World Order/Volume 2/Issue 9/Text

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[Page 321]

WORLD ORDER

DECEMBER 1936

NUMBER 9 VOLUME 2

SPIRITUAL MATURITY

EDITORIAL

A NEW and most significant approach to the world problem has been created by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s statement that mankind has entered upon its stage of maturity. By that conception it is possible to perceive the inevitable failure of the competitive motive and the relationship of struggle as values which no longer find sanction or justification in man’s real nature. The social institutions and the collective customs reflecting the degree of immaturity no longer respond to any valid order of truth. With maturity a larger possibility has come, and this possibility is measured by our responsibility for establishing an ordered society. Since the condition of life has been fixed for man by a higher power, there is no retreat behind chaos and failure, but only an ordained progress to the unity that lies ahead in time but exists potentially now in the world of the soul.

If upon mankind collectively there rests an inescapable obligation to achieve world order, upon the individual lies no less vital an obligation to strive for spiritual maturity in his own being. What is spiritual maturity? It may be indicated, perhaps, by reference to three definite conditions.

The first condition is to leave behind the realm of instinct and enter the realm of understanding. The instinctive man is controlled by immediate and personal likes and dislikes, to the extent of sacrificing to them the larger good of the community. His morality is tested only by the quality called sincerity, by which is frequently meant nothing more than being filled by one single emotion. The instinctive man is therefore “sincere” when imbued with any loyalty or prejudice to the point where it cannot be rationally judged by himself. It is because so many are instinctive rather than rational that mobs can be inflamed with destructive madness, and nations moved to policies of blind struggle. The morality of the man of understanding is higher in that he judges himself not by his personal feelings but by the effect of his emotion, his thoughts and [Page 322] his deeds upon the community as a whole.

The second condition is faithfulness to truth. Here there are two forms of truthfulness to consider— truthfulness to others and truthfulness to one’s self. Without truthfulness among the members of a community one to another there can be no true society but only the extension of the jungle. Truthfulness to one’s self, however, is the more essential virtue and the more significant influence. It is because so many individuals betray themselves by lies of inferiority or superiority, because they have no fundamental truth in them which they can and will face, that every community today, large and small, is permeated through and through with uneasiness, suspicion and the stuff of cruel conflict. Truthfulness to others may be enforced, but truthfulness to one’s self is the first step the individual takes under the beneficent influence of a true religion. Not until the light of Truth itself is revealed can the inner eye begin to apprehend reality. As long as the soul is immersed in sullen darkness, the inner life is necessarily bereft of truth.

The third condition is that of responsibility for the community. Bahá’u’lláh has declared that every man must be part of an evolving civilization. In this statement the virtue of social responsibility has been given an entirely new dimension. No longer is it sufficient to assume responsibility merely for one’s own family, or for the town or even for the nation. Upon the man of today falls the obligation to concern himself with the condition of the world. He is part of the collective destiny, whether he realizes it, whether he assumes the responsibility of it or not. It has only been by conscious responsibility for the community in times past that the tribal and then the national societies were established and maintained.

The essence of maturity is conscious understanding of the purpose of existence. For the individual, to “know God and to love him” forms the beginning of spiritual development. To know the universal principles of an ordered society and be active in promoting them is the house of life to be constructed upon that firm, that eternal basis of reality.

Despite the overweening material power now reinforcing policies of struggle and conflict, the human values upon which they rest are pitifully weak. The world today is naught else but a blustering youth, powerful in his physical strength but motivated by the instincts of a lingering childhood. But this self-assertion cannot escape responsibility for its results. It is pulling down the pillars of the old order, and the grief arising from this experience will alone transform the stormy adolescent into a mature man—a world citizen.

H.H.

[Page 323]

EDUCATION FOR LIFE

By HARRY LEVI

THERE never was a time when the world was so deeply interested in the cause of education. Of course the interest is not new. The Jews ages ago had an appreciation of the need and value of education. So had the Greeks. So had the Chinese. But the interest was never so widespread. Until comparatively recent times popular education was practically unknown. Such education as was offered was limited to the minority. It was counted not only unnecessary but even dangerous to educate the masses. Even here in America the early suggestion of compulsory taxation for general educational purposes met the bitterest opposition. In England, Herbert Spencer denounced the program as “a tyrannical system tamely submitted to by people who call themselves free.” Twenty-five years ago there were more public school teachers in the city of New York than in all of Spain. Fifteen years ago 90 per cent of the people of Russia were illiterate. Now popular education is the major concern of practically every country under the sun.

This is especially true in our own land. Recently the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, called attention to the fact that there are 5,000,000 illiterates in the United States and urged that effective measures be taken to reduce the number. Yet three years ago the United States Bureau of Education issued statistics indicating that 25,000,000 of our children attend public schools and 2,500,000 private schools; and that the cost of this educational program is in excess of $2,000,000,000 annually. And the end is not yet. There is a constantly growing demand for wider and larger educational opportunities, an insistence not only that every child shall have an education, but that facilities for higher education shall be placed at the disposal of all who desire to use them. There are not wanting those who feel we are going too far, who argue that the aim of education ought to be the production of competent leadership and not the elevation of the common level. “Democracy is freedom” said the late President Faunce of Brown University. “Democracy is freedom [Page 324] —not identity or similarity. Democracy does not mean levelling down, or levelling up, or any kind of levelling or standardizing process. It does not mean that one man is as good as another, but that all men are good enough to help in finding out who the best ones are. A public school which produces in the course of ten years a few potential leaders of the state or the nation is far more democratic than one which merely enables thousands to read and write and cipher and to live respectable but stupid lives. Boys and girls are no more alike in their ability to devise, administer, and create than they are in the color of their eyes and hair. When all men grow six feet tall all may develop the same brain power and the same heart power. ‘Unto one He gave five talents, to another two, to another one.’ Some of the timber that is floated down from the forests of northern Maine to the sea is made into the masts of seagoing vessels, some into chairs and tables, and some into toothpicks. You cannot make seaworthy masts out of toothpick timber.” President Faunce wanted education to produce freedom. But he wanted its opportunities at least to be placed at the disposal of all. Only a few weeks ago Ernesto Nelson, chairman of the Board of Education of Argentina, and head of a visiting delegation of Argentine educators declared, “Here in America you continually make education easier for the individual and lower the standard of your culture, with the result that cultural zest and yearning for intellectual food is in danger of being lost.” It is a voice in the wilderness. More and more we have come to feel that, especially in a democracy, popular education is an essential, that where a people are the government and make the laws, they cannot afford to be left ignorant, that illiteracy strikes at the very roots of democracy. Hence the vast sums we spend on education, the willingness of the people to bear increased taxes for this purpose and the eagerness of our parents to give their children all the education they can.

WHAT is the purpose of it all? Why are we willing to expend so much money, interest and time on the cause of education? What do we expect, what do we want education to do for our boys and girls? Why do we send them, why do we compel them to go to school? What is the function of education?

The primary purpose of education, I suppose, is to develop culture, an acquaintance with the best that has been thought and written and done since human history began. Until quite recently this was probably the one aim of education. Men were to know for the sake of knowing. Of course the plan was understood to achieve specific results. Cultural education would make life more complete, more mature. It would make for happiness. The more men knew of themselves, of life and the world, the better they could fit themselves into the social structure of which they were part. A logic which we cannot dispute. For my own part, I have always felt that a cultural education has an even wider influence. I believe that the more a man studies and [Page 325] knows, even though he is not preparing for any special vocation or profession, the brighter his chances of success in any work he undertakes after graduation. Even an academic education gives a man an equipment for factory, office or store, which he could not possess if he had not been permitted to go to college. Of this practical value of a cultural education however, until our own time, men thought and said but little. Indeed the number of doubters is now definitely on the increase.

So that today, in the popular mind, the primary function of education is to make a living. Ours has become an economic day. We are living in a business world. We want our children to be spared some of the trials we knew when we were their age. We believe that education will make life easier for them, will make it possible for them to secure larger economic returns with less labor. And this is a technical world, in which the skilled have every advantage over their unskilled competitors. In consequence, we are losing much of the interest and satisfaction we once felt in the cultural courses, which until recently, comprised the curricula of our educational institutions, and are increasingly demanding that subjects be introduced which will give our children better economic opportunities. We want more schools for the professions. We are establishing more business and commercial schools, more schools for the development of the “practical arts,” more manual training schools.

Now it is true that education has an economic value. I have already suggested that this is true of a cultural education. It is certainly true of what we call practical education. A recent investigation of the situation by the Boston University School of Education developed the interesting information, that a man, who lives to be 60 years of age, has an economic value of $45,000 if he had a grammar school education, of $78,000 if he had a high school education, and of $150,000 if he had a college education. Education does make for a living.

YET I cannot believe that this tells the whole story. No people can be satisfied to pay such a staggering price for an education that will simply make it possible for their children to make money. We need material reward for our labor. But “we live not by bread alone.” There are so many vital things in life that have no economic association, so much in life that is more significant than material success. Education must raise our economic level, our material standards. But if this be the sum and substance of its contribution, it falls far short of what we have a right to expect of it.

Education should help us make a living, but more, it should help us make a life. First it should help us live, live healthier, live longer, live more courageously, meeting the problems, the duties, the difficulties of life in becoming fashion. Something is radically wrong with an educational system which permits a philosophy of pessimism, surrender and bitterness, which graduates students without a sense of responsibility, which [Page 326] leaves them when they go forth no better than when they entered, or even worse, and which sometimes exerts so little influence over them that they take their own lives before their schooling is completed. Surely before it makes for a living, education should make for life.

And for the right kind of life; the life that, knowing the warrant for selfhood, does its duty by itself, and knowing its relationship to all the life about it, does its duty by the society of which it is part, and so long as it endures makes its worthy contribution to the sum total of life from which it draws its own sustenance, the kind of life that helps to make a man a better man, a better son, a better husband and father, a better neighbor, a better citizen. A large program for education, but a valid one, testing its legitimacy and validity. For like the law of God, education “is our life and by it shall we prolong our days on earth,” and more, give these days their justification.

If education is to achieve such a life, it must make for self-knowledge, self-respect, self-control, the trinity which are at the root of “Sovereign power.” It must make for self-dependence. It must make for independent thinking. It must give boys and girls not mere information but the capacity to think for themselves. We cannot set slaves really free, we can only help them free themselves. Mencken charges that 99 per cent of our college students are morons. Certain it is that the vast majority of the pupils in our schools are sadly wanting in the capacity to reason for themselves. A fault which reflects not so much on them as on our educational authorities and our teachers. We do not encourage freedom of thought, independence of judgment. We want acceptance, acquiescence. We penalize unconventional thought. Most of our boys and girls are weak imitations of their teachers, accepting unquestioningly all that is given them, repeating the teachers’ words, echoing their thoughts, championing blindly all their philosophy. “What America needs” says a writer in the Forum magazine for April 1927 “is mentality.—Behind that enormous energy and power which the American has developed, there seems to be the weakest and softest mental equipment, —mere indications of a mentality, —and if Russia was called the Giant with the Clay Feet, America could be called the Giant with the Clay Head.” And this in the face of the billions we are spending for our schools! If education is to justify itself, it must produce not imitations but originals, not servile adjustment but independence, not slaves but freemen. And only the “truth can set men free.”

GIVING men liberty, education must give them law, an understanding of the need of law, and of the need of obeying law. And first it must stress the value of the moral law. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” Yet we are not so exacting with the feeble-minded as with those who are normal, with children as with adults. And we have to find excuses for those who are ignorant. But what shall we say of those who [Page 327] know or ought to know? The more educated men and women are, the better they ought to be. If “knowledge is power,” it should be moral power. Considering all we do for those in our schools, all we expend on them, all we teach them, all we give them, we have a right to expect, we have a right to demand that when they go out into the community, they shall be “eyes for the blind and feet for the lame,” “a light unto their eyes and a lamp unto their feet,” showing them the way, leading them. Our educated people in a literal moral sense ought to be our best people. What shall we say of the education we give them, if instead of living on the heights, they are content to wallow in the depths, instead of leading, they are content to follow, instead of lifting they are content to lower the communal level? Education needs to make clear that liberty is not license but self-control, obedience to the higher law.

And obedience to political law as well. This obedience is essential to all orderly social life. If each man lived alone he could unconditionally follow the desires of his own heart. He could express his own nature fully and freely. If he is to live with others he must perforce adjust himself to such common rulings as will safeguard the interest of both. In other words, if he is to be part of a social or political group, and is to avail himself of the blessings which issue from such association, then he must obey the laws which this group, through its collective wisdom, ordains as necessary to its continued existence. To the making of these laws he must give his own thought and interest. But to these laws, once made, he must give obedience. If they are not to his liking, he may do all in his power legally to change them. Until they are altered he must obey. If every citizen were privileged to violate the laws which do not appeal to him, all government and society would cease to be, security and freedom would be simply words, and chaos and anarchy would reign supreme. Uneducated people may lack this vision and understanding. But what of those who have been taught in our schools? What shall we say of college men and women who become criminals and law-breakers? The function of education is to create respect for law.

This does not mean that we are to remain conventional, conservative and orthodox in our ideas or conduct. If laws are hopelessly antiquated, unsuited to the days in which we live, we must liberalize them. If current opinions are primitive and outgrown, we must abandon them for such as are nearer the truth. Education must help us rid ourselves of provincialism, prejudices, superstitions. It must lift us above narrow, unwarranted racial, religious and political antagonisms. The more we know, the more we are taught, the more we learn, the more educated we are, the more liberal we ought to be in our views and in our attitude toward those who do not agree with us, and who may have opinions and customs different from our own. Ignorance is the mother of most of our hates and misunderstandings. Educated people must be loyal to truth and justice.

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Education should make us not only just but serviceable to others, whether they agree with us or not. “If I am not for myself, who will be for me” asked the great sage Hillel, “Yet if I am for myself alone, what am I?” We owe certain duties to ourselves. And we have to meet them before we can be helpful to those about us. But we owe these others definite duties also. They give us what we have; they make us what we are. Society creates the opportunities of which we avail ourselves and metes out the rewards we receive. We should make fitting return. For our own sakes, since the more the social group possesses, the more it will be in a position to give us. The lower its level, the lower our own. We need God. But we need also all the people about us. Therefore we should serve them, even as a matter of enlightened selfishness if you will; but as a matter of decency too. “If I am for myself alone what am I?” All of us are but stewards of what we possess, blessed that we may bless, given that we may share. Are we strong? Then we must try to lift the weak to our level. Ignorance admits no such philosophy. “Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” But what of people who call themselves educated? If education does not socialize our instincts, making each feel that he is his brother’s keeper, that he shares and must share in a common destiny, how can it possibly justify itself?

THE vision must of course first relate us properly to the members of our own group. It must bring us the realization that the interests of the members of our family, of our neighbors, of the civic group to which we belong, are identical with our own, that all these have a claim on us which we must respect. But obviously the program must not end here. We owe loyalties not merely to the more intimate, but to the larger groups of which we are part. We who share in this program are not only Bostonians, we are Americans. Now as Americans we do not all have the same background. We do not look alike, or think alike or feel alike. Nor need we regret the fact. It would indeed be a sad day for America if all our divergences should disappear. They give America not merely variety but value, not only added beauty but added worth. America is rich because it represents the composite of all these contributions. But though we have warrant for remaining to ourselves, though we need not even consider sacrificing our personalities, imitating those about us, and standardizing our lives, there is much on which as Americans we can and must agree. With all our differences there are interests we hold and must serve in common—interests we must serve together. We want no uniformity, but we must have unity. With Von Moltke we may “walk apart, but we must fight together.” “Respect and cooperation” must become the motto of every good American, a motto our educational system must first accept and then teach, day in and day out, if it would justify itself.

We who live here are Americans. But we are also citizens of the world.

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ASSURANCE

By DOROTHY BAKER

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH was deeply concerned with affliction. Of His own choice He took upon himself a life which touched the very dregs of human affliction and turned sorrow into joy. But aside from that affliction which we choose to take as sacrifice there are two afflictions which the world knows. One is the natural testing ground of the soul. Of this, Bahá’u’lláh said: “My calamity is My providence, outwardly it is fire and vengeance; inwardly it is light and mercy.” The other affliction comes through disobedience to divine commands. The majority of the world’s afflictions are of the latter type. For their healing, Bahá’u’lláh, like the glorious Messengers who preceded him, gave His life. Such a healing can and will restore assurance to the world.

Not long ago a remarkably beautiful club woman turned to me a bit sadly and said: “I have lost assurance in every thing. I do not desire fame nor do I require great wealth. But would to God I could have security.” It is to souls like these that God has spoken, rather than to the oversatisfied.

What is revealed religion? In a word it is God reaching down to us. Turning the pages of history backward, we discover that He has so reached down to us many times. Twelve hundred years ago a lawless, profligate people received the reaching down of God. It came through the prophet Muhammad. And they, through the education they received from Him, became a spiritual race who produced geniuses in literature, architecture and art. Moreover, they attained to spiritual assurance. Two thousand years ago Caiaphas heard the call of Jesus. Greek philosophers and Roman generals heard it. Tiberius, the emperor, heard it. But who were those who received assurance from it? The woman of Samaria who had lost certainty in everything, Mary Magdalene who was despised, humble fishermen who had no education and owned none of this world’s goods. This great assurance so directly became man’s regeneration that three centuries later Constantine [Page 331] tried to cast into the state life of his people the spirit that moved the Christians. Fifteen hundred years before that time, Moses spoke to the slaves of Pharaoh. Soothsayers, wise men and kings heard that call and failed to respond. It was the downtrodden who heard; they had lost assurance in everything. God reached down to them through the message of Moses and led them through the wilderness of doubt, despair and misgivings and brought them out to the promised land of certitude.

NOW what does this mean to the individual today? Passing by momentarily the need of a social order, let us look upon ourselves as individuals. You are a unit that helps create society. The hairs of your head are still numbered. You are precious, infinitely precious, in the sight of God. His justice is often difficult for us to understand with our finite minds, but every jot and tittle of it seeks your betterment and leads you toward your Canaan. The individual here today must face the same wilderness that the races of long ago faced. The name of this wilderness is Search. Bahá’u’lláh said: “Only when the lamp of search, of earnest striving, of longing desire, of passionate devotion, of fervid love, of rapture and ecstacy is kindled within the seeker’s heart, and the breeze of His loving kindness is wafted upon the soul, will the darkness of error be dispelled, the mists of doubts and misgiving be dissipated, and the lights of knowledge and certitude envelop his being.” So you must be willing to search. But what do you seek? You seek that which Jesus gave to the pure in heart, and Moses gave to the captives, the assurances born of the Word of God. What are some of the assurances that revealed religion through Bahá’u’lláh again promises the seeker?

First there is certainty that you have purpose in being. A prominent news writer tells us that the world is a fungus accident and man a sick fly taking a dizzy ride to no purpose. A leading criminal lawyer publicly remarks: “If I were a young man today there would be nothing left to do but to jump from a tenth story window.” How many people have lost all sense of purpose! A splendid person stopped me one day and said: “If you can tell me why I must continue arising at one time in the morning, eating and keeping shop, retiring and again arising to repeat it all over again the next day and the next, I will sit at your feet for the rest of my life.” I answered: “I cannot, but Bahá’u’lláh can, because He restores to you that larger perspective that the world has lost. He prayed; ‘O God, I testify that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to adore Thee.’” This is your goal also. Life viewed in the larger perspective has a far end; that end is God. No young man seeking a profession dares to lose for a moment, if he would be successful, the ultimate professional purpose. Neither can the seeker lose sight of the quest of the Divine Beloved. With an objective like that he is not imprisoned by life; he can afford to take hold of it and bend it to his own ends. Ruthless cruelty can become his kindly teacher and the grave itself a new [Page 332] beginning, for he has further purpose; he has purpose in being.

IF we accept the first assurance, that life has an eternal goal, we must accept also the belief in a life beyond personality. Immortality is a promise to every soul alive in the world. Bahá’u’lláh says that this present world is a spiritual matrix in which we develop faculties that will take us through eternity. “From God we come and unto Him do we return.” Prophethood not only invariably assures us of immortality as an accepted fact, but it points out the way to make that immortality blessed. “Blessing be upon the soul,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh, “who departs from this life freed from the superstitions and doubts of the nations. Verily it will move in the atmosphere of God’s Holy Will. . . . All the angels of Paradise attend and surround it. . . . If any one could realize what hath been ordained by God, he would immediately yearn with a great longing for that immutable, holy and glorious station.” To create here and now a heaven which transcends doubts, worldly desires, and superstitions counts in the race toward the goal. Every effort becomes an adventure because your self-created heaven is a point of beginning.

“So!” cries the materialist at this point, “Your religion is merely an escape, a dreamy hope of future bliss, an easy forgetting of present ills, built on the hope of eternity!” To be sure, much of our human emphasis is guilty of just that, but to be assured that a newly revealed prophetic religion has real moral suasion one has only to remember the power of early Christianity and Judaism to be at grips with life. Bahá’u’lláh has said: “The Word of God is endowed with such potency as can instill new life into every human frame.” Can it instill new life into a broken society? It is the only force that will.

As a child I was continually being given dolls. I had no real regard for these little lifeless things. Rather would I have visited my friends the sparrows or the awkward growing weeds that scattered fuzzy life about the garden. In a fine sense of duty I would at times line up the dolls in rows and talk to them until their unresponsiveness drew from me the query; “Why can’t you come alive?” So do dead religious doctrines in a spiritually lethargic world affect the thoughtful adult. Dean Inge truly said that when religion no longer held men at the point of ethical conduct, that which was left would not be worth fighting over. We wait upon the Spirit of God, to be made alive. If no reviving breath appeared in the world, eventually past good would be swallowed up and become mere history. The Word of God alone is capable of remotivating the race. Without it we are a body without a heart, a vehicle without a motor. Bahá’u’lláh has no desire to exalt or even motivate one race or class of people, but desires rather to draw every type and kind into a sturdy solidarity. The moral suasion of his Word has already, within its first century, united human beings wherever it has touched. In forty countries of the world the imprint of His universal utterance has purified life and drawn together divergent races, [Page 333] classes and creeds. Indeed, the promise of a world united is the supreme assurance of Bahá’u’lláh to our age. “Today,” He writes, “This servant has assuredly come to vivify the world and to bring into unity all who are on the face of the earth. That which God willeth shall come to pass and thou shalt see the world even as the Most Glorious Paradise.” The assurance of a great moral suasion again in the world!

MORE, perhaps, than any other one need in the world, we have the need of assurance that there is law and that law is on our side. We need a friendliness with law, a knowledge that it is our benefactor at all times and throughout all the worlds of God. The Most High has always apportioned law through His Prophets according to the need of the hour. Social law must be in conformity with divine law to be true protection. Wherever the divine laws of justice, cleanliness and righteousness are kept, life bears fruits. Law becomes a sanctuary and the dawning place of progress. For the individual too it is the crying need. Every individual travels in an orbit of spiritual law as well as physical. At the hands of the Great Physician he learns, if he will, how to move with the Winds of God and use them. He learns to his sorrow that disobedience to them is to be crushed by them. A young man said to Harry Emerson Fosdick; “I have never been so happy in my life as now that I am rid of God. I have become an atheist.” Mr. Fosdick replied: “You may be rid of God but you are not rid of a moral universe; you are not rid of a universe that is run by law.” The young man succeeded only in putting himself out of balance with that law and out of harmony with life. Now in looking to the Messengers for the law, for that protection which is the ever-flowing stream of His Will, we sometimes find a sense of resentment because God has so often restated His law. Bahá’u’lláh has said in this day: “My commandments are the lamps of My loving providence among My creatures and the keys of My mercy to the servants.” Will these conflict with the law of Moses and the law of Jesus? The basis of spiritual law remains the same but the emphasis changes with the unfolding race. How great the assurance that the law of God is good and that He will further empower us with its uses through Bahá’u’lláh!

A modern skeptic makes this statement: “Man matters only to himself; he is fighting a lone fight against a vast indifference.” Our final assurance is the certainty of the companionship of God. It is a reality about which history has been very obscure. Besides the infinity which stretches beyond that which the finite mind can encompass, there is a near side of God which is his spoken Word and His Messenger. History shows that God has reached down through the Prophet and given man divine companionship. One who has received and understood such companionship wears two signs of it; first he will never know loneliness because God will be “Closer to him than breathing, nearer than hands and feet;” secondly, he will be intimately aware [Page 334] of his kind. He who knows God knows all creation and loves it for God’s sake. Someone asked ‘Abdu’l-Bahá why every one who talked with Him came away so happy. “Because,” replied this great servant, “In the face of every one I see the face of my Father.” To be in tune with the Infinite is to be in tune with His creation. As to the proffered intimacy with God through His Prophet, can this be doubted? What is that power that has sustained saints and apostles through inhuman ordeals and apparent loneliness? The truly great rise like mountains above the plains of popular thought and cannot hope to be understood by the lesser. Why the tranquil fortitude which they exhibit? It is easy to say that they are willing to be lost in the greatness of a great Cause, but there is something beyond the ethical sacrifice for principle in a Paul, a John, or a Stephen. They were alone many times but never can one depict them as lonely. Their sacrifice is triumphant. The early history of the Bahá’í Faith reminds us that a force here again existed capable of exacting such sacrifice. Twenty thousand not only gave their lives but gave them joyously, as if possessing a rare treasure entirely lost to their tormentors. Nor did the blare of trumpets and acclamation of the populace account for their courage. The crowd was not with them; in most instances any one of them found himself quite alone. What assurance of companionship must have lighted the countenance of Qurban Ali in his last hour when at the hands of the executioner a blow displaced his turban and evoked these exultant words:

“Happy he whom love’s intoxication

So hath overcome that scarce he knows

Whether at the feet of his Beloved

It be head or turban that he throws.”

How sublime is the flash of intimacy we catch in the circumstance of the young martyr, Muhammad Ali, whose persecutors offered him liberty in exchange for simple denial. The young man’s quiet challenge as he turned to the Beloved of the world, strikes at the heart of every faithful soul. “What better have you to offer me? In Him I have found my Paradise.” Never will any heart find any higher assurance than this companionship. It transcends every affliction; it sends down its roots in the law of God; it finds purpose in all things; it sees the face of God in a clear mirror; it lives and moves and has its being in His Spirit; it rests and is assured. Bahá’u’lláh has come that every human soul courageously facing the Valley of Search may find the City of Assurance.

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THE UNFOLDMENT OF WORLD CIVILIZATION

By SHOGHI EFFENDI

VI

WHO else can be the blissful if not the community of the Most Great Name, whose world-embracing, continually consolidating activities constitute the one integrating process in a world whose institutions, secular as well as religious, are for the most part dissolving? They indeed are “the people of the right,” whose “noble habitation” is fixed on the foundations of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh—the Ark of everlasting salvation in this most grievous Day. Of all the kindreds of the earth they alone can recognize, amidst the welter of a tempestuous age, the Hand of the Divine Redeemer that traces its course and controls its destinies. They alone are aware of the silent growth of that orderly world polity whose fabric they themselves are weaving.

Conscious of their high calling, confident in the society-building power which their Faith possesses, they press forward, undeterred and undismayed, in their efforts to fashion and perfect the necessary instruments wherein the embryonic World Order of Bahá’u’lláh can mature and develop. It is this building process, slow and unobtrusive, to which the life of the world-wide Bahá’í Community is wholly consecrated, that constitutes the one hope of a stricken society. For this process is actuated by the generating influence of God’s changeless Purpose, and is evolving within the framework of the Administrative Order of His Faith.

In a world the structure of whose political and social institutions is impaired, whose vision is befogged, whose conscience is bewildered, whose religious systems have become anemic and lost their virtue, this healing Agency, this leavening Power, this cementing Force, intensely alive and all-pervasive, has been taking shape, is crystallizing into institutions, is mobilizing its forces, and is preparing for the spiritual conquest [Page 336] and the complete redemption of mankind. Though the society which incarnates its ideals be small and its direct and tangible benefits as yet inconsiderable, yet the potentialities with which it has been endowed, and through which it is destined to regenerate the individual and rebuild a broken world, are incalculable.

For well nigh a century it has, amid the noise and tumult of a distracted age, and despite the incessant persecutions to which its leaders, institutions, and followers have been subjected, succeeded in preserving its identity, in reinforcing its stability and strength, in maintaining its organic unity, in preserving the integrity of its laws and its principles, in erecting its defences, and in extending and consolidating its institutions. Numerous and powerful have been the forces that have schemed, both from within and from without, in lands both far and near, to quench its light and abolish its holy name. Some have apostatized from its principles, and betrayed ignominiously its cause. Others have hurled against it the fiercest anathemas which the embittered leaders of any ecclesiastical institution are able to pronounce. Still others have heaped upon it the afflictions and humiliations which sovereign authority can alone, in the plentitude of its power, inflict.

The utmost its avowed and secret enemies could hope to achieve was to retard its growth and obscure momentarily its purpose. What they actually accomplished was to purge and purify its life, to stir it to still greater depths, to galvanize its soul, to prune its institutions, and cement its unity. A schism, a permanent cleavage in the vast body of its adherents, they could never create.

They who betrayed its cause, its lukewarm and faint-hearted supporters, withered away and dropped as dead leaves, powerless to cloud its radiance or to imperil its structure. Its most implacable adversaries, they who assailed it from without, were hurled from power, and, in the most astonishing fashion, met their doom. Persia had been the first to repress and oppose it. Its monarchs had miserably fallen, their dynasty had collapsed, their name was execrated, the hierarchy that had been their ally and had propped their declining state, had been utterly discredited. Turkey, which had thrice banished its Founder and inflicted on Him cruel and life-long imprisonment, had passed through one of the severest ordeals and far-reaching revolutions that its history has recorded, had shrunk from one of the most powerful empires to a tiny Asiatic republic, its sultanate obliterated, its dynasty overthrown, its caliphate, the mightiest institution of Islám, abolished.

Meanwhile the Faith that had been the object of such monstrous betrayals, and the target for such woeful assaults, was going from strength to strength, was forging ahead, undaunted and undivided by the injuries it had received. In the midst of trials it had inspired its loyal followers with a resolution that no obstacle, however formidable, could undermine. It had lighted in their hearts a faith that no misfortune, however black, could quench. It had [Page 337] infused into their hearts a hope that no force, however determined, could shatter.

CEASING to designate to itself a movement, a fellowship and the like—designations that did grave injustice to its ever-unfolding system —dissociating itself from such appelations as Bábí sect, Asiatic cult, and offshoot of Shí’ah Islám, with which the ignorant and the malicious were wont to describe it, refusing to be labelled as a mere philosophy of life, or as an eclectic code of ethical conduct, or even as a new religion, the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh is now visibly succeeding in demonstrating its claim and title to be regarded as a World Religion, destined to attain, in the fullness of time, the status of a world-embracing Commonwealth, which would be at once the instrument and the guardian of the Most Great Peace announced by its Author. Far from wishing to add to the number of the religious systems, whose conflicting loyalties have for so many generations disturbed the peace of mankind, this Faith is instilling into each of its adherents a new love for, and a genuine appreciation of the unity underlying, the various religions represented within its pale.

“It is like a wide embrace,” such is the testimony of Royalty to its claim and position, “gathering together all those who have long searched for words of hope. It accepts all great Prophets gone before it, destroys no other creeds, and leaves all doors open.” “The Bahá’í teaching,” she has further written, “brings peace to the soul and hope to the heart. To those in search of assurance the words of the Father are as a fountain in the desert after long wandering.” “Their writings,” she, in another statement referring to Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, has testified, “are a great cry toward peace, reaching beyond all limits of frontiers, above all dissension about rites and dogmas . . . It is a wondrous message that Bahá’u’lláh and His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá have given us. They have not set it up aggressively knowing that the germ of eternal truth which lies at its core cannot but take root and spread.” “If ever the name of Bahá’u’lláh or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,” is her concluding plea, “comes to your attention, do not put their writings from you. Search out their Books, and let their glorious, peace-bringing, love-creating words and lessons sink into your hearts as they have into mine.”

The Faith of Bahá’u’lláh has assimilated, by virtue of its creative, its regulative and ennobling energies, the varied races, nationalities, creeds and classes that have sought its shadow, and have pledged unswerving fealty to its cause. It has changed the hearts of its adherents, burned away their prejudices, stilled their passions, exalted their conceptions, ennobled their motives, coordinated their efforts, and transformed their outlook. While preserving their patriotism and safeguarding their lesser loyalties, it has made them lovers of mankind, and the determined upholders of its best and truest interests. While maintaining intact their belief in the Divine origin of their respective religions, it has enabled them to [Page 338] visualize the underlying purpose of these religions, to discover their merits, to recognize their sequence, their interdependence, their wholeness and unity, and to acknowledge the bond that vitally links them to itself. This universal, this transcending love which the followers of the Bahá’í Faith feel for their fellow-men, of whatever race, creed, class or nation, is neither mysterious nor can it be said to have been artificially stimulated. It is both spontaneous and genuine. They whose hearts are warmed by the energizing influence of God’s creative love cherish His creatures for His sake, and recognize in every human face a sign of His reflected glory.

Of such men and women it may be truly said that to them “every foreign land is a fatherland, and every fatherland a foreign land.” For their citizenship, it must be remembered, is in the Kingdom of Bahá’u’lláh. Though willing to share to the utmost the temporal benefits and the fleeting joys which this earthly life can confer, though eager to participate in whatever activity that conduces to the richness, the happiness and peace of that life, they can, at no time, forget that it constitutes no more than a transient, a very brief stage of their existence, that they who live it are but pilgrims and wayfarers whose goal is the Celestial City and whose home the Country of never-failing joy and brightness.

Though loyal to their respective governments, though profoundly interested in anything that affects their security and welfare, though anxious to share in whatever promotes their best interests, the Faith with which the followers of Bahá’u’lláh stand identified is one which they firmly believe God has raised high above the storms, the divisions, and controversies of the political arena. Their Faith they conceive to be essentially non-political, supra-national in character, rigidly non-partisan, and entirely dissociated from nationalistic ambitions, pursuits, and purposes. Such a Faith knows no division of class or of party. It subordinates, without hesitation or equivocation, every particularistic interest, be it personal, regional, or national, to the paramount interests of humanity, firmly convinced that in a world of inter-dependent peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the advantage of the whole, and that no abiding benefit can be conferred upon the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are ignored or neglected.

(To be concluded)

[Page 339]

SEVEN CANDLES OF UNITY

A Symposium

III. UNITY IN THE POLITICAL REALM

By MARION HOLLEY

“While the fires still lie dormant, the nations, buttressed by the shield of their common purpose, move up circle by circle toward the Light.”

James T. Shotwell

IT was less than a hundred years ago that the Bahá’í Faith was announced, and less than seventy years, that Bahá’u’lláh Founder of this Faith, summoned the kings and emperors of Europe and the East to the Most Great Peace. Since then the peoples of the world have been immersed in wave after wave of violence, —wars between nations, civil wars, wars of conquest, and recently, although not finally, the Great War, the effects of which still rage in the hearts of many nations in a disquieting and fearsome way.

One would say, surveying the world of 1936, that the practice of peace is still as remote from realistic usage in politics as in the days of Bahá’u’lláh’s first pronouncement; one would deduce, on the basis of strict reasoning from events, that the achievement of such an ideal must be relinquished to some future generation in a time we cannot dare to guess. Yet ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, son of Bahá’u’lláh, wrote with confidence of the twentieth century that “the unity of all mankind can in this day be achieved. Verily this is none other but one of the wonders of this wondrous age. . . .”

It is with a just sense of the relationship between the whole goal as envisioned by Bahá’u’lláh, and one of its first manifestations, that we must approach this subject of unity in the political realm. For there can be no doubt that unification of the states which comprise the political map of the world, while it will make a tremendous advance in organized government, will only prepare for the epoch of well-being which must surely follow. Political unity will provide for the first time in human history the mechanism whereby federated [Page 340] states may be enabled to plan for the welfare, security and happiness of mankind as a whole.

THE conception of peace is not a new one, nor is the idea of an all-inclusive state unique. Although there is no necessary correlation between these two, it is a fact that the extension of ties between groups has usually established, at least for a brief period, an area wherein peaceful rather than warlike methods might prevail. The Pax Romana is a notable early example: peace within the vast dominion of the Roman Empire which, to be sure, had pushed out its boundaries through the exploits of efficient legions. Even the disintegration of the Pax under the steady pressure of uprising native tribes could not erase altogether the memory of it, which surged as a recurrent hope for hundreds of years beneath the surface of medieval history. The early Christian Church did foster a bond of common belief which cemented many discordant factions; through the Truce of God it attempted to limit feudal strife; combining Church and State, often in strained matrimony, the Holy Roman Empire sought to reconstruct its more vital namesake. Despite these trends, however, the states of Europe entered into the modern epoch at swords’ points.

It is not part of this subject to examine the causes of that transformation which gradually pervaded the kingdoms of the Middle Ages, until there emerged in their stead new nations of liberated men who, possessed of middle-class vigor and curiosity, turned themselves to the pursuit of power, wealth and knowledge with equal voracity. The establishment of strong, centralized national governments marked for political bodies the achievement of their most complex and active form. Indeed, compared to previous social groups, whether family, tribe, city-state, kingdom, or empire, the modern nation eclipsed all in its combination of size with a close-knit, effective, representative organization.

In the nineteenth century it became an essential matter to curb and counter-poise these national entities, if each was not to destroy the others. For each was the natural rival of every other, in a race for the same territories, raw materials and trade. In this scramble, not mutual trust but the theory of a balance of power was utilized to maintain a comparative peace. Not that the nineteenth-century desired peace, for imperialism could not live in a vacuum; yet an excess of war, it was realized, might debilitate and destroy the very gains which had been acquired. Thus at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the great nations combined in a Quadruple Alliance dedicated to the preservation of what they termed the status quo, that is, things as they were, since for them the division of spoils was favorable and pleasing.

It must be admitted, therefore, that through selfish motives the idea of international government first reached concrete embodiment in modern times. This at least was positive, as were the agreements abolishing slave trade and arranging an international river navigation. The four [Page 341] Powers conceived a perpetuation of their Congress, moreover, voting to “renew their meetings at fixed periods” to discuss matters “of common interest.” Unfortunately, the common interest was limited entirely to the strong, for throughout the sessions there was a crude neglect of the opinions of lesser states. When certain of these referred, through Talleyrand, to their rights under international law, Humboldt of Prussia made brief reply: “Might is right; we do not recognize the law of nations to which you have appealed.”

The Congress was short-lived and the status quo often in jeopardy. On the one hand were the continued efforts of nations to aggrandize themselves; perhaps even more serious were the revolutions which convulsed the whole of Europe, as the democratic ideal strengthened, demanding life and justice for the peoples espousing it. Now there could be no real justice in the system based on the crystallization of things as they are, for society is above all dynamic and everchanging. It was the rigidity of nineteenth-century international life which made it so precarious. Yet from this rigidity the nations knew no escape, or were unwilling to pay for it the price of reduced independence of individual action. Sovereignty they prized above all else, and it was this treacherous vision which assisted in the preparation of a world stage set for the greatest of all wars.

STRANGELY enough, after four years of self-inflicted punishment, a period of trouble apparently long enough to have bred a minimum of common sense, the nations sat down again at conference, this time in Versailles, to draw up a treaty as unstable at the core as that previous one of Vienna a century before. Into it they incorporated, however, a document which has gained enduring fame, despite the fact that it has been outrageously violated as a consequence of the very weakness of the Treaty as a whole. The Covenant of the League of Nations marked the birth of an institution which may fail in the present but must succeed, however modified, in the long run. For as James Shotwell has written in this spring of 1936, with the League at its lowest ebb: “There are now two remedies offered to us. The one is the resort to the threat of force in politics of power; the other is international cooperation not merely for peace but for prosperity as well.”

However ill-starred the fate of the League of Nations may appear, we who stand today at the height of a long course of human history may readily perceive a certain trend of events—an expansion of areas of organization, an increasing complexity of national relationships, a strengthening anarchy where organization fails to succeed, and finally a vital need for some truly international form of government which should, according to the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, “be regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organization of human society. . . .” This trend is consistent in its direction and guarantees that “unity in the political realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned.”

[Page 342] But undermining weaknesses beset the pathway, which the League’s falterings have emphasized. Not until these have been corrected can the nations hope to establish that collective security so clearly defined a century ago by Bahá’u’lláh. First and most obvious, of course, is the fact that no true League of Nations really exists, since a number of the most influential states have never joined or have withdrawn from that body. Universal participation is a minimum requirement for collective action. Second, authority is necessary and this depends upon two factors which are inter-related. So long as the principle of state sovereignty is generally accepted, it will remain impossible to originate and impose sanctions adequate “to ensure the efficacy of the proposed system,” particularly when such sanctions may affect the more respected nations. A centralized authority, backed if need by force, must be securely established. Third, the system must rest upon a stable basis, which involves a restatement and general acceptance of international law, privileges, holdings, and responsibilities. The Versailles Treaty can only continue to irritate the vanquished, and those smaller powers and national minorities which were manipulated against their wills. Fourth, such a League should be unrestricted in its aims; it cannot be bound to political considerations nor even to the quest for world peace. The source of chaos and war—which are buried deep in economic unrest, population pressures, race rivalries, religious fanaticism, and social unbalance of every type—if sought out and gradually cured, will lead to a health and vitality which the present meager conception of peace wholly fails to encompass. Finally, the raison d’être must never be set aside, for unless this new League of Nations holds faithfully and tenaciously to the common welfare as its guide and goal, it will have failed utterly. It will have become a mechanism perfect only in conception, destructive in operation.

THESE are the corrections which must occur before collective security can be won. These were the principles enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh in His Tablets to the kings and governors of the world. In reality, such a League is the International House of Justice which He envisioned. To Queen Victoria He wrote, addressing “the concourse of the rulers of the earth:” “Take ye counsel together, and let your concern be only for that which profiteth mankind and bettereth the conditions thereof. . . . Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may need armaments no more save in a measure to safeguard your territories and dominions. Be united . . . for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you and your peoples find rest. Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.”

To inaugurate such a regime, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá marked out certain definite steps. “The sovereigns of the world,” He wrote, “must conclude a binding treaty, and establish a covenant, the provisions of which shall be sound, inviolable and definite. They must proclaim it to all the [Page 343] world, and obtain for it the sanction of all the human race. . . . All the forces of humanity must be mobilized to insure the stability and permanence of this Most Great Covenant. . . . The fundamental principle underlying this solemn Pact should be so fixed that if any government later violate any one of its provisions, all the governments on earth should arise to reduce it to utter submission, nay the human race as a whole should resolve, with every power at its disposal, to destroy that government.”

Were contemporary states to take these steps, unity in the political realm would be established. But this, every Bahá’í knows, would be only the “Lesser Peace.” Yet it is becoming increasingly sure that even this primary phase of world organization will not be reached without more passionate and violent struggle; today we are not ready to admit or embrace it. Today we cherish an ancient fetish, as Shoghi Effendi has called state sovereignty, and if it kills us or no, we blind our eyes to the fact that “Nation-building has come to an end.”

That it will not kill us, however, is a prime faith with the followers of Bahá’u’lláh. These convulsions of modern times—the fears, losses, violences and betrayals—are symptomatic of, indeed are necessary to the overthrow of a barren and long-crystallized system of civilization, in favor of a new Order, world-wide in its scope and unimaginably fruitful in its future. It is an Order which shall mark “the coming of age of the entire human race.” Its achievement shall herald the “Most Great Peace,” “a peace that must inevitably follow as the practical consequence of the spiritualization of the world and the fusion of all its races, creeds, classes and nations. . . .”

Let us not despair, therefore, at the peak of crisis nor regret that our destinies are fixed in an earth-shaking period. This century has entered upon a task, the first phase of which is the formation of a federated world. With the machinery secured, who can tell what human adventures, what satisfactions, what triumphs may ensue?

“A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation —such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving.”

[Page 344]

THE BIRTH OF JUSTICE

By ROSA V. WINTERBURN

THE best of all to Me is Justice,” says Bahá’u’lláh, and He must surely have been looking forward into this age when He gave utterance to words like these which should become a daily household guide. If His followers could live the justice that Bahá’u’lláh teaches, so plainly that all with whom they come in contact could see and feel its meaning, then would the leaven of spiritual life spread its quickening power through the deadened mass of injustice that plagues the world today.

Cries, pleadings, rebellions against “man’s inhumanity to man” arise on every side, for the globe is circled with the burdens and oppressions of injustice. As spiritual faith and power have weakened during the last century, there has been an appalling growth of immorality among the many, and of increasingly rampant activity among the selfish and evil-minded, who either defy and ignore all sense of justice, or who deliberately twist and contort it to fit their own vile services. Meanwhile, however, men are struggling ever more intelligently against the evils that block their progress, for in all civilized nations there is an awakening life understanding which demands keener, cleaner justice.

The fact of the increase in evil arouses fair-minded men to a more insistent demand for greater rights for all; and, notwithstanding all the misery, danger, and puzzlement around us, there is better and more universal justice in the world now than ever before. The light of the new Manifestation has begun to illumine even remote places of the world, and man is turning to face his God. The ignorance and repression of millions have been partially replaced by a released and educated intelligence. An increasing number of students, investigators, and experimenters in the fields of human justice and progress are arousing in men a more sensitive social conscience. Consequently, most human suffering is being looked upon as remediable or unnecessary. Inharmony, hate, crime, war, are beginning to be recognized as remnants of man’s primitive savagery, which must give way to love and justice. Man will never be perfect, [Page 345] but society is turning eagerly to a fuller justice as a means of further human upliftment. So there is a muttering storm of protest against injustice, and a wave of demands for greater justice in establishing rights and happiness. As yet, but few comprehend the spiritual significance of the upheaval. In spite of frequent prophecies of great social changes, there is almost universal ignorance of the fact that powerful spiritual forces are already shaping a new cycle of civilization.

Every civilization which has originated in a divine Manifestation has brought with it standards of life fitted to the comprehension of the people to whom the special Manifestation came. Such standards are always accompanied by a body of spiritual teachings, which, as they are obeyed, lift the believers to new levels of life. Thus a new and distinct age is shaped. Fundamentals of right are approximately the same in all the great spiritual teachings, but the details for regulating their daily use have always differed greatly. These local regulations have to be so presented that they are understandable by those to whom they are given. According to his stage of intelligence man has always been guided by divine teachings to demand justice for himself and for those whom he must protect, and naturally his idea of justice has reflected his environment. As a result of the coming of these divine teachings from age to age, the conception of justice and of the field of its activity has broadened with every step into higher civilization, until today man demands as a right what it would have been madness to indulge in as a dream in earlier days. With justice ever advancing and producing vast changes in the social structure, what may be the broader meanings and sweeter truths held for man in the fuller knowledge of the Divine Justice as unfolded for the new age by Bahá’u’lláh! The ceaseless guarding and enlargement of justice in the spiritual revelations of all previous ages gives assurance that the new Revelation will provide for the new age. The teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá contain many explanations of justice and commands concerning it. Believers may easily make themselves familiar with them, so that by their conduct and teachings they may carry into all life the Bahá’í instructions concerning justice. As this is done man’s relation to his fellow men and all social conditions will change as marvellously and happily as when Christian standards slowly replaced the old Roman imperialism, based on slavery of individuals and nations.

Easily accessible to all in the “Hidden Words” is this selection from the pen of Bahá’u’lláh: “Justice is loved above all. Neglect it not, if thou desirest Me. By it thou wilt be strengthened to perceive things with thine own eyes and not by the eye of men, to know them by thine own knowledge and not by the knowledge of any in the world. Meditate on this —how thou oughtest to be. Justice is of My Bounty to thee and of My Providence over thee; therefore keep it ever before thy sight.”

THE instructions and commands [Page 346] are plain. If we desire the Divine Beauty we dare not neglect justice in our own lives. Justice in business, in family relations, in social contacts, even towards ourselves. Out of a steady effort to live justly in every action, there will come unwonted strength to stand upright in God’s work. If we study devotedly and thoughtfully what we should be and do, “how thou oughtest to be,” God’s Providence will protect us and His Bounty will provide for us, for, after even the great gift of justice from the Divine Hand, there are many other gifts left for us in His Bounty and Providence. But the promise is accompanied by the inescapable command, “Neglect it not, if thou desirest Me.” “Keep it ever before thy sight.” Can any one fail or be downcast who really believes in this justice which is “best of all to Me,” and who tries faithfully to live it every day! Wonderful, also, is the assurance that such faithful effort to live justice will broaden our vision, strengthen our intelligence, increase our knowledge. In this way has obedience to Divine commands always uplifted man.

In “Words of Wisdom” Bahá’u’lláh speaks of justice as freedom for man, and as if He would give the assurance that He, too, is guided by the desire to be just to all men. “The source of all these utterances is Justice. It is the freedom of man from superstition and imitation, that he may discern the Manifestation of God with the eyes of Oneness, and to consider all affairs with keen sight.” “The source of all these utterances is Justice.” God wills that man should be free from superstition and imitation; so, out of his divine Justice, flow the utterances of His Manifestation, instructing man how to gain freedom through adherence himself to justice. Superstitions and imitations drop away as man strives to understand and live the divine justice. He discerns the “Oneness” of the Manifestations, and with “keen sight” he perceives that “all affairs” have always moved and always will move according to a divine and continuing plan. Hence, justice, which is “best of all” in the divine plan, must be learned and lived by man. In this utterance there is also a profound lesson in the theory and philosophy of education. “It (justice) is the freedom of man from superstition and imitation;” yet how much of our schooling consists of these very hangovers. Teachers of children and adults should train their scholars to “consider all affairs with keen sight,” freeing themselves from “superstition and imitation” so that the clear light of justice may shine through the world’s dark entanglements.

From “Words of Wisdom” we learn: “The light of men is Justice; quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of Justice is the appearance of unity among the peoples.” Since the purpose of justice is unity, it follows that before unity can be reached justice must prevail. But selfishness, greed, corruption, abound until the world is filled with the miseries of a vast injustice. Our own immediate sphere may be small, but as a center from which justice may spread it can never be unimportant. To the best of [Page 347] our ability we can live such justice towards the few people around us that unity will be promoted in family, business, and general social relations. If unity does not exist, its absence may be traced to some injustice, real or fancied, which may be tormenting some one. If so, and justice can be done and acknowledged, unity is almost sure to follow. To live up to such justice in one’s immediate environment is a great task; it is a stupendous one to establish justice in this greedy, corrupt, war-torn world. Since, however, God commands man to do it in this present age, we may be sure that it can be done. The task of each believer is himself and his immediate surroundings, and since justice is the light for man, the more sincerely we practice all that we know of justice, the more brightly will burn that light which is eventually to illumine all men. Beware of oppression and tyranny, our own or that of others, for they are the “contrary winds” that imperil the light we fain would carry high.

From “Glad Tidings” comes the following: “O people of God! The trainer of the world is Justice, for it consists of two pillars, reward and retribution. These two pillars are two fountains for the life of the people of the world.” Justice, “the trainer of the world!” When once this conviction is reached, it does not easily leave a thoughtful man, for he realizes that result goes with him always, following inexorably thought or vacuity, action or inaction, good-will or evil-will. Nowhere is the fearsome precision of justice more apparent than in the inevitability of results from every act, from the mere fact of living. The instructed wise man, however, does not fear results, for he finds in the precision of justice the “light” of guidance; he recognizes in it the “trainer of men” whose vigilance never relaxes. When men—and children —learn thoroughly the lesson that the rewards and retributions (punishments) of life are the logical, inevitable results of actions, their own or those of others, and recognize the pure justice of this fact, they will swing on to the pathway of intelligent, considered action and control. The bestower of rewards and punishments, if justice enters into his make-up, will do well to see to it most honorably that justice and not selfish or tyrannical impulses governs his awards.

These are some of the advanced spiritual means of justice by which Bahá’u’lláh is leading us out into the light of a new day. There are many others which make us realize that the new age will have wonderful new lights and new meanings. In some of the utterances older commands are reaffirmed because their basic truths have not yet been assimilated, as in this one: “O Son of Man! Wert thou to observe Mercy thou wouldst not regard thine own interest, but the interest of mankind. Wert thou to observe Justice, choose for others what thou choosest for thyself.” Thousands of years have not yet taught man the sweetness of this command, nor obliterated the selfishness that causes injustice and that still holds a deadly grip on the world; but there are surely many signs that [Page 348] by means of the lives of “just men” the justice of unselfishness is slowly prevailing. May God speed its progress!

Bahá’u’lláh’s promise of a joyful outcome is with us, even though it is coupled with a reference to the darkness lowering over the world: “Justice is, in this day, bewailing its plight, and Equity groaneth beneath the yoke of oppression. The thick clouds of tyranny have darkened the face of the earth, and enveloped its peoples. Through the movement of Our Pen of glory We have, at the bidding of the omnipotent Ordainer, breathed a new life into every human frame and instilled into every word a fresh potency. All created things proclaim the evidences of this worldwide regeneration. This is the most great, the most joyful tidings imparted by the pen of this wronged One to mankind. Wherefore, fear ye, O My well-beloved ones! Who is it that can dismay you? The mere act of your gathering together is enough to scatter the forces of these vain and worthless people.”

“O people of Justice! Be as brilliant as the light, and as splendid as the fire that blazed in the Burning Bush. The brightness of the fire of your love will no doubt fuse and unify the contending peoples and kindreds of the earth, whilst the fierceness of the flame of enmity and hatred cannot but result in strife and ruin. We beseech God that He may shield His creatures from the evil designs of His enemies. He verily hath power over all things.”

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The virtues of humanity are many but science is the most noble of them all. The distinction which man enjoys above and beyond the station of the animal is due to this paramount virtue. It is a bestowal of God; it is not material, it is divine.—‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

[Page 349]

THE CHALLENGE

By OLIVIA KELSEY

THAT Day when man should yield his will

To God, dawned!

Though not a single breath of Unity

Was wafting to the Court of Holiness,

The ‘Mystic Bird’ gazed earthward

‘Seeking one heart severed

That He might alight therein to nest.’

Saw souls stifling

‘In the garment of a thousand years ago.’

Man, whose destiny is Godward,

Enthralled in selfhood,

Alien to the Mystic Song;—

His plight known to but One,

The Knower!

Faithful to Command,

That ‘Bird of Heaven’ circled

The abyss of godlessness, crying:

“Oh people! I am He and He is Me!”

As the spirit liberated by His Words

Mirrored the cosmos,

Aloft two mighty Pillars flamed:

‘Reward and Retribution!’

“O mortals! Will ye be content

With that which is like vapor in a plain,

Unmindful of the precepts of your Lord?

By one word He called you into being!

Will ye not be thankful?

I am come to you, O people,

From the Throne of Glory!

Would that your hearts might comprehend!”

Falling on rocks His words had yielded

Springs of crystal water,

But impenetrable the heart of man,

Deprived of Faith!

Holding aloft ‘a Chalice of Pure Light’

He saw no arm outstretched to seize it,

[Page 350]

Nor heart that would reflect it.

Remote from Truth is man

That He could view that Flaming Cup

Immune to rapture!

Faithless to His Trust, when he,

‘Created from a clot,’ was covenanted

To reflect to all the kingdoms

Eternity and God.

In them the Law is honored—

Their fruits garnered,

While man roves, phantom-like,

The vale of heedlessness.

How can this shadow make reply to God?

Never plead ye were not warned

That fear and overwhelming grief

Would shake you!

For through unreckoned aeons

True Ones came

To reconcile your will to God’s,

That Truth might be renowned.

Forsaken and decried,

They sang “A Day of God” and “Covenant”—

A people living lordly exhortations

And commands;

His people they, and He their God.

Have ye imagined all their counsels

But idle musings of a ‘moving form of dust?’

‘Lo! The Promised One hath come!’

This is the Day of Knowledge and of Love;

The Day wherein the True shall be distinguished

From the false;

And ‘none secure from this Decree:’

Thy evil deeds and secrets

Nurtured in satanic gloom,

Shall sear thy soul with torment;—

And ye shall know what God hath known!

Calamity, Thy cradle is Irán!

Thy ulamás ‘knew not’ Jesus nor Muhammad,

Or Him ye would have known, The Promised One,

Of Whom They prophesied!

Behold He hath all life—all rhythm changed!

Now is the soul’s oblivion pierced,

[Page 351]

As from the grave of negligence

Your hosts unleash

Their calumnies and cruelties,

Their doubts and base denials—

Inner life and outward form that sprang

From human thought—all

To perish in the tumult of a dying day!

Almighty Day! When only that shall stand

Which serves the Lord, thy God!

And this thy theme, thine inmost urge—

One Faith, one Race, one common Cause!

Now from the Day-Spring of a vital Faith

The Covenant takes form,

And shielded in the Tabernacle

Of a Mighty Soul,

Rises from out the chaos

Of receding dispensations!

‘O ye people of discernment’

Sing praises unto God—

He comes—and in His hand the Cup!

His triumphant song of Oneness

Arresting the movement of the world!

Transcending warring cycles, He,

The Ensign of the Most Great Peace,

Salutes the Promised Day:

“Lord! Here am I!”

The Ancient Law,

Revealed in symbols in the Day of Abraham;

In Moses’ Day inscribed in flaming Tablets;

Is, in this matchless Day, incarnate in a Man,

Who ‘embodies every virtue, every ideal

Of this Holy Cycle’s Goal!’

“Magnified be God for this exalted Handiwork!

Unto God, O people, render thanks for His appearance!

He is the Most Great Favor unto you,

The Trust of God amongst you,

His charge within you!”

‘Taking the cloak of resignation

In the name of God,’

He taught and labored

In this womb-life of the spirit,

[Page 352]

Hailing with unerring pen

The Renaissance of Nations,

When The Law exalted in the hearts

Shall guide the people.

Shaken from her slumber, Russia

Glimpsed the vision leading on to destiny!

Then her Czar sought a parliament of nations,

While ‘Ishqábád’s strong-hearted

Seized and clothed that Spirit

In a ‘Dawning-Point-of-Light!’

Assurance to a soul-tried people

Of a sacred commonwealth—

The pivot of Divine Economy!

Gaze toward ‘Akká!

Soil of bondage! Soil of Spirit!

Where in savage conflict

Muslim and Crusader met!

Where the Ancient Suns of God

Saw the vision of This Day:

Melchizedek, Elijah, Abraham and Jesus!

There, in towering grandeur,

Came The Exile—

Master Builder of ‘The Day of God,’

And His Mighty ‘Ark of Covenant,’

A tender Youth adorned

In ‘Robe of Servitude!’

O misleaders of the people!

Prophet slayers and Their Chosen!

Grievous is your plight:—

He for Whom ye prayed a thousand years

Hath come,

And ye knew Him not!

‘Akká, hearthstone of The Servant!

To His Open Court hasten—

Over mountains, deserts, seas—

The yearning!

Race and Faith converging

In a Crucible of Spirit

Knowing neither East nor West!

This is Heaven!

There is Carmel, Fragrant Mountain,

And Bahji, o’er the Bay,

[Page 353]

Glorified by Him in Shrines.

Holy the soil that He bore there

And flowers He tenderly caressed;—

Earth, in exquisite remembrance,

Blooms a New Eden!

Fitting couch for El Báb,

Whose crimson light

Cleft the Morn of Promised Day;

And ‘Him-Whom-God-Hath-Manifest,’

The Promised One!

Hallowed is thy Mystic Fane

That conceals Their rest,

Most lowly, most transcendent Earth!

Ages and their traces vanished,

Thy Perfumed Spot shall breathe

‘Tidings from God’

To the souls of men!

‘Akká, soil of service!

Soil of freedom!

Where His childhood, youth and age

Were ceded to this New Creation,

‘Which shall ever stand unrivalled,

Uneclipsed in splendor.’

His enemies are scattered now

And martyrdom has won.

Across the threshold of His prison home

He sweeps,

The Object of devotion such as kings

Might envy,

To engage the final epic

Of His threefold Mission!

Egypt! Europe! Westward—to America!

Bent with age and cares He comes!

On His brow dominion!

In His melting glance forgiveness!

His utterance the future!

His life dynamic acclamation

Of the Oneness of Mankind!

From that visitation

Ages shall inherit manna.

Here at Gotham’s portals,

[Page 354]

Where first the West embraced Him,

‘Clothed in majesty’

He laid the ‘Mantle of the Covenant’

Exhorting its inhabitants

To spiritual distinction!

Then in the nation’s midmost heart

He blest the Earth

Whereon would rise a Sacred Edifice to God,

A symbol that this earth shall be indeed

A Paradise,

And all men live as brothers

In the ‘Most Great Peace.’

His Prayer:—

“O God! My God! I call Thee

And all Thy Holy Ones to witness

That I have declared conclusively

Thy Proofs unto Thy loved ones,

And set forth clearly all things unto them,

That they may watch . . . guard . . . and protect

Thy Law Resplendent . . .”

Ah, ‘could you but know

His burning love for you

‘Twould kindle in your hearts a fire

To set aflame the world!’

‘Being “round Whom all names revolve!”

The pride and glory of mankind!’

“Honored the land you visited!

Blest the eye, the ear, the heart, the breast

Through Thy remembrance dilated!

The tongue that mentions Thee!

The pen that celebrates Thy praise!

Blest, doubly blest

The ground trod by Thy feet!”

And when the Breeze of Mercy rends the veils,

Still shalt Thou be “The Mystery of God.”

America! Ye must arise

To ‘forge the Mystic Chain’

And ‘if His wishes are to be fulfilled’,

Unfurl the standard of the ‘Most Great Peace!’

‘Your mission is unutterably great!’

[Page 355]

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

By BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK

The impulse of a great moral passion is the only power that can save the world. Economic changes cannot be brought about because of the selfishness of the nations. The nations are afraid to disarm because of fear.

Until the spirit of the nations is changed the process that is now underway will continue. . . . The practical problem is, How can the greed, the selfishness, the brutality, the callous disregard by the nations of their solemn pledges be eliminated?

Religion has been the guiding factor in the development of our civilization. Every advance from barbarism has been marked by the giving up of some course of action which individuals have come to recognize as sin. Lying and stealing have at various periods and places been virtues. The change has come about through preaching of a higher and better code and the gradual education of the minds of individual men until there has developed in the individual a conscience which will not permit him to lie or steal or take human life. —From The Church Peace Union.

We want a greater league and a better league, a real league of men’s wills . . . a league that goes deeper than diplomacy and wider than conference rooms, into the brains and hearts of resolute men. In short we want a new practical world religion whose declared objective is a federated world. —H. G. WELLS in Collier’s Weekly.

A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause, or perceived its motive. —BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

We have reached one of those crises in history when old institutions, sentiments and procedures, ideals and habits are being cracked and shattered by the upthrusting force of the superhuman growth of meaning and value. But these meanings and values cannot be consummated in the experience of human living until this old destructive debris is taken out of the way. Such is the present state of society. In face of such a situation anyone who thinks God will do it all and man has nothing to do, is wrapped in a blanket of delusion.

It may be that men will refuse to do this work of clearing the way for superhuman growth of meaning. It may be they will refuse to yield themselves to its transforming power. If so the great opportunity of this age to experience a flowering of meaning and value will pass. In that case, future historians will say: A springtime of history hovered near and then departed. After that came winter —HENRY NELSON WIEMAN in The Christian Century.

We have lived to see our harmless wings of fabric turn into carriers of destruction even more dangerous than [Page 356] battleships and guns. . . . While we (in aviation) have been drawing the world closer together in peace, we have stripped the armor of every nation in war. It is no longer possible to shield the heart of a country with its army. . . . I begin to realize we must look for a new type of security —security which is dynamic, not static, security which rests in intelligence, not force.

“I find cause for hope,” he added, “in the belief that power which must be bound to knowledge is less dangerous to civilization than that which is barbaric.” —CHARLES A. LINDBERGH.

Until religious aspiration does seek a synthesis . . . between individual life and truth, human beings both in Europe and America will, in one way or another, be dominated by machine technology and economic obsessions. The state, no matter whether it remain individualistic or become socialistic, will humanize the machine and socialize capital only if it can summon to its aid a new and more authentic religious culture. —The New Republic.

Many millions of people today know that there is no superior race. Whether we like it or not, the anthropologists insist that there is no pure race—we are mongrels! No, that is wrong, mongrels is a misnomer —we are humans. There is actually only one race.—JAMES H. YARD in The Christian Century.

It follows that war, the system of international duelling, must be abolished as a human institution, and in order to abolish it, it is imperative to discover a substitute which will enable changes to be brought about in the relationships of nations through a peaceful instead of a violent procedure. This substitute is to be found in federalism, because the federal bond is formed, not by the imposition of the imperial will of one nation or state upon the other, but through the voluntary and free assent of all the cooperating states.—The New Commonwealth.

The world today is changing. . . . We are coming out of one age and going into another, and all periods of transition are desperately dangerous. I would say that the world is now so bewildered, so confused, and so dreads going along the line that it has so far gone along, that if you seize and hold the initiative, you can set a new leaven working in the world —that is, if you are ready for the sacrifice of pride, prestige, and comfort. You can think and act, and the example of one man will undoubtedly affect thousands. Give this example to the world and it will follow you into a New Age.—GERALD HEARD, Conference of London Teachers.

The world’s equilibrium 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.—Words of Bahá’u’lláh.

[Page 357]

THE PHENOMENA OF LIFE

Book Review

By CHARLES FRINK

IT is quite probable that many readers have heard about or read Dr. George Crile’s recent scientific volume entitled “The Phenomena of Life.”

Herein Dr. Crile has summarized the results of nearly a half century of scientific investigations. He explains many of the phenomenal activities of the eternal but seemingly diametrical phases of life and death or, in other words, composition and decomposition: the physical body is in reality an electric battery that runs down. In his attempt to bridge the gap between the living and the non-living he concludes that all matter is electrical in nature and that in the final analysis all energy is radiant and electrical; that protoplasm (the substance that forms the principal portion of an animal or vegetable cell) must be generated and operated by radiant and electrical energy. The beginning of physical life is traced to solar radiance—lightning and terrestrial electricity from the nitrates. “Solar radiance,” he maintains, “added to the nitrates generates plants. Plants generate animals. Thus solar radiance generates (the physical) man.” It will be understood by the student of Bahá’í literature that the use of the noun “man,” according to Dr. Crile’s interpretation, refers particularly to the human brain as an highly evolved instrument through and by means of which man proves his superiority over the animal.

The uniqueness of Dr. Crile’s findings may be due to his discovery that the electrical potential (acid-alkali) balance within the cell governs the oxidation so necessary to living organisms. “This assumption,” he says, “led us to abandon physiological, chemical and morphological methods of attack upon our problem and turn to physics in the hope that, by the application of the principles of physics, we might identify the physical laws and forces in accordance with which the organism is constructed and operated.”

Oxidation—the slow burning of the carbon compounds stored in the plants—is described as causing the release in animals of solar radiance in the form of radiant and electric energy. At death the electric potential of cells is reduced to zero.

Dr. Crile refers to an experiment which clearly demonstrated the existence of latent electric energy stored in living things. Two dozen or more apples were cut in halves. These were piled on top of each other. Wires were extended from the extremities of this (Voltaic) pile to a small electric light bulb which was [Page 358] lighted from the latent electric energy released in the manner described. The life principle, we learn, existing within the cells of an apple is the same as that governing the cells of the more complex forms of animal life. Apples were made to “die” from the effects of an overdose of ether. Conversely, the life processes were quickened by injections of the heart stimulant known as adrenalin.

Science has determined that all organized or living beings are made up of and functioning by means of single-celled organisms called amoeba. Each of these cells is a minute bipolar mechanism or electric battery and “Since,” as Dr. Crile says, “in a bipolar mechanism, the electric current must flow from areas of higher to areas of lower potential, it is necessary to cite such facts as may tend to support the conception that the cells of the brain are the principal source of electric energy that coordinates the body and to show how the direction of the fabricated current is established.” This significant statement is taken from Chapter Nine. The contents of Chapter 10, entitled, “The Physical Nature of Mental Processes," should be of great interest to the neurologist in particular and to students of psychology in general.

Contemplation of the structural and functional marvels of the human brain, as revealed in this division of Dr. Crile’s work, can easily convince one of the necessity of the best of educational influences (“recorded patterns of action”) especially at the time of youth. He states, “The entire mass of the brain that constitutes the actual mechanism of the ‘mind’ consists roughly of two parts—the gray matter and the white matter. It is estimated that in the cerebral cortex (gray matter) there are 1,200 million protoplasmic units of energy-transformation, or cells. The white matter of the brain contains no cells. The white matter of the brain is not a dynamo, it is a matrix on which are recorded the patterns of action.” “Could one look with an eye of sufficient magnification into the recording matrix (white matter) of the brain of an individual, one would read in the configuration of its magnitude of action patterns, every act, every experience, every thought, every desire, every ideal of that individual from the moment of his birth.” “But within itself this plastic and passive matrix, on which the special senses have caused to be etched this network of conducting pathways of action, furnishes no power whereby it may operate its intricate system.” “It is in the cells of the gray matter of the brain that the energy required to operate this system (special senses) is generated.”

WITH gratitude for Dr. Criles’ scientific efforts we now have access to a graphic account of the structural and functional workings of the brain which “is an infinitely delicate energy-transformer and receiver.” We are also equally indebted to another famous scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute, who in his recent book, “Man the Unknown,” has shown that the human brain is more than a purely sensuous organ responding [Page 359] to stimulation of one or more of the five senses. Dr. Carrel, for instance, recognizes the demonstrable truth of telepathy. According to him every man is endowed with a certain amount of telepathic power. This power, generally and formerly known as the “Sixth Sense,” has perhaps been more accurately dubbed the “Extra-Sensory Perception.”

After studying the statements of these two great scientific contemporaries we can readily agree with Dr. Charles Potter who says in “Psychology Magazine,” “The great Continent of Opportunity is not Africa or South America, but the realm of human personality. It may well be, that out of the hidden reaches of our personalities we shall bring up powers beside which, even the radio will be child’s play.”

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LIVING

By DIANTHA CRISP

“You are so brave about Life”

Oftimes to her was said

Little the conception

Of the beauty she had known . . .

Little the conception

Of the music she had heard . . .

How could They know

The white ecstasies that lay

Behind the humor of her eyes

How could they know

The kindness of her touch

For the mundane things

Was her hands’ remembrance

Of untold Beauty held

Or that Love that seared her heart

With wounds that heal

Put stars for ever in her sky

To light the way

That each peak of ecstasy

That she had known

Lifted her from its deep descent

To an ever rising level

For the ordinary days . . .

So why should she not be brave

For she sees the Stars . . .

And feels the Beauty . . .

And treads the new ecstasies . . .

Of a Hidden Path.

[Page 360]

WORLD ORDER

“The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order.”—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

WHY this ominous breakdown of civilization, these revolutionary movements, this consuming strife of race, class and nation—this swift descent to some overwhelming political or economic war?

The old order perishes, not to be restored, but beneath the forces of destruction a universal, a divine Spirit remolds humanity within the creation of a new order and a new cycle of unity, of spiritual knowledge and of peace.

The central point of this progressive world movement is Bahá’u’lláh. His Life restored to the human heart its power of faith in God. His Teachings are a pure mirror reflecting purpose and meaning where all was chaos and confusion.

World Order Magazine is devoted to the promotion of these Teachings, which are the laws and principles of the new cycle. Month by month it affords glimpses of the new way of life and the New Civilization arising from the wreckage of the dead past.

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