purpose is none other than to usher in, in ways He alone can bring about, and the full significance of which He alone can fathom, the Great, the Golden Age of a long-divided, a long-afflicted humanity.”

God called the world to its fulfillment through Bahá’u’lláh. Through Him [Page 33] God proclaimed: “The time fore-ordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the earth is now come. Verily I say, this is the Day in which mankind can behold the Face, and hear the Voice, of the Promised One. The Call of God hath been raised and the Light of His countenance hath been lifted up upon men.” “He that was hidden from mortal eyes is come! His All-conquering Sovereignty is manifest; His All-encompassing splendor is revealed. Beware lest thou hesitate or halt.”

“The Word which the Son (Jesus) concealed is made manifest. It hath been sent down in the form of the human temple in this day...He, verily, is come unto the nations in His most great majesty. Turn your faces toward Him, O concourse of the righteous.”

---

THE WHIPPING

by Robert Hayden

The old woman across the way

is whipping the boy again

and shouting to the neighborhood

her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,

pleads in dusty zinnias,

while she in spite of crippling fat

pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling

boy till the stick breaks

in her hand. His tears are rainy weather

to woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise

of knees, the writhing struggle

to wrench free, the blows, the fear

worse than blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I

no longer knew or loved ...

Well, it is over now, it is over,

and the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against

a tree, exhausted, purged—

avenged in part for lifelong hidings

she has had to bear.

[Page 34]

A REVIEW

By Glenford E. Mitchell

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, with the assistance of Alex Haley

(New York: Grove Press, Inc., 1965) 455 pages, $7.95.

To Malcolm X, death was a menacing step but always almost falling in. Having but acceptable companion slightly out of been born in a climate of violence and having lived a life of either absorbing violence or perpetrating it, he anticipated death by violence. It came decisively on February 21, 1965, in a burst of pistol shots as he addressed an audience in Harlem. His life story looms larger than the thirty-nine years which contained it; and it is a gift of remarkable good fortune that Alex Haley undertook to bring out this monumental chronology. It is no ordinary book; its place among American sociological classics is assured.

The Malcolm X the public knew was largely an abhorrent figment of mass media fantasy. One often heard or read the incendiary assertion carefully edited out of context, or was confronted with a figure whose humanity had succumbed to distortions of violent hatred for the “white devils.” Malcolm himself excoriated this fantasy: “The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal ...If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” In the turbulent awakening occasioned by his crude demise, one is moved, autobiography in hand, to contemplate the crucial realities of his edifying experiences. These experiences began, as the autobiography properly begins, with the circumstances of his birth.

Malcolm was born to a fair-skinned West Indian woman and a black Baptist preacher, whose discipleship to Marcus Garvey, founder of the militant back-to- Africa movement in the 1920’s, made him a fugitive from Ku Klux Klan justice in Omaha, Nebraska. The Little family settled down as far away as Lansing, Michigan, the locale of Rev. Little’s mysterious death. “Negroes in Lansing always whispered that he was attacked,” the autobiography recalls, “and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half.” Unscrupulously deprived of the major provisions of her husband’s insurance policies, Mrs. Little sought employment to support her eight children. Job prospects were too bleak for a Negro woman, especially one widowed to a Garveyite; and need drove her into the clutches of unconscionable state welfare agents. Then, observed Malcolm, “some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride.” Mrs. Little ended up in a mental institution, and the remainder of the family was scattered about Lansing, partially provided for by welfare and good friends. Shortly afterwards, Malcolm was sent to reform school for placing a tack on his teacher’s chair seat; however, he made it through the eighth grade as a superior student.

Abandoning his hopes for a legal career (his white English teacher advised him to learn carpentry), Malcolm went to his half- sister Ella in Boston, where his life underwent a profound change at 14. Here the sordid attributes of a metropolitan ghetto engulfed his adolescent susceptibilities. Anxious and bright, he was quickly absorbed into the serried echelons of the hustlers, an ambitious class condemned by skin color but woefully redeemed by their animal ability to prey on the depraved and the dejected toward some sort of affluence. Pimps, pickpockets, prostitutes, dope peddlers, numbers racketeers, burglars, and unproclaimed artists—all came within the range of this ugly affluence, and Malcolm was involved with them all. He worked for them, with them, and against them, learning and observing the furtive forms of protocol by which affluent life in the ghetto is facilitated and preserved. Boston prepared him for Harlem, the ultimate hunting ground of hustlers. Never before has the inner core of Harlem’s hustlers been opened so widely to public [Page 35] scrutiny as in the Autobiography of Malcolm X. The firsthand expatiation of the despicable alternatives to which talented but frustrated Negroes are subjected in Harlem is an invaluable increment to our sociological catalog of ghetto life.

Malcolm's hustling landed him in jail for ten years on a burglary charge, and it was in the Norfolk Prison Colony that the future dramatic course of his life was shaped. There he responded to two decisive influences: an introduction by his brother Reginald to the Nation of Islam, commonly called the Black Muslim movement, led by Elijah Muhammad; and the titillating discourses of his scholarly cell mate, “Bimbi.” Of his encounter with Bimbi, Malcolm said: “Bimbi was the first Negro convict I’d known who didn't respond to ‘What’cha know, Daddy?’ Often after we had done our day’s license plate quota, we would sit around, perhaps fifteen of us, and listen to Bimbi. Normally, white prisoners wouldn’t think of listening to Negro prisoners’ opinions on anything, but guards, even, would wander close to hear Bimbi on any subject. He would have a cluster of people riveted, often on odd subjects you never would think of... What fascinated me with him most of all was that he was the first man I had ever seen command total respect...with his words.”

Adulation for Bimbi and promptings from his sister Ella impelled Malcolm to pursue correspondence courses in English and Latin and subsequently to an unrelenting engrossment in history, philosophy and philology. His reference to these pursuits reveals an ironic but exhilarating discovery: “...in every free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors—usually Ella and Reginald—and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to then, I never had been so truly free in my life.”

Malcolm left prison reformed, educated and dedicated to the preachments of Elijah Muhammad. His zeal, organizational versatility, and newly-nurtured oratorical ability were a boon to a movement still

encumbered by obscurity. Malcolm’s meteoric elevation to the Muslim ministry effected equally meteoric expansion and development within the movement—among them: large increases in membership (from 400 to 40,000), a multiplication of mosques in large cities, and the founding by Malcolm himself of the movement’s chief organ, Muhammad Speaks. Minister Malcolm X (the “X” symbolizes rejection of the Christian name and the anonymity of the pre-slavery ancestral name) returned to the ghettos to find converts. His appeal was simple and direct: Black people abandoned to privation and humiliation in a predominantly white racist society were forced to separate themselves from their white oppressors (“devils”), who were incapable of fraternal sentiments toward their black brothers; salvation could be found only within the oppressed themselves and, especially, through adherence to a black man’s religion—in this instance, the Nation of Islam as developed by Elijah Muhammad, “Allah’s Messenger” in Chicago.

Followers of the Nation of Islam uphold a strict moral code and discipline, often antipathetic to potential converts. They are forbidden to eat pork or any unhealthful foods; they do not use tobacco, alcohol, or narcotics; nor are they permitted to gamble, dance, date, or attend movies and sports; they must not steal, lie, engage in domestic quarrels, act discourteously—especially toward women, or be insubordinate to civil authority, except on the grounds of religious obligation. They are instructed to defend themselves physically, but never to initiate violence against others. Their moral laws are policed by an able, dedicated and well-trained group of Muslims known as the Fruit of Islam. Those guilty of infractions can be suspended by Elijah Muhammad, or expelled “from the only group that really cares about you.” Malcolm X alleviated this aversion to Muslim ordinances with cogent assertions: “The white man wants black men to stay immoral, unclean, and ignorant. As long as we stay in these conditions we will keep on begging him and he will control us. We never can win freedom and justice and equality until we are doing something for ourselves.” This made common sense to ambitious and troubled blacks and, coming [Page 36] from the mouth of a former hustler, it made capital sense.

No contemporary Negro leader outside of himself was endowed with Malcolm’s ability to attract the attention of ghetto hustlers; his unique experience among them weighed heavily in his favor. His concern with them arose from a conviction that “actually the most dangerous black man in America is the ghetto hustler. Why do I say this? The hustler, out there in the ghetto jungles, has less respect for the white power structure than any other Negro in America. The ghetto hustler is internally restrained by nothing. He has no religion, no concept of morality, no civic responsibility, no fear—nothing. To survive, he is out there constantly preying upon others, probing for any human weakness like a ferret. The ghetto hustler is forever frustrated, restless, and anxious for some ‘action.’ Whatever he undertakes, he commits himself to it fully, absolutely.” Deserving as it is of condemnation for its flagrant racial distortions of orthodox Islamic teachings, the Nation of Islam has demonstrated an ability to rehabilitate ghetto hustlers and to restore pride to a dejected minority to an extent hardly matched by any other organization. It is an observation that craves the serious attention of sociologists and religionists.

Ironically enough, Malcolm X was felled from prominence in the Nation of Islam by the same bullets which felled the late President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Headless of the ban on comments imposed on all Muslim ministers, Malcolm X, the foremost exponent of the Nation of Islam, expressed his opinion of the assassination in response to a direct question. He viewed the assassination as a case of the “chickens coming home to roost”—an inflammatory summation which seared the front pages of newspapers from coast to coast. The truth is that Malcolm X was not unique in his opinion; he was unique only in having voiced it so openly, so tersely, and so soon after the President’s death. The whispered understanding among Negroes throughout the country during the mournful aftermath was that the white man’s hatred for non-whites had wreaked vengeance on a chief executive bent upon reducing racial injustices. To this day many Negroes think this is the real reason for Kennedy’s assassination, whatever the conclusions of the Warren Commission.

Elijah Muhammad silenced Malcolm X for the next 90 days—so that the Muslims everywhere can be disassociated from the blunder;” but the ostensible purpose had a subterranean design. Malcolm was being isolated from the movement for reasons that only his autobiography makes clear: jealousy among his brother ministers and, particularly, his newly-discovered knowledge of his leader’s covert acts of immorality. Elijah Muhammad admitted to Malcolm the truth of a newspaper report that the “Messenger” had fathered four illegitimate children. And even then, Malcolm’s faith in the man was not shaken, since it was skillfully rationalized that the “Messenger,” exempt as such, could or should fulfill prophecy by imitating the sinful behavior of biblical figures —such as David, Lot, and Moses—because their good deeds outshone the bad. Malcolm’s efforts to prepare his brother ministers to defend their leader against accusatory press reports were deflected by their jealousy of him and the consequent insinuation that Malcolm himself was spreading damaging rumours about the “Messenger.”

Such insinuation belied two qualities of Malcolm X’s affiliation with the Nation of Islam, namely, the ardor of his fidelity to Elijah Muhammad and a deliberate self- effacement in the public performance of his ministry. He attributed all that was worthwhile in his public expressions and accomplishments to “the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.” So careful was he to subdue his own personality to that of his leader that he refused to be featured in Life and Newsweek or to appear on “Meet the Press” when the opportunities were opened to him. The measure of his intellectual and spiritual surrender to the Nation of Islam and its leader is reflected in reminiscences of the occasion on which he addressed the Harvard Law School Forum within sight of his own former burglary- gang hideout: “Awareness came surging up in me—how deeply the religion of Islam had reached down into the mud to lift me up, to save me from being what I inevitably would have been: a dead criminal in a grave, or, if still alive, at flint-hard, bitter, thirty-seven-year-old convict in some penitentiary, or insane asylum. Or, at best, I [Page 37] would have been an old, fading Detroit Red, hustling or stealing enough for food and narcotics, and myself being stalked as prey by cruelly ambitious younger hustlers such as Detroit Red had been...Standing there by that Harvard window, I silently vowed to Allah that I never would forget that any wings I wore had been put on by the religion of Islam. That fact I never have forgotten...not for one second.”

Now that he had been silenced, Malcolm took some time for retrospection which led to the faith-shattering conclusion that “instead of facing what he had done before his followers, as a human weakness or as a fulfillment of prophecy—which I sincerely believe that Muslims would have understood, or at least they would have accepted —Mr. Muhammad had, instead, been willing to hide, to cover up what he had done.” Malcolm came to realize for the first time that “...I had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than he had believed in himself. And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength to start facing the facts, to think for myself.” By then, too, he had learned that he was to be assassinated by brother Muslims.

With the assistance of an orthodox Moslem scholar in New York, Malcolm decided to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, during which he experienced another radical transformation in the pattern of his life. As he himself explained: “The color-blindness of the Muslim world’s religious society and the color-blindness of the Muslim world’s human society: these two influences had each day been making a greater impact, and an increasing pursuasion against my previous way of thinking...I had been blessed by Allah with a new insight into the true religion of Islam, and a better understanding of America’s entire racial dilemma.” After an extended post- pilgrimage tour of Middle Eastern and African countries, Malcolm returned to the United States determined to establish an organization that “would embrace all faiths of black men” and “help to challenge the American black man to gain his human rights, and to cure his mental, spiritual, economic, and political sicknesses.” Muslim Mosque, Inc. was organized in Harlem to “give us a religious base, and the spiritual force necessary to rid our people of the vices that destroy the moral fiber of our community.”

Malcolm’s new attitude toward race was as startling as the new name he had adopted on pilgrimage, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, indicating an extraordinary human flexibility, of which he noted: “I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”

Throughout his years with the Nation of Islam, his harsh truth fell hard on ears accustomed to the sleep-inducing rhetoric of self-deception; it terrified the conscience and raked at the indolence of the privileged. One of his more attractive qualities was his incorruptibility in a society notorious for immoral compromises. He was trusted by black people when other black leaders were held in suspicion. Once in Harlem when he was convinced that his having been invited to a meeting sponsored by civil rights leaders was merely a means to attract a large audience, he said so; and the crowd became angry and riotous. He persuaded the crowd to quiet down and go home. Afterwards, the press described him as the only man in America who could start or stop a race riot. The evil workings of prejudice justified his anger, although his solutions were often unjust and impracticable. His oratory, recognized as unique in this century by the Oxford Union Society during a December 1964 debate, was born out of necessity to censure the dangerous obsessions of racialism and to arouse the dormant sensibilities of a heedless white majority.

By more than one criterion, Malcolm X was an outstanding product of twentieth- century America, part of a rare species produced by that mysterious social alchemy through which qualities of greatness are upraised from environments of debasement. He was cut down at a time when the country was in dire need of a public figure of his uniquely persuasive talents, integrity, and experiences. There is no telling now how long America will have to wait for the appearance of his like; for he had, in fact, just matured to universal manhood. As he put it: “...it is only after the deepest darkness that the greatest light can come; it is only after [Page 38] extreme grief that the greatest joy can come; it is only after slavery and prison that the sweetest appreciation of freedom can come.”

Malcolm’s light, joy, and freedom fused themselves into a quest for the “oneness of mankind” among the variegated American populace. He had come to believe that “...if white Americans could accept the Oneness of God, then perhaps, too, they could accept in reality the Oneness of Man —and cease to measure, and hinder, and harm others in terms of their ‘differences' in color...But as racism leads America up the suicide path, I do believe, from the experiences that I have had with them, that the whites of the younger generation, in the colleges and universities, will see the handwriting on the wall and many of them will turn to the spiritual path of truth—the only way left to America to ward oil the disaster that racism inevitably must lead to.” Viewed through the haze of hatred associated with his name, this expression of belief was paradoxical. But paradox, as we often accept it, is a potent spice of history and Malcolm's life is certainly a matter of American historical, as well as sociological, cognizance. One may attempt to unravel this paradox by following closely and reflectively the titanic personal episodes of his brief life from the abyss of the Negro condition in America to the ascensive pathway of greatness, relating them to the broader social backcloth against which they were spun, noting their immense variety, referring their moral implications to one’s own conscience, and coming to one’s own inevitable conclusions. But the clue to it is more immediately perceived by searching Malcolm’s own testimony contained in these words: “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”

Alex Haley’s remarkable restraint from involving himself in the autobiography dictated to him releases the dynamic spirit of its author, entrusting his memory, rightfully, to the world’s archives. It is an indictment of the prejudiced society in which we now live that the Autobiography of Malcolm X has not appeared on the bestseller list. Fortunately, the lessons to be derived from it are available—thanks to Alex Haley—for those who are unfettered in their pursuit of truth.

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[Page 39]

TOUR FIVE

by Robert Hayden

The road winds down through autumn hills

in blazonry of farewell scarlet

and recessional gold,

past cedar groves, through static villages

of Choctaw, Chickasaw.

We stop a moment in a town

watched over by Confederate sentinels,

buy gas and ask directions of a rawboned man

whose eyes revile us as the enemy.

Shrill gorgon silence breathes behind

his taut civility

and in the ever-tautening air,

dark for us despite its Indian summer glow.

We drive on, following the route

of highwaymen and phantoms,

Of slaves and armies.

Children, wordless and remote,

wave at us from kindling porches.

And now the land is flat for miles,

the landscape lush, metallic, flayed,

its brightness harsh as bloodstained swords.

Robert Hayden is Associate Professor of English at Fisk University, won the Rosenwald Fellowship in creative writing in 1947, the Hopwood Award for Poetry, a Ford Foundation grant for creative writing.

[Page 40]

O SON OF SPIRIT!

The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice;

turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not

that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with

thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know

of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy

neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be.

Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My

loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.

O SON 0F MAN!

I loved thy creation, hence I created thee. Wherefore, do thou

love Me, that I may name thy name and fill thy soul

with the spirit of life.

O SON OF BEING!

Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love

can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.

—FROM THE HIDDEN WORDS OF BAHÁ’U’LLÁH