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W®RE®‘
©E’SEIDEE’3
SEPTEMBER, 1948
Why Can’t We Be Friends? Stanwood Cobb
Fingers of One Hand Robert Culick
Civilization on Trial, Book Review Robert W. McLaughlin
Builders, Poem Stanton A. Coblentz
Meditation and Prayer, Editorial Pearl Easterbrook
Poverty 01' Wealth? Olivia Kelsey
The New Age in Which We Live Ina M. Trimble
Freedom from Self Gene W. Crist
With Our Readers
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WORLD ORDER is published monthly 1n Wilmette, 111., by the
Publishing (Iummittee 01 the- National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahá’ís of the United States. Editor: Garreta Busey. Managing
Editor: Eleanor S. Hutchens. Associate Edirars: Victor de Araujo,
Elsa Blakely‘ Robert Durr. Pearl Easterbrook. Gertrude Henning. Flora Emilv Hones. Mabel H. Paine.
Publication Office
110 LINDEN AVENUE, WILMETTE, ILL.
C. R. Wood, Business Manager Printed in USA.
Editorial Office Mrs. Eleanor S. Hutchens,
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SEPTEMBER, 1948, VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 6
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $2.00 per year, for United States, its territories and possessions; for Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America. Single copies, 200. Foreign subscriptions, $2.25. Make checks and money orders payable to World Order Magazine, 110 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, 111inois. Entered as second class matter April 1, 1940, at the post office at Wilmette, 111., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Content copyrighted 1948 11y
Bahá’í Publishing Committee. Title Registered at U. S. Patent Office.
CHANGE OF ADDRESS SHOULD BE REPORTED ONE MONTH IN ADVANCE
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HE picture this month shows Mt. Illimani in Bolivia. From June through September, when it is winter in the southern hemisphere, this glorious 21,000 foot peak of the Andean Cordillera Real, lifts its snowy majesty into the brilliant and cloudless blue of the Bolivian sky. It dominates the southern end of the deep valley in which lies La Paz (whose name means Peace), and Bolivian Bahá’ís, living in the world’s highest capital at 12,000 feet above sea-level, marvel at it daily when the purity of the sunrise and the transforming glory of the sunset clothe it in unforgettable splendor.
One of the inspiring prayers. revealed by Bahá’u’lláh rises naturally in the mind and in the heart at such times: “I beseech Thee, O my God, by the Tabernacle of Thy majesty upon the leftiest summits, and the Canopy of Thy Revelation on the highest hills, to graciously aid me to do what Thy
will hath desired and Thy purpose hath manifasted.”
The first Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly of Bolivia was founded in La Paz in April, 1945, and now Sucre, traditional capital of the country, also has
its Assembly.
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WORLD 0BDEB
The Bahá’í Magazine
VOLUME XIV
SEPTEMBER, 1948
NUMBER 6
Why Can’t We Be Friends?
STANWOOD COBB
LMOST a hundred years ago
Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed to mankind His message of harmony and unity. He condemned not only war but also all expressions of prejudice and disharmony between human beings on the planet, which, He said, was created to be “one home.” “Verily, the words which have descended from the heaven of the will of God are the source of unity and harmony for the world. Close your eyes to racial differences and welcome all with the light of oneness.” “We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; that all nations should become one in faith and all men he as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race he annulled.”
RELIGIOUS ENMITY The most potent among the prejudices which Bahá’u’lláh
condemned were those arising from the mistaken zeal of religionists who looked upon other sects and other world religions as worthy only of their antagonism or aggressive attack. Religion, He said, should be the cause of unity. Religion is one in reality; and if that which parades under the name of religion causes disunity and even bloodshed, then there is something definitely wrong in such a religion.
Enlightened thought in Christendom has progressed a long way toward those goals of religious friendship and brotherhood which Bahá’u’lláh urged. That mistaken theology has waned which obligated zealous Christians to believe that all other religions were false claimants to truth and their founders either imposters or subject to hallucinations. Such is not the nature of enlightened religious thought today. Not only do the cultured class of Christians rec 183
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ognize truth and beauty in other religions, but even the mission‘ ary approach to religionists of other countries is one of appreciation and fellowship. It seems improbable that warfare and bloodshed would take place again upon this planet through the faulty ardor of religious devotion.
“An essential principle of Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “is that religion must be the cause of unity and love amongst men; that it is the supreme eifulgence of divinity, the stimulus of life, the source of honor, and production of eternal existence. Religion is not intended to arouse enmity and hatred nor to become the source of tyranny and injustice. Should it prove to be the cause of hostility, discord and the alienation of mankind, assuredly the absence of religion would be preferable. Religious teachings are as a course of treatment having for its purpose the cure and healing of mankind. If the only outcome of a course of treatment should be mere diagnosis and fruitless discussion of symptoms, it would be better to abandon and abolish it. In this sense, the absence of religion would be at least some progress toward unity.”
NATIONALISM Next to the evils of religious
intolerance Bahá’u’lláh condemned the prejudices arising from patriotism and devotion to one’s own country. Pride in one’s own country can be heneficent only when merged into love for the whole human race and devotion to its universal welfare. Selfish nationalism gives rise to evils which threaten the very existence of humanity.
Subsequent e v e n t s have proved the prophetic correctness of Bahá’u’lláh’s famous preachment: “Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; rather let him glory in this, that he loves his kind.”
The elimination of selfish and jingoistic nationalism was deemed necessary to the achievement of that great goal to which Bahá’u’lláh dedicated His life and for which He suffered forty years of banishment and imprisonment—the goal of human oneness and of federated world unity.
Legitimate loyalties, however, are not condemned.
“Let there be no misgivings as to the animating purpose of the world-wide Law of Bahá’u’lláh,” says the present world leader of the Bahá’í Faith, Shoghi Effendi. “Far from aiming at the subversion of the existing foundations of society, it seeks to broaden its basis, to
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BE FRIENDS
remold its institutions in a manner consonant with the needs of an ever-changing world. It can conflict with no legitimate alliances, nor can it undermine essential loyalties. Its purpose is neither to stifle the flame of a sane and intelligent patriotism in men’s hearts, nor to abolish the system of national autonomy so essential if the evils of excessive centralization are to be avoided. It does not ignore, nor does it attempt to suppress the diversity of ethical origins, of climate, of history, of language and tradition, of thought and habit, that differentiate the peoples and nations of the world. It calls for a wider loyalty, for a larger as piration than any that has yet animated the human race.”
RACIALISM
Thirdly, Bahá’u’lláh c o n demned all racial and color prejudice. There is only one race in reality upon this planet — the human race. “All are the leaves of one tree.” Such diversities as appear should lend charm rather than aversion to human association, just as diversity of colors in a flower garden add to its attractiveness. One cannot ignore the fact of these diversities. But they should not be the cause of unfriendliness.
As regards these racial prejudices it must be realized that
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we are dealing with very deepseated emotions springing from biological sources. To primitive man the stranger is always an enemy, something to be feared and distrusted. These antagonistic fears and prejudgments so innate in man’s psychology are very difficult to eliminate. Admirable as are all cultural attempts to eliminate intolerance, it seems to the writer that only a spiritual attack upon his human weakness can be successful.
This is what Bahá’u’lláh intended when He proclaimed the need of a new consciousness in the human race, a consciousness of the oneness of mankind. Such a unifying emotion as this must spring from spiritual sources; from an awareness of the essential oneness of man as cast in the image of God. And to fortify such a unifying consciousness there must be drawn into active expression that force of divine love which all the Prophets have exemplified and have urged their followers to practice one toward another. “Love one another, as I have loved you,” was the main thesis of John’s reporting of his Master’s teaching -“As a mother loves its child and protects it at the risk of her life, so turn With boundless love to all mankind,” said Buddha. This is where the attack on pre
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judice must originate — in the heart, not in the brain. Tolerance, worthy expression of liberalism and humanism as it is, must become something more positive and more dynamic if the unity of the human race is what is envisioned.
We cannot merely eliminate prejudice, leaving nothing in its place. Something else must be substituted, or else new prejudices will arise. The emotionally egocentric and intellectually analytical factors of human nature tend always to discriminations which lead to unkind and unsympathetic judgments. Thus, even if all the prejudices in the world were by some miracle wiped out of existence today, unless the hearts of men were changed new prejudices would arise tomorrow.
There is only one thing that can annihilate existing prejudices and prevent new ones from forming—a loving, charitable heart that instinctively goes out in kindly thought and deed to others. Such a heart exists only in those who are spiritually attuned to the great Heart of Love.
The one factor missing in current secular attempts to eliminate prejudice and intolerance from the world—~universa1 love
—was expounded a generation ago by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in one of
his Paris addresses—~“We must find a way of spreading Love among the sons of Humanity.
. . . The Perfect Love needs an unselfish instrument, absolutely freed from fetters of every kind. The love of family is limited. . . . Patriotic Love is finite. . . . The Love of Race is limited; there is some union here, but that is insufficient. Love must be free from boundaries. . . . The love of Community of Interest in service is likewise fluctuating. . . . All these ties of Love are imperfect. It is clear that limited material ties are insufficient to adequately express the Universal Love. . . . The great unselfish Love for Humanity is bounded by none of these imperfect, semi-selfish bonds; this is the one perfect Love, possible to all mankind, and can only be achieved by the Power of the Divine Spirit. No worldly power can accomplish the Universal Love. . . . Shed the Light of a boundless love on every human being whom you meet, whether of your country, your race, your political party, or of any other nation, color or shade of political opinion. Heaven will support you while you work in this ingathering of the scattered peoples of the world beneath the shadow of the Almighty Tent of Unity. You will be the servants
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of God, who are dwelling near to Him, His divine helpers in the service, ministering to all Humanity. All Humanity! Every human being! Never forget this!”
Most notably is the problem of prejudice and intolerance felt by the submerged minorities of the world such as the Jews, the Negroes, the American Indians. What sort of a spiritual rebirth of humanity can do away with these racial barriers which are the cause of such deepseated inequities, exploitations and social cruelties! The Bahá’í Faith works ardently for the goal of universal brotherhood a n d Bahá’í’s apply the principles of unity in every aspect of their religious practice. In this Bahá’í field will be found today, in various countries of the world, a complete and profound expression of unity and harmony between all peoples—regardless of race, creed or color. The Bahá’í’s express this oneness in all their activities—social and educational as well as religious. And they confidently look forward to a day when the human race will in reality be one; when all the enmities, hostilities, and injus7 tice of prejudice and intolerance will have disappeared completely under the power of a spiritual
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love which brings a real and abiding unity.
ORIENT AND OCCIDENT
One of the most important and epoch-making contributions of the Bahá’í Faith to world unity is its ability to unite the Orient and Occident in a warm fellowship of spiritual faith and practical living. All through history an apparently unsurmountable gulf has separated the peoples and civilizations of the Orient from those of the Occident. A1exander caused only a temporary bridging of these cultures. The Caesars, conquering all the Occident, were unable to penetrate Asia beyond the nearer borders of Persia.
Even Christianity, which was propagandized in India and China in the same centuries in which it was being successfully established in Germany and England, never obtained a vital foothold in the Asiatic countries. It conquered everywhere westward of its birthplace, but made no conquests eastward. Thus it contributed nothing toward coalescence of the Orient and Occident.
Buddhism, strangely enough, had a converse experience. It penetrated successfully everywhere eastward of its birthplace, but left only vague philosophical
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influences in the culture of the western world.
Islam——which has demonstrated throughout its history a remarkable power of unifying peoples of most diverse races and bringing them into an active brotherhood —— seemed destined also to operate in certain particular areas and among certain races; and while it holds the key to unity even today among the peoples of these same widely scattered and diverse races, it has never evidenced much ability to win Occidentals to its fold.
A NEW WORLD FAITH
It is perhaps the destined time for a new world faith to arise, capable of winning the allegiance both of Orientals and of Occidentals. This remarkable ability the Bahá’í Faith has demonstrated, from its inception. It is widespread in India, Persia, Egypt, and other countries of the Orient; and is also strongly established in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the twentyone countries of Latin America; and is making headway in many European countries.
Certain it is that the Bahá’í Faith can bring into a warm and loving brotherhood the peoples of the Orient and the Occident; can wipe out the distrust which western imperialism has created among Asiatics; can lay the
foundations for reciprocal and friendly relations between these two diverse cultures of the world.
Occidentals, through the spiritual potency of the Bahá’í teachings, develop a sense of spiritual values which up to date has more characterized the Orient than it has the Occident. And the Oriental Bahá’í, mystical by birth, becomes more progressive under the immensely practical teach ings and principles of the New World Order as laid down by Bahá’u’lláh. The Oriental Bahá’í wants education for his children; he wants developments in the fields of public health, technology and industry; he looks forward to the. universal goal of a world civilization in which the best values of the Orient and Occident will be expressed.
Thus the brotherhood and fellowship between Oriental and Occidental Bahá’í’s has much more than a sentimental value. It has already begun to express itself in the practical ways abovementioned, and will continue to do so very significantly in the coming generation, as the Bahá’í Faith wins Occidentals in larger numbers to its spiritual fold and invigorates in still greater proportion the passivity of the Orient.
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Fingers of One Hand
ROBERT GULICK
S IT possible to organize re ligion without killing it?
The answer depends on how religion is defined. If we think of faith in terms of a state of trance or remoteness from the world, perhaps organization is detrimental. As soon as the conception is broadened to embrace human service, however, the element of teamwork enters the picture.
The Bahá’í Faith recognizes both the spiritual or personal and the material or social aspects of religious experience. The spiritual side of faith is changeless, eternal. The world’s great living religions have a1Ways subscribed to the same fundamental tenets—the law of love, the golden rule, belief in God and His Messengers. This does not mean that religion is merely a process of repetition for it is necessary to reaffirm the fundamental verities from age to age. In large measure, these ideas have entered into our racial heritage, but it is one thing to agree with a principle and quite another to translate it in terms of personal conduct. A single call by a physician does not suffice for all time, no matter whether the healer be human
or divine. The other side of religion concerns those outward matters necessary for the advancement of civilization on this planet. It must change in every era in accordance with the requirements of human society. It is clear that the great issues of our day are social in nature. War and poverty cannot be abolished by a little personal piety here and there. We need also the ability to work together harmoniously. A major task in which Bahá’ís all over the world are engaged is the clearing away of the debris of national, religious, and racial prejudice. In order to coordinate our efforts to hasten the coming of the Kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven,” it is essential to have an organization for the pooling of talents and resources. But the Bahá’í Administration has an even greater significance. Bahá’u’lláh commanded His followers to be “as the fingers of one hand” and He has, for the first time in the world’s religious history, established institutions for consultation and collective action in the form of local, national, and (in the future) international houses of justice. These are the necessary instruments for
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realizing human unity. Constituting as they do a “pattern for future society,” they merit close examination.
Administration of the affairs of the Faith is a matter of primary concern to the rank and file believers, not merely to their elected representatives. Every Bahá’í is a potential member of a local and of a national Assembly and it is his duty to take an active part in the election of the Assembly, loyally to abide by its decision, and to enforce its verdict. It is a privilege coupled with responsibility.
The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith is the heart and spiritual powerhouse of the Administrative Order. The secret of the remarkable victories in extending the Faith to more than four-score countries, in building the House of Worship by Lake Michigan, and in overcoming persecution, lay in relating desires and efforts to his wishes. He is the general of the armies of peace and light, the “Sign of God” among men. Bahá’ís acknowledge their inestimable privilege in having the benefit of his constant guidance and they feel impelled to reflect and ponder on every hint that he gives for the promotion of the vital interests of the Cause. They strive to obey his counsel instantly, precisely, and fully.
Work on committees and other administrative activities is not a substitute for the Faith but is merely the means to an end, the direct instrument for the propagation of the Faith. According to the revered Guardian, the administrative organism has a two-fold function: “It should both provide the impulse whereby the dynamic forces latent in the Faith can unfold, crystallize, and shape the lives and conduct of men, and serve as a medium for the interchange of thought and the co-ordination of activities among the divers elements that constitute the Bahá’í community.”
Regular community gatherings known as feasts begin with a period of prayer and the reading of selections from Bahá’í scriptures, continue with discussion of community problems, and close with refreshments and personal visiting. The feasts provide opportunities for even the humblest members of the group to put forward their suggestions in all frankness and to perfect their capacity for self-expression. The Guardian has stated that “the main purpose of the Nineteen Day Feasts is to enable individual believers to offer any suggestion to the local Assembly which in its turn will pass it to
the N. S. A. (National Spiritual
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Assembly).” Such observations and recommendations are offered in a kindly hut candid spirit. It is laudable that the members should praise one another, but personal considerations cannot be allowed to cramp or misdirect the free flow of consultation. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted that “the shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.”
The obligation of voting in Bahá’í elections carries with it the duty to investigate cautiously and personally the qualifications of those available for office. In Bahá’í elections, there are no nominations, no electioneering, no trotting out of dark horses. Each voter must, therefore, dis-‘ pense with the opinions of others and determine through direct, personal experience which individuals are best fitted to perform the duties of Assembly members and convention delegates. Voting is looked upon not as an oppor tunity for conferring favors or \
bestowing honors but simply as the means for choosing workers to perform definite tasks. The Guardian has indicated that the National Assembly members should be those who can best combine the “necessary qualities of unquestioned loyalty, of selfless devotion, of a well-trained mind, of recognized ability and
mature experience.” Such all-toorare attributes are desirable in all administrators. In order to develop knowledge and capacity among the Bahá’ís, courses in a wide range of subjects are oflered children, youth, and adults in regular Bahá’í schools from Maine to California and in ‘special institutes and conferences. Perhaps the central feature of a Bahá’í election is meditation as contrasted with the mud-slinging of partisan politics.
The Bahá’í Faith centralizes authority in the Houses of Justice, at present called Assemblies, but it is not bureaucratic power. These Assemblies cope with an amazing array of problems in individual adjustment, financial difficulties, marital relationships, public teaching, international re‘ lief, and virtually everything else requiring more than personal attention. There are towns in Persia where even the non-Bahá’ís request these Assemblies to solve their problems. This administrative machinery stimulates and coordinates the voluntary, spontaneous endeavors of free individuals.
The Assembly is required to ascertain the views and wishes of the community which it serves and it may be called upon to jutsify its decisions. The danger of arbitrary conduct and of leth
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argy that follows from too long a tenure of office is reduced by holding elections every year. Rotation in office is not a fetish and changes are not made for the sake of novelty but new blood is always welcome on an Assembly when it strengthens the body.
The Guardian has emphasized that “Administrative efficiency and order should always be accompanied by an equal degree of love, of devotion and spiritual development.” Administration is part and parcel of the Faith, not something apart. The chosen officials are not ornaments of the Cause but co-workers who have been entrusted with the performance of specified duties, “instruments for a more efficient and dignified presentation of the Cause of God.” In elaborating on the fundamentals of procedure, the Guardian very significantly declares: “Let us also hear in mind that the keynote of the Cause of God is not dictatorial authority but humble fellowship, not arbitrary power, but the spirit of frank and loving consultation. Nothing short of the spirit of a true Bahá’í can hope to reconcile the principles of mercy and justice, of freedom and submission, of the sanctity of the right of the individual and of self-surrender, of vigilance, discretion and prudence on the one hand, and fel WORLD ORDER
lowship, candor, and courage on the other.”
Particular attention is given the place of youth in the administrative framework. A person may become a Bahá’í at the age of fifteen and be appointed to any committee, local or national, on the same basis as an adult. Participation in elections is limited, at least for the present, to those over twenty-one. In the Advent of Divine Justice, written in 1938, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian, urged youth to participate in both the teaching and administrative spheres of Bahá’í activity and it was in response to the summons that John Eichenauer, then seventeen, went as a pioneer to Latin America. Among my most thrilling experiences in Persia were the meetings with the children in their classes in char -acter-building and with those
young people who are the spiritual heirs of such youth as Badi’ who gave his life that the Faith might live.
A very wholesome characteristic of the Faith is the stress put upon action. It is not enough to say, “I believe.” If one truly believes, his deeds must exceed his words. The administrative mechanism is in itself powerless to lead to an earthly paradise, even though it be an indispensable vehicle for reaching that goal.
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Far too often reformers want to change society but are unwilling and unable to change themselves. The Bahá’ís have no alibi. Their task is definite. The going may be rough, but there is no other way—and there never was. This is the rebirth mentioned by Christ. Shoghi Effendi puts it in these words: “Not until we live ourselves the life of a true Bahá’í can we hope to demonstrate the creative and transforming potency of the Faith we profess. Nothing but the abundance of our actions, nothing but the pufity of our lives and the integrity of our characters, can in the last resort establish our claim that the Bahá’í spirit is in this day the sole agency that can translate a long-cherished ideal into an enduring achievement.”
The challenging task of this day is to bring together the peoples of the world in a peaceful, forward-looking union. The Bahá’í Administrative Order is a “freedom train” of the spirit. It is a tough job to persuade people
to climb on board. As in the spiritual, “there’s room for many a mo’.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s technique of teaching as described by Shoghi Effendi, merits the closest scrutiny: “Wise and tactful in
His approach, wakeful and at- ,
tentive in his early intercourse, broad and liberal in all his public utterances, cautious and gradual in the unfolding of the essen. tial verities of the Cause, passionate in His appeal yet sober in_ argument, confident in tone, unswerving in conviction, dignified in His manners—such were the distinguishing features of our Beloved’s noble presentation of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh.”
To sum up, organization may injure the purely spiritual side of religion and it is for this reason that rituals, ceremonials, and pageantry in general have no place in the Bahá’í Faith. But an administrative set-up is necessary for handling both local and global problems. The Bahá’í Faith meets the needs of man and society.
THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
Man must cut himself free from all prejudice and from the result of his OWn imagination, so that he may be able to search for Truth unhindered. Truth is one in all religions, and by means of it the unity of the world can
be realized. All the peoples have a fundamental belief in common. Being one, Truth cannot be divided, and the differences that appear to exist among the nations only result from their attachment to prejudice. If only men would search
out Truth, they would find themselves united.
—‘ABDU’L-BAHA
Civilization on Trial
Book Review ROBERT W. MC LAUGHLIN
COUNTERPART to the broad and intensive interest that met Mr. Toynbee’s A Study of History has been a desire to meet the author on a more personal and perhaps contemporary plane. Civilization on Trial* makes this possible. It consists of thirteen essays, mostly based on lectures given in the United States, Canada, and England. The essays range from statements of personal philosophy to revealing interpretations of events in Greece, China, or Islam, always with an eye to analogies to be drawn with events in our current civilizations, and with a forward look to the world embracing civilization to come. To Mr. Toynbee the outstanding event in contemporary history is that “the human race has been brought under one roof”.
Mr. Toynbee includes some hundreds of years in “contemporary” history. One of the most valuable concepts to be gained from reading him is a sense of the tremendous sweep of time in the universe. All civilizations of which We have record are compressed into a mere 6000
- By Arnold J. Toynbee, New York, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1948. $3.50.
years, whereas man has existed on this planet for perhaps 600, 000 years and life for some 800,000,000 years, while the earth is of the nature of 2,000,000,000 years old. Another concept to be gained is that we must study the history of civilizations on a world wide basis, and without cultural prejudice, if we are to be mentally prepared for the problems of modern history. These concepts were admirably presented in Mr. Toynbee’s Bicentennial Lecture at Princeton, here reprinted under the title which gives the volume its name.
Civilization on Trial has been written as an interlude in A Study of History. It is desirable that we should read Civilization as a supplement to A Study. The first five of the thirteen sections of A Study have been published in six volumes totalling something over 3200 pages. These volumes contain the analysis of the geneses, growths, breakdowns, and disintegrations of civilizations. Civilizations on Trial furnishes some of the background for the writing of A Study of History. The Study is of such great import that one
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wants to know all about how it came to be. The first essay, “My View of History,” describes the value of a thorough knowledge of the Graeco-Roman World, not only because that stands in a relationship of “apparentation and affiliation” with Western Christendom, but because we have there on a scale upon which we can more easily focus, the problems of modern times. But Mr. Toynbee did not stop there and he cast aside the blinders that are too often handed out with copies of Thucydides. The facts that Rome and China were contemporaries, quite oblivious of each other, that the Oxus-Jaxartes Basin cradled civilizations, as well as the Tigris or the Nile, were deeply enough impressed on Mr. Toynbee to give him a world wide breadth of understanding, quite lacking, for instance, in Gibbon, or in almost any other eminent historian of modern times. Not until the colorful diversity of past civilizations is mentally absorbed, is one historically ready for the concept of the Oneness of Man kind.
Granted that a score of civilizations have come into being, the author asked himself, “What was it that, after so long a pause,‘ had so recently set in such vigorous motion once again, towards
some new and still unknown social and spiritual destination, those few societies that had embarked upon the enterprise called civilization?” He read Spengler, as did many in the 1920’s, and whereas most of us were put off by Spengler’s arbitrary formula of rise and fall of civilizations in conformity with a fixed mechanistic time table, he grasped Spengler’s analysis of the parallel elements in civilizations and set out to find what it was that really made them happen.
Mr. Toynbee, in A Study of History disabuses our minds of what does not produce a civilization. We will be interested in his conclusion that race is not a controlling factor, and that there is no innately superior race, such as the Nordic race, which is responsible for the creation of cvilizations, just as there is no special climatic environment that brings civilization forth. It is in the process of “challenge and response” that he finds a clue. One wonders, perhaps, whether the mere fact that challenges, adversities, and stimuli are always present at the geneses and growths of civilizations necessarily means that they should be accepted as of the nature of the basic cause. The blows of a blacksmith’s hammer
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certainly shape the forging of a tool and are necessary to its- forgo ing, but there is more to the concept and production of the tool‘ than that. At some point there was a concept that such a tool should exist, that the time was right for making it, and the challenge of the hammer blows and response of the iron became an inevitable part, “but only a part, of the process. Mr.’ Toynbee concludes his first essay in “Civilization on Trial” with this: “While civilizations rise and fall and, in falling, give rise to others, ‘some purposeful enterprise, higher than theirs, may all the time be making headway, and, in a divine plan, the learning that comes through the suffering caused by the failures of civilizations may he the soverign means of progress. Abraham was an émigré from a civilization in extremis; the Prophets were children of another civilization in disintegration; Christianity was born of the sufferings of a disintegrating Graeco - Roman world. Will some comparable spiritual enlightenment be kindled in the ‘displaced persons’ who are counterparts, in our world, of those Jewish exiles to whom so much was revealed in their painful exile by the waters of Babylon? The answer to this question, whatever the answer
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may be, is‘ of greater moment than the still inscrutable destiny of our World-encompassing Western civilization.”
Andragain, in the second essay,’ he says: (“Our Western ‘know how’has unified the whole world in the literal sense of the whole habitable and traversable surface of the globe; and it has inflamed the institutions of War and Class, which are the two congenital diseases of civilization, into utterly fatal maladies. This trio of unintentional achieve ments presents us with a challenge that is formidable indeed.” The challenge is undoubtedly there. What of the response?
Toynhee, the historian, has set up the ttventy odd civilizations that have appeared within the six thousand years of recorded time, and by scientifically observing and describing the cycle of each, has found what appear to be laws that condition not only the rise and growth and disintegration, but the interrelationship of the civilizations. He has himself attempted a partial summary of the deductions of thousands of pages of A Study of H istory. F irst he defines what he meant by a civilization: “. each of these 'civilizations is, while in action, a distinctive attempt at a single, great human enterprise, or, when it is seen in
CIVILIZATION
retrospect, after' action is over, it is a distinctive instance of a single, great common human experience . . . mankind trying to rise above mere humanity —above primitive humanity, that is—towards some higher kind of spiritual life . . . Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. No known civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet.” We are reminded of‘the words of the Prisoner at Acre: “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization . . . to act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of men . . . that the leaders of men in every land may fully recognize the purpose for which the Eternal Truth hath been revealed, and the reason for which they themselves have been created.”
In “My View of History”, Mr. Toynbee summarizes: “Briefly stated, the regular pattern of social disintegration is a schism ,of the disintegrating society into a recalcitrant proletariat and a less and less effective dominant minority. In the last rally but one, the dominant minority succeeds in temporarily arresting the society’s lethal self-laceration by imposing on it the peace of a universal state. Within the framework of the dominant
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minority’s universal state the proletariat creates a universal church, and after the next rout, in which the disintegrating civilization finally dissolves,'the universal church may live on to become the chrysalis from which a new civilization eventually emerges.” What of this chrysalis? Where may we look? There is little question about the existence of wide schism in a disintegrating society today. In our study under Mr. Toynbee’s guidance of more than twenty civilizations, which are “philosophically contemporary” and therefore analogous to an already tottering Western Christendom, we have been empirically shown from what direction, at least, comes our help.
Surely not from the idolatrous worship, Mr. Toynbee has warned, of such gods as nationalism and racialism, nor from undue adoration of our technological adeptness. The essay entitled “Islam, the West, and the Future” carries one up to what the author, as a historian, chooses to call the Pillars of Hercules beyond which lies the ocean of future time. The essay is extraordinary and wonderful; extraordinary because so free of that unconscious bias and patronage that can characterize Western scholarship when its learning is
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focused away from the Western homeland; wonderful, because empirically and by historical deduction, based on the analysis of civilizations contained in A Study of History, one is led to the source of the “Chrysalis” to which we must look for the salvation of our civilization, as well as Civilization with a capitaI “C9,. V
In the action and reaction of Islam and Western Society upon one another, first Christendom and then Islam was at bay; both survived. Economically and culturally, “conquered Islam took her savage conquerors captive and introduced the arts of civilization into the rustic life of Latin Christendom”. The encounter today between the West and Islam is historically analagous to that between Rome and Israel.
As the impact of the West is felt by Islam, there have arisen, says Mr. Toynbee, the Moslem equivalents of Judaean Zealots and Herodians. The vast majority of the Islamic peoples are “being enrolled in that vast, cosmopolitan, ubiquitous proletariat which is one of the most portentous by-products of the ‘Westernization’ of the world.” The stage has been set again in Palestine for the asking of the question: ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ From that under world of the Oriental proletariat, of which Nazareth was one type and symbol, Mr. Toynbee reminds us, “there came forth some of the mightiest creations hitherto achieved by the spirit of man; a cluster of higher religions. Their sound has gone forth into all the lands, and it is still echoing in our ears. Their names are names of power: Christianity and Mithraism and Manichaeism.”
These precedents portend, the author says, that Islam may well influence the future in ways that pass understanding.
“Indeed, under the impact of the West, the great deeps of Islam are already stirring”, we continue to quote from Mr. Toynbee, “and even in these early days we can discern certain spiritual movements which might conceivably become the embryos of new higher religions. The Bahá’í and Ahmadi* movements, which from Acre and Lahore have begun to send out their missionaries to Europe and America, will occur to the contemporary Western observer’s mind; but at this point of prognostication we have reached our Pillars of Hercules, where the prudent investigator stays his course and refrains from attempting to sail out into an
- For a description of the Ahmadi movement, see Toynbee, A Study of History,
Unabridged Edition, Vol. IV, p. 175
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ocean of future time in which he can take no more than the most general bearings.”
We can well remind ourselves of the telescoping of the time schedule of the universe, which Mr. Toynbee so clearly has laid before us. There may not be quite time for watching, from the shelter of the Pillars of Hercules, ‘rivals’ for the necessary function of a universal religion out of which a world civilization will evolve. A yacht race with an atomic bomb poised over the course and supersonic speed at the command of contestants is not a pleasant place for spectators. Surely the finish will be far beyond the supposed limits of an ancient world, and though the historian, as an historian, stops where history stops, those who would be there at the finish had best board the ship and come along. History has shown us that at these times of crisis God does give man his bearings, and out of such superficially unlikely places as Nazareth and Acre.
In reading both C ivilization on Trial and A Study of History, readers of this magazine will find a deep kinship with the author in his desire really to unierstand what has happened so far on this planet and what is apt to happen. If their experience is like that of the writer of this review, their admiration of the author will deepen into respect and affection. The volumes are full of tongue twisters, but there is never a touch of pedantry. And you will have a great deal of fun, if you take it easily, because Mr. Toynbee tells stories wonderfully well. He is, as an individual, so completely on the side of the angels, and at the same time, as an historian, he relentlessly pursues the empirical method. But above all, we are grateful that at this particular juncture in the affairs of the world a great writer of history has appeared with a concept of the universal character of the cycle which We have entered.
BUILDERS STANTON A. COBLENTZ He who erects in tinsel, courts acclaim, For round his door all casual flashes shine. But he whose stones are truth is shunned by fame; Unseen within, the timeless and divine.
Meditation and Prayer
-———'é)a[iloria/
“ AY, God suffices all things above all things, and noth ing in the heavens or in the earth
but God suffices.
“Verily, He is in Himself the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent.”
Bahá’u’lláh says, “There is a sign from God in every phenomenon. The sign of the intellect is contemplation, the sign of contemplation is silence.” The world is so very much with us that some one has suggested we are again passing through an ice age. Our first ice age was a physical one destroying all vegetable and animal life. Our modern ice age is one of the spirit. The destruction it causes reaches into every field of human activity.
Are not present conditions flashing the red light? Are not present conditions calling loudly “stop”? Can thinking man not hear that call, “Stop, man! 0, stop! else you plunge deeper into the mire of self-destruction?”
Perchance the call has reached the hearts of a great many, who
now are asking “What then?” To‘
those we suggest they “seek the sign of God in every phenomenon.” How shall we discover that sign? Through prayer, which
brings an increasing consciousness of the ever present signs of God.
Is there anyone in the whole world who would not pay for the precious privilege of making the right decision today, tomorrow, or next month? What a spiritually endOWed humanity Bahá’u’lláh anticipates as He describes life upon this planet in the future. How and when shall this humanity appear? There are those who believe man will cease to be a mere animal at that moment in which he purposefully starts developing the faculty of meditation. Shall we begin today?
It matters not where we find ourselves working out our destiny; all that is required of us is to begin. Upon what shall we meditate? Upon the Words of God. Where shall we find them? In the revealed Word of His Manifestation. These Words are the food of man’s soul. What happens to the physical body when we cease feeding it? It begins to deteriorate. May it not be that we are starving spiriually?
The heart is the seat of God’s Love. Are hearts failing and bod ies dying because they do not
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have the strength and health of the Love of God to sustain them?
“Say, Cod suffices all things above all things,” “All things above all things.”
If Hedoes, let’s cease contemplating~ anything but Him. Let us refuse to waste precious human thought energy on anything but God.
“And nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God sufiices.” If these words of God’s Manifestation be true, the challenge demands that we seek and find the way to the One and Only Power that shall sufiice for us in all eternity.
“Verily, He is in Himself the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent.”
“The Knower, the Sustainer,” what a privilege! We may turn unto the Knower, the One who will sustain us through the present grade of life’s school in which we are working, and through all grades we shall ever attain.
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“The Omnipotent,” the All-Powerful. He, the All-Powerful awaits our turning to Him.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “Through the faculty of meditation man attains to eternal life, through it he receives the breath of the Holy Spirit. Through this faculty man enters into the very Kingdom of God.”
Prayer! the key that opens so many doors. But, praying a prayer and reading a prayer are as distinctly different as the difference in the experience of two men, one of whom gazes upon a table groaning with delicious food, while the other sits down and partakes of that food. God speed the day when all humanity ‘ shall pray the prayers brought to this tottering world by God’s Manifestation, Bahá’u’lláh, with a faith so steadfast that no storms can move, that nothing can disturb, and that shall endure to the end. “As ye have faith so
shall your powers and blessings he.”
DETACHMENT
Our greatest efforts must be directed towards detachment from the things of the world; we must strive to become more spiritual, more luminous, to follow the counsel of the Divine Teachings, to serve the cause of Unity and true equality, to he merciful, to reflect the Love of the Highest on all men, so that the light of the spirit shall be apparent in all our deeds, to the end that all humanity shall be united, the stormy sea thereof calmed, and all rough waves disappear from oil the surface of life’s ocean henceforth unrufl’led and peaceful. Then will the New Jerusalem be seen by mankind, who will enter through its gates and receive Divine Bounty.
—‘ABDU’L—BAHA
Poverty or Wealth?
OLIVIA KELSEY
ONE day a long time ago
someone picked up a stone. It was different from other stones and it chanced to be a great asset in combating the enemy and in hunting. Another time a spark set aflame by chance some brush and dried leaves, and fire came to take its place as something of rare value to man. It was the first sign of a new relationship between man and the outer changing world. In time he grew to adore the things which he had found were useful to him. In his consciousness there had been established the sense of closeness to them and dependence upon them.
Ages passed. With the aid of a mysterious power man was rising above nature; he was changing and, in turn, changing the world about him. This change always synchronized with an immediate need. Thus as civilizations rose and fell, material values changed with the exigencies of the times: cattle, sheep, grain, skins, slaves, copper, silver, gold, tobacco and sugar cane, and paper money have been standards of wealth. To an Arab in the desert of Arabia riches would be a well, some goat’s milk and a handful of dates; to an Eski mo, in the Arctic region, warm blood and flesh of seal, dogs and a sledge. The standard of material wealth could never be permanent because of its essential nature, derived from the ephemeral world.
Out of the jungle man came, then, bringing with him an agelong sense of insecurity. It was natural that he should look for respite from the struggle for existence, and, believing that he had found it in those perishing things, cling to them. But the law of the jungle is hunter and hunted—the spoils to the victor. So permanent security he never found in that world and he came to know that it was never intended in the scheme of things that he should find peace or security in the world of decay and corruption. His concept of wealth, however, had undergone changes. To a slave in Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, riches would have been freedom; to the oppressed wealth meant kindness; to the ignorant it meant knowledge; to the grasping and greedy wealth meant power, political, social, financial. In reality it was freedom man most desired:—freedom from death, destruction, pain, fear.
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POVERTY OR WEALTH
Religion has always opened to man a new sphere. Even in his most primitive state he Was guided. As religion unfolded to him spiritual light it impressed the reality of a sphere of stability and permanence attainable through powers and faculties within man ranking above the senses and intellect. Channels of Grace have brought this Sphere near to man and united him consciously with it. It is the World of Origin of all things visible and invisible, awaiting man’s recognition. These Divine Beings Who have blazed the spiritual path for man, come in periods of time known as cycles and found Dispensations of God. We call them Messiah, Lord, Educator, Teacher, Messenger of God, Prophet. They alone have opened the door of life more abundant, of wisdom and knowledge, of compassion and love, of infallible guidance and protection, of material and spiritual wealth, of freedom and progress. After the advent of such a Personage “the universe is wrapt in an ecstacy of joy and gladness,” “a cycle of radiance, an age of mercy dawns.” The New Spirit flooding the world creates new literature, new arts and sciences, new industries, new philosophy, and a nobler social pattern. They come to make man known to
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himself and to call to his remembrance his Creator, God. They have repeated, with increasing power, the story of man’s spiritual origin and destiny.
They declare the riches of a world of permanence and that man’s mission here is not in behalf of his own desires and idle fancies, but that he is intended to become a servant of God. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “God created man lofty and noble; made him a dominant factor in creation. He has specialized man with supreme bestowals, conferred upon him mind, perception, memory, abstraction, and the powers of the senses. These gifts of God to man were intended to make him the manifestation of divine virtues, a radiant light in the world of creation, a sourCe of life and the agency of constructiveness in‘ the infinite fields of existence . .”
Thus the Trainer and Leader of so great a creation as .man must be invested with tremendous power; His station is “He
Doeth Whatsoever He Wille ” and “He saith ‘Be’ and it is.” It is from Him that man’s spiritual capacity is replenished and sustained and man, in turn, must radiate that Spiritual energy into all the worlds with which he shares relationship. Clearly, then, the achievement of spiritual capacity is the be-all and the
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end-all of man’s life on earth and hereafter; his success, security, greatness, happiness, and abounding wealth. That is why Jesus said “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all things else shall be added unto you.” To a Bahá’í this means imitating watchfully and earnestly, insofar as possible, the pattern the Messenger of God presents; “ceaseless endeavor” to fit one’s self to be worthy to live and die for God. We have the perfect example in the lives of these great Messengers of God. Picturing their grandeur Bahá’u’lláh says, “Human tongue can never befittingly sing their praise and human speech can never unfold their mystery.”
Praising and glorifying God, the Source of Their almighty power, They guide mankind to God, the F ountain of true wealth. Thus Bahá’u’lláh writes “It is He Who hath called into being the whole of creation, Who hath caused every created thing to spring forth at His behest . . . All else besides Him stand poor and desolate at His door, all are powerless before the greatness of His might, all are but slaves in His Kingdom. He is rich enough to dispense with all creatures.”
But if the Teachers of God
have taught man dependence upon God, They have also cried
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loudly of man’s moral and spiritual responsiblities. Much has been given to man and much has been forgiven him. Because of the quality of his nature there is always temptation, his senses attracting him to the world and his spirit yearning for the Infinite. He must choose between the two worlds his soul mirrors to him and struggle between two outlooks—~the natural, limited, finite world of self, and the sublime, real and infinite world of God. He must learn to discriminate between doubt and certainty, greed and generosity, hatred and forgiveness, arrogance and humility, tyranny and love, poverty and wealth. In life he encounters disappointment, frustration, loss, sorrow, dishonor and deprivation, and as he meets these problems and grapples with them the powers of the soul are released and perfected. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, great Exemplar Of the Bahá’í Faith, said, after enduring half a century of hardship, toil, imprisonment, persecution and sorrows,———“Troubles rest me.”
It is evident, however, from the words of the Prophets, that God did not intend that His children should be overwhelmed with misery and unhappiness. But until the will and understanding are tamed and made
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receptive, how may man receive his true inheritance? “All that is in the heaven and on earth I have ordained for thee, except the human heart which I have made the habitation of My Beauty and Glory. . . .”
And again Bahá’u’lláh says “. . . that which God, Glorious is His mention, has desired for Himself, is the hearts of His servants, which are treasures of love and praise of the Lord and stores of divine knowledge and wisdom.”
And He contrasts earth’s treasures, which confuse the soul, with the magnificence God has in store for him in his true station as a creature of faith: “This poverty and these riches, this abasement and glory, this dominion, power, and the like, upon which the eyes and hearts of these vain and foolish souls are set,—all these things fade into utter nothingness in that Court! Even as he hath said ‘0 men! Ye are but paupers in need of God; but God is the Rich, the Self—Sufficing.’ By ‘riches’ therefore, is meant independence of all else but God, and by ‘poverty’ the lack of things that are of God.”
If worldly ease and honors were intended as the signs of the splendor of man, why then did those Faithful Stewards of God
avoid them and endow them 205
selves with service and love, selflessness and martyrdom?
Abraham grew up in the city of Ur in Chaldea and He might have lived an untrammelled life selling images of gods in his father’s shop. But He obeyed the Voice of the One True God and summoned the people to “Righteousness.”
Moses had been reared in the palace of Pharaoh, but when He was commanded to arise and deliver the children of Israel, He responded and became the Interlocutor of God. The key to His Message was “Obedience.”
Buddha was a Prince of India and He lived a number of years on earth unaware that such things as misery, sightlessness, poverty and failure exist. To lift mankind above its degradation He became the most lowly of the lowly and taught the lesson of “Detachment.”
Jesus might have lived a comfortable life as a carpenter, unfamiliar with sorrows and persecution that ended with His crucifixion. But He went “about His Father’s business,” preparing the way for the Kingdom of God on earth. His message was “Love.”
Muhammad was renowned for His rectitude of character. As a successful citizen of Mecca
He could have lived a shielded
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and luxurious life. But God commanded Him to “Recite” and He arose to implant the lesson of “Resignation to the Will of God.”
And so it was with the Báb (Gate of God) Who announced on May 23, 1844, the Dawn of the Promised Day. In words such as these Bahá’u’lláh testifies to His devotion to God, and the flame He enkindled in the hearts of His disciples and followers: “Who in this world is able to manifest such transcendent power, such pervading influence? . . . Hath the world since the days of Adam, witnessed such tumult, such violent commotion? . . . Methinks, patience was revealed only by virtue of their fortitude, and faithfulness
itself was begotten only by their deeds.”
And Bahá’u’lláh, Author and Founder of the new Day of God, that majestic and awe-inspiring Personage, who for over forty years suffered imprisonment, banishment, torment and indescribable hardships, that through Him, God might become glorified again in the soil of human hearts. When he was in the pestilential dungeon of Tihran, in stocks, the Voice of God summoned Him to arise for the “regeneration of mankind.” All of the previous lessons were pre paratory for the one He brings“Unity.” To the glory of His work and Message, so healing, so all-enfolding, so blessed for all mankind, this quotation from
the pen of Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, is an eloquent testimony.
“The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, whose supreme mission
is none other than the achievement of this organic and spiritual unity of the whole body of
nations, should, if we be faithful
to its implications, be regarded
as signalizing through its advent the coming of age of the entire human race. It should be
viewed not merely as yet another spiritual revival in the
ever-changing fortunes of mankind, not even as the culmination of one of a series of recurrent prophetic cycles, but rather
as marking the last and highest
stage in the stupendous evolution
of man’s collective life on this
planet. The emergence of a
World community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the
founding of a world civilization
and culture—all of which must
synchronize with the initial
stages in the unfoldment of the
Golden Age of the Bahá’í Erashould, by their very nature, be
regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organiza
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tion of human society, though man, as an individual, will, nay must indeed as a result of such a consummation, continue indefinitely to progress and develop. . .”
With infinite love and care mankind has been led through perilous ways to this Wondrous Age. He was a savage ranging the wilds, contending with beasts and the elements. A greater freedom was prepared for him and he became a nomad, tending flocks and wandering at will about the earth. In time he outgrew that experience and a nobler opportunity was presented to him. He became an agriculturist, filling the soil, gathering harvests, advancing civilization. Of his own will he might have remained satisfied with that life, but greater potentialities were awaiting development—a new challenge greeted him and he entered the Age of Commerce. Now that experience has reached its climax and a vaster horizon beckons to him. We cannot appreciate the glory of the Age at whose threshold we stand, “the coming of age of the entire human race.” But viewing the achievements of the past, we apprehend that the lesson of Unity will employ lovelier qualities, higher susceptibilities, mightier powers of the
207 soul. “Children of the half light”, we cannot pierce the future nor fathom the Golden Age that is being born out of a world of agony. Our mission is rather to labor and pray for its inauguration. Who, studying the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, its DayStar of Truth, can doubt its grandeur:—“Say, 0 men! This is a matchless Day . . . The whole human race hath longed for this Day, that perchance it may fulfill that which well beseemeth its station, and is worthy of its destiny.”
Who would not be enraptured hy the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá its perfect Exemplar and Interpreter, foreshadowing its glorious consummation? “This is a new cycle of human power, all the horizons of the world are luminous and the world shall become indeed as a garden and a paradise. It is the hour of unity of the sons of men and of the drawing together of all races and all classes. The gift of God to this enlightened age is the knowledge of the oneness of mankind and the fundamental oneness of religion. War shall cease between the nations and by the Will of God the Most Great Peace shall come. The world shall be seen as a
new world and all men shall live as brothers.”
The New Age in Which We Live
INA M. TRIMBLE
LTHOUGH it is more than
two years since the United Nations Peace Conference was held, we are still a long way from attaining peace. In many parts of the world there is still much fighting and bloodshed going on, in others famine and starvation, in others industrial strife, inflation and unemployment. Everywhere there is chaos, unrest, and destruction. Sometimes it would seem that even the elements are taking part in the general upset.
Bahá’u’lláh said: “The world is in travail and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned toward waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue.”
It has been said that “without change there can be no life.” There are two kinds of changeone slow and gradual, the other rapid, sudden, and dramatic. We will call the sudden changes “critical” stages of development, as when the mineral reaches the boiling and melting point, when the solid suddenly becomes a liquid, or when liquid becomes a gas. In plant life the “critical”
stage occurs when the seed germinates, when the bud bursts into bloom; in animal life, when the grub becomes a butterfly, when the chick emerges from the shell, or when the babe is born.
In the higher life of the soul there is a similar change when a person is “born again”, i.e. attains a spiritual “re-birth”. Then the whole character, aims, and activities are radically changed.
To carry this thought still further: as vegetation of all kinds bursts into new life in the springtime, just so the whole of mankind has a “critical” stage of change and development, a “rebirth”. Modes of life which may have persisted for centuries can be quickly and irrevocably changed and humanity enter on a new phase of life as different from the old as the butterfly is from the caterpillar or the bird from the egg.
So it would seem that our world is going through that “crit ical” stage, that trial and struggle, that travail and sickness, which in due time will bring forth a new age—a better one, we hope.
History tells us that great civilizations have been built by
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great religions. God never forgets his covenant with His creation, never deserts us in our time of greatest need. Always, when humanity reaches a low ebb in social conditions, and_ calamities surround us, He sends us another Divine Messenger, when a new Dispensation is begun and a great civilization founded. God foresees the sickness besetting mankind and sends the divine remedy long before the real crisis occurs—the sickness and crises which in time turn men’s hearts to God for help.
In view of the turmoil prevailing around the globe, it is quite evident that mankind is in need of divine help now. Bahá’ís believe we have that help in the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. Because of His many years of imprisonment. He was enabled to write voluminously, leaving His teachings to the world in great detail. He re-states all the old basic principles of the ancient faiths, and adds much more. He gave us a plan by which to build a new civilization, largely based on a World Commonwealth or Super-state of all the nations. This includes a World Parliament, 3 World Tribunal, a World Executive and a World Police Force. By Bahá’u’lláh’s comprehensive plan: — Economic barriers will be destroyed, and the
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interdependence of capital and labor recognized. Religious prejudice and strife will be stilled forever, because there will be only one World Religion. Race prejudice will finally be extinguished. There will be no more wars, because a capricious and militant nationalism will have been transmuted into a consciousness of world citizenship.
His teachings tell us clearly how to accomplish all this, and when this plan has been fully inaugurated there will be the greatest and fairest civilization the world has ever known. This is a far cry from what we see around us today, but it is the goal for which we strive and to which we must look in our moments of depression.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá assures us: “In
this present cycle there will be an evolution in civilization unparalleled in the history of the world. The world of humanity heretofore has been in the stage of infancy, now it is approaching maturity. In one year of this ripened period an unprecedented measure of development will be witnessed. The outworking Universal Spirit in man will reveal itself in unlimited degrees of perfection.”
At another time, He says: “This is a new cycle of human power, all the horizons of the
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world are luminous and the world will become indeed as a rose garden and a paradise.”
Shoghi Effendi says: “This is the greatest drama in the world’s spiritual history.”
Bahá’u’lláh, addressing the followers of Christ, exclaims“Followers of the Gospel, behold the gates of heaven are flung open. He that hath ascended unto it hath now come . . . Lo, the
sacred Pledge hath been fulfilled, for He, the Promised One, is come.”
And again Bahá’u’lláh says: “This is the King of Days, the Day that hath seen the coming of the Best Beloved, Him Who through all eternity hath been acclaimed the Desire of the world. The world of being shineth in this Day with the resplendency of this Divine Revelation. All created things extol its saving grace and sing its praises. The universe is wrapped in an ecstasy of joy and gladness. The Scriptures of past Dispensations celebrate the great jubilee that must greet this most great Day of God. Well is it with him that hath lived to see this Day and hath recognized its station. Were mans kind to give heed in a befitting manner to not more than one word of such a praise, it would
be so filled With delight as to be
overpowered and lost in wonder.
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Entranced, it would then shine forth resplendent above the horizon of true understanding.”
These are great promises, and we Bahá’ís believe them, in spite of the chaos we see around us. And why shouldn’t we? If as much progress is made in the next century as during the past one, we will see great changes indeed.
During the first century of the Faith, great strides were made. Now there are Bahá’ís in ninetyone countries, and the framework of the Bahá’í Administration is being laid in many of them. This means that men and women of hostile races, nations, classes and religions have been organized in harmony under the banner of one world religion.
This great change must begin with the individual. Anyone who sincerely desires to help make this great change will begin with himself; that is, he will try to live brotherly love, learn to reorganize his life so as to give his best efforts to the service of humnaity. He will be transformed and become as a leaven, creating a spirit of brotherly love and goodwill all around him.
This Faith will grow, will encircle the globe, and will finally blossom out into a new world or der, the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh.
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Freedom from Self
GENE W. CRIST
AHA’iS are admonished to proclaim boldly the verities underlying the Faith. Today no truth is more important to mankind than the newly revealed one that God has put freedom within the reach of every human being. It is interesting, therefore, to note some of the gems from the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh in regard to this truth.
During the World War, the leaders of our country declared that the universal desire was fourfold: freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, and freedom from want. However, the freedom of which we are speaking is something different from any of these. It is freedom of the soul.
We all share the longing for happiness. According to Dwight Hillis, “happiness is the test of character.” How true this may he can be clearly seen when we learn, from the Bahá’í Revelation, as well as from experience, that happiness, in its highest expression, is the result of the freedom of the soul.
We are interested in that which will produce freedom from disease; freedom from destructive habits; freedom from worry; freedom from destructive think ing; freedom from emotional upset; freedom from fear; freedom from tradition, bigotry, intolerance, superstition and many other things too numerous to mention. May these not all be summed up as freedom from self? . . . . . .
Let us think of these elements of freedom separately.
Freedom from disease: well, disease is an eHect—there are many causes. Usually these causes are something over which we have control. Often it is what or how we eat. More often it is what we are thinking or feeling. Destructive, evil thoughts create poison in the blood stream. At a recent convention of healers it was stated that every man and woman lives under the law that everything unfolds from within outwardly. That is why if we nurse hurts, injuries, jealousies, worries, we shall have diseased conditions which all the pills and vitamins in the world will not take away.
The medical profession has come to the conclusion that 50% of all disease exists in the mind before evidencing itself in the body and that, in the other 50%, mental conditions are an important contributing cause. We need to get the negative forces out of
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our system so that the Spirit may flow in. Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “Jealousy eats up the body and rage burns up the liver” are a powerful concrete expression of this same idea.
And as to the causes of destructive thinking, fears, criticism, emotionalism and the development of such unlovely traits: are these not caused by self-concern, self—indulgence and selfishness? Or, to put it another way, knowing that evil does not exist as a concrete force, we realize that self-love, with all these things which imprison us and keep us bound, is the lack of love for others and for God.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá has said, “When one is released from the prison of self, that is indeed freedom! For self is the greatest prison! When this release takes place one can never be imprisoned.” And Bahá’u’lláh: “F ree thyself from the fetters of this world, and loose thy soul from the prison of self. Seize thy chance, for it will come to thee no more”. . . . “Purge thy heart from malice; and innocent of envy, enter the Divine court of holiness.” We have God’s Words given us through Bahá’u’lláh: “The candle of thine heart is lighted by the hand of My powerquench it not with the contrary winds of self and passion.” We
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are taught to pray: “Give me to drink from the chalice of selflessness, with its robe clothe me and in its ocean immerse me.”
From ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. we learn that happiness is commanded. We are taught to pray for it. We are told what creates it. And we are told how to procure it;
“O Thou Benevolent God, . . . Purify and sanctify me. Give me a portion from the outpouring of holiness so that sorrow and sadness may vanish, joy and happiness descend, despondence and hopelessness be changed into cheerfulness and trustfulness, and let courage take the place of fear.”
This trustfulness gives us freedom from worry. “Oh put your faith in the Almighty, for He faileth not and His goodness endureth forever . . . His refreshing breeze ever carries healing in its wings to the parched souls of men.”
It is interesting but sad that
so many are trying to attain
mental poise and to control destructive habits through other
than spiritual channels. Le
Compte de Nouy in H uman Destiny pleads with men to come
up from the physical and sense
level to higher ground. He says
that man must free himself from
his lower nature and, in the great
struggle the gaining of this free
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F REEDOM
dom entails, he must find the necessary strength in “his sense of human dignity”. Well, I ask you, how much would this help to liberate a person from the domination of habit in the face of strong temptation? Can we expect much if he has no power greater than his own desires and sense of dignity?
I have talked with many who have such problems — they always say the same thing; they always say they are “trying hard.” This is not the method! It is exactly the reverse of the Divine method! What a glorious blessing, to have been given the Divine Technique! -— the technique for obtaining freedom from physical weaknesses and all faults and vices which imprison us! For example, there is this prayer given us by Bahá’u’lláh:
“I beg of Thee, O my God, by Thy most exalted Word which Thou hast ordained as the Divine Elixir . . . through whose potency the crude metal of human life hath been transmuted into purest gold . . . to ordain that my choice be conformed to Thy choice and my wish to Thy wish. . . . Happy
is the man who hath recognized‘
Thee and discovered the sweetness of . . . Thy Kingdom and tasted of the things that have been perfected therein by Thy grace and favor.”
213 When this Elixir, with its God given potency, begins to efiervesce in the heart, it regenerates and creates the desire to release everything that is contrary to God’s will—it creates radiant _ acquiescence and produces free dom from self.
- * *
There is another kind of freedom, also. May I mention a recent experience of mine? I frequently go to see a lovely old lady who, for want of a suitable place, has been hospitalized in an institution that cares primarily for the insane. Not only is she normal mentally —— she is far above the average person, keen and alive and very interesting. However, she is confined to her bed and unable to use her hands for any needlework, and she is unable to read on account of poor eyesight. There she lies propped up on her pillows, in a room that is part of a ward that contains about forty scream-ing, sickningly hopeless, insane patients.
All through her lifetime, this dear old lady read the best books, heard the most learned speakers, and reveled in the writings of the outstanding poets. A long time ago I took her the little volume “101 Poems.” Line by line she memorized these gems by Keats, Shelley and others and
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she not only has memorized them, but she has made a deep study of their symbology and meaning. When I go there week after week, and she commences to talk to me about their deep meanings and spiritual implications, I see her absolutely detached from her tragic surroundings. One day I said to her, “It is marvelous how you soar above your surroundings and surmount all your handicaps. I see you absolutely “free!” And she replied, “I am free——I am with Keats and COleridge and Shelley. I am not in this room.”
So also is it with her in her
times of prayer—her spirit takes her from that mad house into the spiritual realm.
She has taught me to know what the Master, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
meant when He said:
“Freedom is not a matter of place, but of condition. I was happy in that prison for those days were passed in service. . . . It was a horrible looking room, yet I lived there two years in the utmost happiness. . . . I was very happy all the time, because I was a free man. Shut off in that room my spirit traveled throughout
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the immensity of space. . . . If We are imprisoned in the material world our spirits can soar into Heaven and we shall be free indeed.”
A last wordz—To you who are seeking that which will give you religious liberty, I wish to say that when one accepts the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, he achieves not merely religious freedom but freedom from traditions, from superstitions, from domination of priests, rabbis and ministers, from pre-conceived ideas, from man-made interpretations of the Word of God, from denominationalism and narrowness, and from race enmities. Furthermore, he is given the answers to all controversial questions, for only through Bahá’u’lláh have the mysteries of Biblical symbology and the meaning of prophecy been given to Man.
All are invited to drink deeply from this rich Source of Truth. It is a loving invitation extended to you by your Heavenly Father through Bahá’u’lláh:
“Immerse yourselves in the ocean of My words, that ye may unravel its secrets, and discover all the pearls of wisdom that lie hid in its depths. . . .”
WITH OUR READERS _
SOME interesting information on Stanwood Cobb, author of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” can be found in our May issue. New readers may want to acquaint themselves further with Mr. Cobb’s previous contributions by reading his article on “Beauty and Art in the Bahá’í World” (May, 1948) and the excerpt
from “Symbols of Amerioa” (June, 1947). ‘
In his article “Fingers of One Hand,” Robert L. Gulick Jr. focuses attention on the harmonious and cooperative functioning of the Bahá’í communities. He makes use of his knowledge both as an observer who has traveled in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and as a member, at one time or another of various Bahá’í communities and therefore a participant in Bahá’í administrative work. His two previous contributions to
World Order (“Beloved Irén: Land of Light,” December, 1947; and “Far-Away Iṣfahán,” February, 1948) dealt with his impressions of Iran on his visit to that country last year.
One might say it takes an architect to understand another architect,
both dealing in ideas, but one imo agining a building in brick and stone, the other conceiving a theory to explain the rise and fall of world civilizations. This month Robert W. McLaughlin, the architect, analyzes the historian Arnold Toynbee’s most recent book, Civilization on Trial.
Mr. McLaughlin graduated from Princeton University in 1921,.and a few years later was a proctor travelling fellow in Italy, France, and England. He was associated with the late Charles Over Cornelius in archaeological and restoration work, and became a pioneer in the manufacture of prefabricated houses, back in 1932. In 1940, he established a research laboratory for the study of building technique at Bedford Village, New York. We are happy to welcome Robert McLaughlin as a new contributor’to World Order.‘
The editorial this month Was written by Miss Pearl Easterbrook, one of the newly appointed editors of World Order. She is now living in Peoria, Illinois. .
Olivia Kelsey wrote the article “Poverty or Wealth.” She is a New Jersey Bahá’í whose new book, Bahá’í Answers, makesiavailable in convenient reference form the authentic answers from Bahá’í writings [0 questions most often asked of Bahá’ís. Mrs. Kelsey has also written a dramatization of the life of the Bab, which has been presented at the cnmmer schools and in some of the Bahá’í communities.
“The Now Age in Which We Live” is the first contribution from Ina M. Trimble, of Edmonton, Alberta. She is an artist who does chiefly landscape paintings in pastels. She writes of her background: “My
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maiden name was Fuller, and I am a Puritan descendant of the “Mayflower” Fullers, Dr. Fuller and Sam Fuller. My great-grandfather was a Kentucky slave-owner but freed all his slaves before the Civil War and ran what was called an “underground railroad-station” to help those escaping northward across the Ohio River. My mother was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne, in England and was brought up in Baltimore, Maryland. I was born and educated in Nebraska and then my father moved to Alberta, Canada, where later I married an Irish Canadian.” Although Mrs. Trimble is a shut-in, unable to walk from the effects of arthritis, she enjoys entertaining, and has always made her home a center of Bahá’í meetings and activities.
Mrs. Gene Crist, author of the meditative article “Freedom from Self,” is a relatively new but valuable contributor to World Order. Her interest in religion dates far back. As a girl she taught the Bible in Sunday Schools. In her moving article “If—With All Thy Heart,” printed in our issue of June‘ 1947, she tells: “My faith led me to teaching very early; later to an intense interest in comparative religions; and finally into the study of philesophy and metaphysics.” She conducted courses for training Sunday School teachers in several different churches and organized the Teacher Training Department in the Columbia College of Religious Education.
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She spent some months in China and Japan and saw, first-hand, “the sickening inadequacy of religions which have become intermingled with superstition, destructive practices and devil worship.” “My travels in the Orient,” she says, “helped to give my teaching a better background—and I finally majored in Philosophy with Dr. James Richardson of George Washington University. His History of Philosophy was the text book, with supplementary reading. It was the subject of comparative religions which made me especially interested in another religion and a philosophy which had all the answers.” Mrs. Crist lives in Washington, DC, where for years she has directed the Conservatory Preparatory School.
Stanton Coblentz, author of “Builders”, will be remembered for his poem “Leaves” which appeared recently. He is a California poet whose experience has included the editorship of the poetry magazine. W ings, the compilation of anthologies, and the writing of several books of prose.
The variety of articles in this issue of World Order is encouraging to the editors who would like to make the magazine increasingly valuable in presenting the many facets in the Bahá’í World Faith. Since we have no paid stafi‘ and no budget to pay for contributions, we are wholly dependent upon friends for life-giving, well-written, and inspiring articles.
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Bahá’í Sacred Writings
Works of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
Distributed by Bahá’í Publishing Committee 110 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois
A TRAVELER’S NARRATIVE
The late Prof. Edward G. Browne received this work in manuscript from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at ‘Akká while investigating the developments in the Faith since the Martyrdom Of the Báb. Its authorship was not known by Prof. Browne. Translated and edited by him, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s explanation of the meaning of the B-éb’s Revelation and the Declaration of Bahá’u’lláh was first published by Cambridge University but the rights have been acquired by the Publishing Committee. This text was written by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at some date prior to 1892.
SOME ANSWERED QUESTIONS
This text is based on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s oral replies to questions addressed to Him by Laura Cliflord Barney at Haifa in 1907. Her notes were later approved by Him. The work is divided into sections, dealing with the Prophets, the nature of man, interpretation of prophecy and religious symbol, and some social questions.
T HE PROMULGATION OF UNIVERSAL PEACE
Prepared from stenographic records of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s public addresses in the United States and Canada from April to December, 1912, and His intimate talks delivered to Bahá’í groups during that period. Here is ‘Abdu’l-B‘ahé confronting the West on the eve of the collapse of its civil, cultural and religious civilization signalized by the outbreak of the first World War, warning the leaders and masses of their peril, summoning them to heed the Advent of the Promised One of all nations, and establishing in America the principles and ideals which have since become the program of the liberal and progressive spirit. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá at the same time clearly explained the nature of the new spiritual community which alone can apply this program to society and produce a new world order.
TABLETS OF ‘ABDU’L-BAHA
For many years ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His outer life restricted by the conditions of exile and imprisonment inflicted upon Him by the Turkish church-state under Islém, shared His spirit and His beneficent wisdom with Bahá’ís of many countries who addressed communications to Him, some as individuals, others as members of Bahá’í bodies. Three volumes were compiled in America based on Tablets dated prior to 1916. These pages invited one to enter an inner place, as it were, glowing with the fire
of a love sustained by God. (Some other Tablets are found in Chapters VIII and IX of Bahá’í World Faith.)
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THE BAHA’I FAITH
Recognizes the unity of God and His Prophets,
Upholds the principle of an unfettered search after truth,
Condemns all forms of superstition and prejudice, ‘
Teaches that the fundamental purpose of religion is to promote concord and harmony, that it must go hand in hand with science, and that it constitutes the sole and ultimate basis of a peaceful, an ordered and progressive society, .
‘ Inculcates the principle of equal opportunity, rights and privileges for both sexes,
Advocates compulsory education, Abolishes extremes of poverty and wealth,
Exalts work performed in the spirit of service to the rank of worship,
Recommends the adoption of an auxiliary inter. national language, . .
Provides the necessary agencies for the establishment and safeguarding of a permanent and universal peace.
—Snocm EFFENDL
