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[Page 199]

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

WORLD ORDER

SEPTEMBER 1937

A NEW WORLD CONCEPTION • • • PAUL PEROFF

THE WAR IS ALWAYS WITH US • • DAVID HOFMAN

MAN’S CAPACITY • • • ALICE SIMMONS COX

RADIANT ACQUIESCENCE • • • ORCELLA REXFORD

THE WAY OF RELIGION • • • • • ERNEST PYE

PRICE 20c

[Page 200]

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER 1937 VOLUME 3 • NUMBER 6

YOUTH AND CHARACTER • EDITORIAL ....................................... 201

A NEW WORLD CONCEPTION • PAUL PEROFF ................................... 203

THE WAR IS ALWAYS WITH US • DAVID HOFMAN ............................ 207

THE HIDDEN WORDS OF BAHÁ’U’LLÁH • G. TOWNSHEND ............. 210

THE NEW CREATION. III • ALICE SIMMONS COX .............................. 214

RADIANT ACQUIESCENCE • ORCELLA R-EXFORD .................... 220

EDUCATION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER • GENEVIEVE L. COY ............ 225

TRUTH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT • HORACE HOLLEY ................... 231

THE WAY OF RELIGION • BOOK REVIEW • ERNEST PYE ................. 235

Change of address should be reported one month in advance.

WORLD ORDER is published monthly in New York, N. Y., by the Publishing Committee of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. EDITORS: Stanwood Cobb, Marjory Morten and Horace Holley. BUSINESS MANAGER: C. R. Wood. PUBLICATION OFFICE: 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. EDITORIAL OFFICE: 119 Waverly Place, New York, N. Y.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: $2.00 per year, $1.75 to Public Libraries. Rate to addresses outside the United States, $2.25, foreign Library rate, $2.00. Single copies, 20 cents. Checks and money orders should be made payable to World Order Magazine, 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. Entered as second class matter, May 1, 1935, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Contents copyrighted 1937 by BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

September 1937, Volume 3, Number 6.

[Page 201]

WORLD ORDER

SEPTEMBER, 1937, VOLUME THREE, NUMBER SIX

YOUTH AND CHARACTER

EDITORIAL

A COMMON Criticism of youth today is that it lacks discipline and character. But where is the necessary discipline to come from, and of what nature is it to be? Youth is naturally pleasure-loving, prone to seek exciting diversions, and averse to steady, disciplined effort in any direction unless strongly motivated.

In fascist countries a new sort of discipline and motivation is given youth under a combination of militaristic and patriotic urges. A similar indoctrination produces earnestness and character of a sort under communist influence. But these disciplines are neither natural nor universal in their quality. They are the result of hectic situations which will eventually be outgrown, and can in nowise be taken as wholesome examples for the rest of the world.

Yet the world of today, America in particular, sorely needs disciplines.

What are we to do about the situation? Earnest Groves, leading authority on the psychology of family life, says that it is foolish to think of changing the modern pattern of life by seeking to deprive youth of the automobile, the radio, the dance. These means of pleasure and recreation are universally present. We cannot turn back the hands of the clock. The solution must lie not in an unnatural limiting and pruning of life but in the use youth is taught to make of its opportunities.

THERE must be somewhere a discipline, and that discipline must be largely self-motivated. The means of riotous living are too abundant around us to prevent youth from using [Page 202] them by any system of external restraints.

Now the most perfect moral discipline and habits of self-restraint are found in the motivation which religion brings to bear on character—a religion which is spontaneously and naturally followed rather than one artificial and autocratic. The latter influence can affect behavior, but is not altogether favorable to character, as certain aberrations and complexes in the Puritan life have proved.

A religion which youth conscientiously and freely adopts and holds to with complete loyalty becomes a powerful motive for character. Under its wholesomely restraining doctrines and with the inspiration of faith and of prayer, youth disciplines itself into a mode and habit of living which can safely pass through modern beds of roses without running upon thorns.

Such a body of youth, earnest, high-charactered, noble in ideals and in practice, are very far in contrast from the modern pleasure loving youth overgiven to dalliance. This is the only discipline that can be effective; and it is a discipline accompanied not by inner pains due to outward rigor but rather that joyous elation typical of conscious character building. Only under the motivation of religion do we find a restraint free from recalcitrant and from neurotic complexes. The freely accepted restraints of religion are psychologically wholesome because they become part of a life filled with better and happier things than laziness, dalliance or sensual indulgence can give. The character building attempted without religion is like the ejection of one evil spirit from a house, which left empty becomes the prey of seven other evil spirits who eventually find their way into a house protected only at the doors, and not by inner fulness. Christ warned us of this; and His psychology is supreme.

RELIGION is needed to mold character—but where can we find a religion that will arouse the zeal and loyalty of intelligent, well-educated, modern-minded youth? While the hold of traditional religion is waning everywhere throughout the world, there are rising new spiritual movements which show the power of firing the minds and hearts of the growing generation. Christian Science is one of these movements which show a vital power to lift youth to higher ethical levels than characterize their contemporaries. In Principia, a Christian Science coeducational college in St. Louis, one finds a student body that do not use alcohol nor tobacco, and that manage to live safely above the temptations of sensualism to which modern youth is prone.

Even more striking is the behavior and character of Bahá’í youth the world over. In their yearly gatherings at various Bahá’í summer schools here and abroad, one finds a daily expression of exalted character and spiritual living, balanced by joyousness and wholesome, happy recreation. Any observer of youth activities in such sessions will be deeply impressed by the possibilities for nobility still normal to humanity, and capable of being evoked by the right spiritual stimulus.

S.C.

[Page 203]

A NEW WORLD CONCEPTION

PAUL PEROFF

NO matter from what standpoint we consider the present world’s crisis, a logical and impartial investigation is bound to disclose that the roots of it are located deep down in the very recesses of the human soul. There, in the secret depth, the real struggle is taking place, a struggle between God and Devil for the possession of human spirit; and the eruptions caused by this struggle are being manifested all over the world. They are taking the forms of economical crises, political commotion or open war.

No matter what the exterior results of this struggle may be, the real result will be established by the outcome of this internal struggle. The victory of either the spiritual or material human being would seal the fate of humanity for many years to come.

In the frightful crash of this struggle, in the great events, of which we are the terrified witnesses, in blood and hate, in treachery and heroic deeds, in victories and defeats a new World Conception is being born, a new temple of human consciousness is being raised. In place of the worn-out traditions, new conceptions are being created; new foundations are being built where the old ones have collapsed. Humanity, suddenly awakening in a crumbling building, seems only now aware of the fact that this building had stood thousands of years without repairs, that it is old, shabby, insecure from the cellar to the roof. That periodical coat of paint, known to history as the epoch of Renaissance, could not fill up the deep crevices any more, could not reinforce the crumbling walls and the badly damaged base of all these scientific and religious teachings upon which the human World Conceptions are being reared. A complete revival is needed. There must be a radical revision of the relations which exist according to our belief, between man and God.

A quest for Truth is the aim of human knowledge. Two roads are leading to it—the road of Religion and the road of Science. It does not mean, that there are two Truths—a religious and a scientific one. The existence of two roads to one truth is the result of a peculiar property of the human mind which perceives the world only as divided upon matter and spirit. We do not perceive a united world, but always one divided upon measurable and unmeasurable Time, Space and Causality. This peculiarity of human perception has been known [Page 204] from times immemorial and is the cause of the dualism traceable through all religious and philosophical systems. Maya and Brahman of the ancient Hindu, Matter and Form of Aristotle, the World of Ideas and the World of Things of Plato, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of men in Christianity.

EMMANUEL KANT gave us a metaphysical explanation of such duality: by bringing into the united (noumenal) world, his divided forms of perception, man himself divides time upon past and future; space, upon three-dimensional and many-dimensional ones; Causality, upon cause and effect. Therefore, this Maya, this World of Things, this kingdom of men, this “phenomenal” world of Kant. All that we accept as our physical universe is a world created by the peculiarity of human forms of perception. We are like a man going up in an elevator who divides the building into the upper (“future”) floors and the lower (“past”) ones, while the building is one and undivided until the moving elevator produces the semblance of difference. We are like a man in a speeding car who, through his own motion, creates movement in a motionless landscape, making the trees dash by, the roads, rivers and streets turn and twist in the most unnatural way. Looking through the window of his car he sees the motionless landscape rapidly fading away.

Now, here is a question. Is it possible to look out of this material Universe of ours, out of the forms of perception into which every phenomenon is encompassed as far as our knowledge is concerned? No, says the Hindu. No, says Plato. No, says Christianity. No, says Kant. But, strange as it may seem, modern science says yes.

It is possible to get out of our forms of perception because these forms are not final, but conditional, i.e., are subject to evolution. If, therefore, it were possible to establish a part of this evolution, we could calculate the whole of it, as an astronomer calculates the distances of the stars lying outside of his immediate perception. That science, which investigates the relations existing between three-dimensional and many-dimensional space, and between time and causality as manifested in our phenomenal world, is called metaphysical geometry. It is therefore a geometrical structure in which our intuitive perceptions and our experimental knowledge are combined into a cosmical scheme.

It is impossible of course, to dwell on this subject in a brief article. Metaphysical geometry requires study, although anyone, with a school knowledge of mathematics, natural history and astronomy could comprehend it. Suffice it to say, that the very possibility for looking out of the forms of perception has been created by the same theories of modern science which had realized the thousand-year dream of humanity and discovered the “philosophical stone” that not only turns quicksilver into gold, but matter into energy as well.

THE meaning of these theories in the field of experimental knowledge is already recognized in [Page 205] every branch of science, but their meaning for the intuitive knowledge has not been even sounded. But precisely in the realm of religion and philosophy, which deal with unmeasurable Space (The Kingdom of God), with unmeasurable Time (Future Existence) and with unmeasurable Causality (God) as the first cause of the theory of Relativity, of sub-atomical energy, of Quantum and others, their meanings open up new horizons. While the scientific discoveries of Copernicus or Darwin brought about a rupture between science and religion, the discoveries made in our time must build a bridge over this rupture and unite science and religion.

Spirituality, according to Professor Milliken, is no longer limited to religion, it is a scientific force, a force, that is back of human progress, of that expansion of human forms of perception which made us aware of the existence of the spiritual world. We have outgrown our physical universe. We are outside of its limits. Three-dimensional space is not sufficient any more to hold all that we perceive in the Universe. “It is by looking into our own nature,” says Professor A. Eddington, “that we first discover the failure of the physical universe to be co-extensive with our experience of reality.”

We are standing upon the threshold of a new conception of the world. Thanks to the teaching of such a prophet as Bahá’u’lláh and such scientists as Professor Milliken, Eddington and Jeans, there is no longer the former ignorance. This world is not given to men: it is being created by them. By gradual expansion of the forms of perception men begin to see more and more of the endless cosmos, thus expanding the phenomenal universe accessible to their perception.

THE real meaning of modern discoveries to humanity have not been fully understood as yet. The meaning is this: Man has reached a mature age. The phantoms of matter and spirit do not trouble and do not frighten him any more. He refuses now to repeat with Socrates: “Only one thing I know, and that is that I know nothing.” In the course of these two thousand five hundred years man has learned a great deal, and this knowledge puts his relation to his Creator upon a new basis. In the period of man’s infantile ignorance God was to him a terrible Lord [Page 206] Whom one must fear and obey. In man’s youthful age God appeared to him as the Merciful Father whose bounties are to be begged through love and prayer. In our time, in man’s mature age, God appears to him as Universal Reason, the laws of which must be studied, understood and obeyed.

There is a cosmical process that is going on without beginning and without end. The aim of it is an expansion of the Universe. Life is not a “by-product” of this process, but the very essence of it. Any living organism is an instrument through which this process is being manifested in time, space and causality. The purpose of man’s existence, therefore, is to do his part in this process of expansion by transforming matter into spirit, that is, a lower form of space into a higher one. By creating his world of appearances man creates a form of space which moves in time to become a higher form. It is for the man himself to see that his world of appearances will become a higher form of space than the one out of which it has been created. This is the purpose of life in general and is the purpose of man’s existence. By adjusting himself to the cosmic process, to this universal drift, man is carried with it through eternity, or is being left in the back-waters. By taking his part in the work of God or by neglecting it, he creates his own salvation, or his destruction.

Man steps out of divided Space, divided Time and divided Causality into the World of Oneness. He steps into the universe of eternal, motionless Truths conscious of his duty towards his Creator, conscious of the greatness of that road, which he has yet to travel, conscious of his responsibility for every step he takes.

THE curtain rises for the next act of the Universal Drama. We, like actors who have played their part, must leave the stage, taking with us our only possession, which is our redemption and our hope—the consciousness of an honestly played role.

[Page 207]

THE WAR IS ALWAYS WITH US

DAVID HOFMAN

IT is a common fault to associate the idea of war solely with military violence and to designate the intervals between physical combat as peace. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

We are perpetually at war, socially, economically, politically or physically, the latter phase appearing when tension in the other fields of human endeavor has become so acute as to be impossible of relief by the inadequate machinery now existing for the adjustment of national and class differences.

Our world is operated on the war principle. Although it is obvious even to school children, that all parts of the globe are mutually interdependent, this knowledge has not been allowed to affect the philosophy of international relations which, in practice, recognizes no higher authority than the sovereign state. Having in the course of history relinquished individual family, city and state autonomy to a wider interest, we now stubbornly refuse to cede national autonomy to the widest interest of all, that of the human race. We even refuse to acknowledge this interest. Hence in an age when geographical, ethnic and physical barriers are definitely obsolete we persist in maintaining separate sovereignties all believing their interests to be mutually competitive and pursuing whatever course they consider most advantageous to themselves, regardless of its effect upon other groups. In fact, national trade policies are designed with the hope of securing an advantage at the expense of some other country, a hope which is not only shattered, but which, following a spiritual law, brings destruction upon friend and foe alike.

Up to now, tariffs have been an instrument of national aggression or defense. Through modern statistics we know the exact population of the earth; we know the amount of food and clothing needed; we know where these things are grown and produced; we know the dependency of all parts upon each other. Knowing these things, would it not seem reasonable to make some kind of parcelling out or allotting of jobs to the different parts of the world—some to grow wheat, others cotton, others wool, others to make steel, others automobiles, others clothing—according to the diversified needs of humanity. This does not suggest limiting of national enterprise. But it is now impossible for any country to be self-sustaining, so let the nations of the [Page 208] world stop attempting to maintain all industries within their boundaries and turn to other countries for those commodities which they cannot produce efficiently in their own. In other words peace, economically, requires a world plan which will make full and efficient use of the varying capacities of peoples and places and at the same time will weld them into a cooperative structure free from opposed groups capable of hampering the flow and reflow of world trade.

The social war is just as apparent and just as destructive of human happiness as physical or economic war. Under the intense pressure of competition accentuated by tariffs and other trade barriers, it becomes a matter of life and death for industry to cut expenses. Human effort is the most expensive item in production and in the face of the war principle human rights and humanitarian considerations go to the wall. A company finds it cheaper to operate its plant at night; workers are compelled to work during the night and to sleep during the day, thus depriving them of all social contacts even with their families and relegating them to the position of human automata sacrificed to the great industrial moloch. This is but one example of war in industry.

Such a condition is brought about by absence of any plan relative to supply and demand. Industries within the nation, each capable of supplying more than the national consumption, are forced to fight each other to the death for markets, a procedure which entails constant reduction of the wages and spare time upon which their markets depend.

It is constantly reiterated that the interests of capital and labor are identical. They are in a peaceful world but business is not yet organized on a peace basis, it still operates on the competitive or war principle. In the same way that knowledge of the economic interdependence of nations has not affected national policy, so knowledge of the mutual interests of worker and employer has not yet resulted in social cooperation. Social peace requires a planned and scientific adjustment between supply and demand, a practical relationship between capital and labor which will recognize and strengthen their interdependence and a fuller measure of security than at present obtains even in the most enlightened countries. But this program must go hand in hand with the plan for economic peace; it is actually dependent upon it for social peace cannot be brought about until world trade is stabilized upon a peaceful, cooperative basis.

POLITICAL differences between countries, in the absence of any authority higher than the state, are always possible causes of military war. There is serious and urgent need of an international body, judicial and arbitrative, whose decisions will be accepted in all cases of national disputes. In a constitutional country differences between the states may be carried to the Federal court which has authority to enforce its decisions. In the international sphere no such machinery exists and consequently nations maintain heavy armaments to protect themselves from bandits and [Page 209] highwaymen. It has been said that the sovereign state is the last wild beast in the political jungle. It would be just as true to characterize it as the last relic of the days before law and order, when men went armed to the teeth and settled their differences by the duel.

Governments maintain and use their armed forces for the protection or furtherance of national economic interests, but lying within and across these national boundaries are the lines of social contest, of racial and religious prejudice, so that when we say the world is at war it is not a matter of clearly outlined units being opposed to each other but of a chaotic mixture of hatreds and enmities transversing all lines of demarcation. Loyalties have become greatly multiplied and greatly muddled and there is no guarantee that another outbreak of physical war would be confined to national belligerents. It is highly probable that the spark which ignites the present powder heap will sear the world with the horrors of civil war of minority group uprisings venting the pent up hatred of long years of oppression, and of every conceivable human evil in addition to the bestialities of modern war.

IT is patently obvious that in every sphere of human enterprise disintegration threatens. The very structure of civilization itself is crumbling. And primarily because in a physically altered world man himself has not adjusted his philosophy to meet the conditions which surround him. In an age of universality we still persist in provincialisms and worship of local interests: we think of our neighbors as foreigners; we exalt nationalism above humanity; we proudly display our law and order and justice and simultaneously engage in a vulgar show of muscles to intimidate the rest of the world.

Where in all this muddle is the power of reconstruction? Where is the plan, sufficiently inclusive, sufficiently far-seeing, sufficiently practical, sufficiently appropriate to modern conditions, sufficiently idealistic to command devotion—the plan which can bring order out of chaos and effect a further integration of separate interests? Can any existing theory of economy, of government, of social order, be characterized as the salvation of humanity? Can any scheme which competes with existing forms do more than add to the tumult?

Is it not a fact that the impulse of renaissance must be so pervasive, so tremendous, as to effect a world wide change of attitude? Any plan for world order must be so all-inclusive as to attract the most diverse and incompatible people and be capable of welding them into an organic unity. It must imbue them with an unquenchable spirit of universality, of modernism, which will transcend all time honored prejudices of race and nation, class, religion and language. It must be capable of directing this spirit into constructive and effective channels. It must synthesize every phase of human activity, must substitute peace for war, must reorganize the world upon a new principle. It must be the summation of the highest ideals and aspirations of this age.

[Page 210]

THE “HIDDEN WORDS” OF BAHÁ’U’LLÁH

G. TOWNSHEND

A REFLECTION

HERE the world’s religions meet and are fused into one by the fire of a great love. “This is that which hath descended from the realm of glory, uttered by the tongue of power and might and revealed unto the prophets of old. We have taken the inner essence thereof and clothed it in the garment of brevity.”

In an age of compendiums there is no other compendium such as this. No other pen has attempted to make a summary which shall be so concise and so complete as to contain in less than eight score brief Words of Counsel the vital substance of the world religions. In the newly printed version of Shoghi Effendi The Hidden Words makes a small pocket volume of fifty-five pages. Yet for all its terseness it bears none of the marks of a digest or an abstract. It has the sweep, the force, the freshness of an original work. It is rich with imagery laden with thought, throbbing with emotion. Even at the remove of a translation one feels the strength and majesty of the style, and marvels at the character of a writing which combines so warm and tender a loving kindness with such dignity and elevation.

THE teaching of the book throughout is borne up as if on wings by the most intense and steadfast spirituality. With the first utterance the reader is caught away to the heavenly places, and the vision is not obscured when the precepts given deal with the details of workaday life, with the duty of following a craft or a profession and of earning a livelihood to spend on one’s kindred for the love of God. The picture given of man and of human nature is noble and exalted. If he be in appearance a “pillar of dust,” a “fleeting shadow” yet he is in his true being a “child of the divine, and invisible essence,” a “companion of God’s Throne.” The created worlds are designed for his training. The purpose of all religions is to make him worthy of the love of God and able to receive his bounties.

The Hidden Words is a love-song. It has for its background the romance of all the ages—the Love of God and Man, of the Creator and His creatures. Its theme is God’s faithfulness and the unfaithfulness of Man. It tells of the Great Beloved Who separates from Himself His creatures that through the power of the Spirit [Page 211] breathed in them they may of their own will find their way to that reunion with Him which is their paradise and their eternal home. It tells how they turned away to phantoms of their own devising, how He would not leave them to the ruin they invoked but ever with unwearying love sought them and called them back that they might enter yet the unshut gates of heaven. Only the final event of the love-story is lacking. God calls and when His utterance is complete He pauses that man may answer, and waits—listening.

Love is the cause of creation: it is the Beginning, the End and the Way. God, as yet a Hidden Treasure, knew His love for man, drew him out of the wastes of nothingness, printed on him His Own image and revealed to him His beauty. Apart from God man has nothing and is nothing; but in union with God he possesses all things. God ordained for his training every atom in the universe and the essence of all created things. He is the dominion of God and will not perish; the light of God which will never be put out; the glory of God which fades not, the robe of God which wears not out. Wrought out of the clay of love and of the essence of knowledge he is created rich and noble. He is indeed the lamp of God, and the Light of Lights is in him. He is God’s stronghold and God’s love is in him. His heart is God’s home; his spirit the place of God’s revelation. Would he sanctify his soul, he could look back beyond the gates of birth and recall the eternal command and antenatal covenant of God. Would he but look within himself, he would see there God standing powerful, mighty and supreme.

ALAS! in the proud illusion of his separateness, man has forgotten whence he came, and what he is, and whither he moves. He has turned away from his True Beloved and given his heart to a stranger and an enemy. Bound fast in the prison of self, dreading that death which might be to him the messenger of joy, he has rejected the immortal wine of wisdom for the poor dregs of an earthly cup and has given up eternal dominion that he might revel for an hour in the lordship of a passing world.

So blinded by arrogance and rebellion have mankind become that they live well content amid these sterile imaginings. They are no longer able to tell Truth from error nor to recognize it when it stands before them in naked purity. Though they enter the presence of the All-Glorious; though the Manifestation of Him Whom they affect to seek is before them and the Face of the Mighty One in all its beauty looks into their face, yet are they blind and see not. Their eyes behold not their Beloved; their hands touch not the hem of His robe. Though every utterance of His contains a thousand and a thousand mysteries, none understands, none heeds. He made the human heart to be His dwelling place; but it is given to another. Among His own on earth He is homeless. Nay more, His own heap on him persecutions. The dove of holiness is imprisoned in the claws of owls. The everlasting candle is beset [Page 212] by the blasts of earth. The world’s darkness gathers about the Celestial Youth. The people of tyranny wrong Love’s King of Kings. The angels weep at the spectacle; lamentations fill the heaven of heavens; but men glory in their shame and esteem their impiety a sign of their loyalty to God’s cause.

IN His mercy and compassion, God leaves them not to self-destruction. Sternly but lovingly He upbraids them, He warns them. He summons them from the couch of heedlessness to the field of endeavor and heroic adventure. He demands of them a faith and courage that will dare the utmost in His service, a fortitude that will endure serenely every calamity, a devotion that will rejoice in tribulation and in death itself for the Beloved’s sake.

He gives them counsel upon counsel. With definiteness and force He shows what God expects of His lovers. The toils and perils of the Homeward Way are many and grievous; but true love will overcome them all and be grateful for afflictions through which it can prove its strength. None can set out upon this journey unless his heart is single and his affections are centered without reserve on God. If he would see God’s beauty he must be blind to all other beauty. If he would hear God’s word, he must stop his ear to all else. If he would attain to the knowledge of God he must put aside all other learning. If he would love God he will turn away from himself; if he would seek God’s pleasure he will forget his own. So complete will be his devotion that he will yield up all for the dear sake of God and welcome with longing the martyr’s death.

Earth has a thousand ties to bind men from their God: envy, pride, indolence, ambition, covetousness, the habit of detraction, the ascription to others of what one would not like to have ascribed to oneself. Against such things as these He warns all who wish to reach the bourne of Love, bids them keep ever before them the rule of Justice (“the best beloved of all things in God’s sight,”) and every day to bring themselves to account ere the opportunities given here on earth are snatched from them for ever by the hand of death.

He reminds them of the treasures He has laid up for those who are faithful to the end. Upon the sacred tree of glory He has hung the fairest fruits and has prepared everlasting rest in the garden of eternal delight. Sweet is that holy ecstasy, glorious that domain. Imperishable sovereignty awaits them there, and in the joy of reunion they will mirror forth the beauty of God Himself and become the revelation of His immortal splendor.

Now in this age, He declares, yet greater rewards and ampler powers are vouchsafed to mankind than in times gone by. God’s favor is complete, His proof manifest, His evidence established. He has opened in the heavenly heights a new garden, a new degree of nearness to God. Whoso attains thereto, for him the flowers of that garden will breathe the sweet mysteries of love, for him its fruits will yield the secrets of divine and consummate wisdom.

[Page 213] YET even in this great day of revelation the fulness of God’s ultimate being has not been uttered. So much has been said as the will of the Most High permits: and no more. What has been set forth is measured by man’s capacity to understand it. God’s true estate and the sweetness of His voice remain undivulged.

How strange and pitiful that in the East the warmth of heart and breadth of mind of him who wrote this little book should have brought on him the relentless hate of the priests of his land. Born of a noble family and endowed with vast wealth, He was through priestly envy deprived of all his possessions, driven into exile, chained, tortured and at last consigned to a life-imprisonment in the city of Akká, a goal reserved for the lowest criminals of the Ottoman Empire and reputed so pestilential that the birds of the air fell dead as they flew over it.

STRANGE, too, that this devotional volume so beautiful in its thought and also (it is said) in the classic purity of its style, should never have drawn to itself the attention of an English scholar and should remain after seventy years unknown to the religion and the culture of the West.

[Page 214]

THE NEW CREATION

ALICE SIMMONS COX

III. MAN’S CAPACITY FOR ILLUMINATION

IN no age previous to this century has the need for universal education been so great as at the present time. Opportunities for education the world around are rapidly increasing, it is true. There are at hand beneficent gifts of science to be further applied in practical use not only for the improvement of living standards in many nations, but also for the advance of human learning itself. Knowledge of how to control natural forces has never before been so gigantic or so widespread. Even the Orient, long asleep in the spell of institutionalism and ancestor worship, is now arising under the magnetism of western material civilization and the promise of power which it seems to offer. And still, still, education of man that he may adapt himself to the new world he has made seems to many minds to be the most urgent need of the hour.

Perhaps it would be commonplace to dwell here on the condition of human society today, picturing again as has many a writer, the discord, the desperation and fear, the blurred vision and the struggling hopes that exist side by side with the new opportunities which the mind of man has made possible through scientific discovery. It is necessary, however, to take note that it is not the new knowledge of material progress, or even rational criticism of tradition which has really caused the disorder, but the failure of the human race to integrate its living with the pace of the new power at its disposal. Or, in other words, the chaos we find in the social, economic and political structure of the world is the evidence of man’s delay to enlarge his social, moral and ethical conceptions to harmonize with that material advance which has made the earth one body, but which, by its nature, cannot provide an enlightened soul.

Although the minds that make the greatest natural discoveries may be allied in spirit with the highest realms of ideals, nevertheless, the multitude that has applied science to the current affairs of life has done so without understanding of the spiritual forces essential for universal adoption or for wise control. Knowledge of those spiritual forces must become the handmaid of the majority of men and women in the world if civilization is to continue to move forward, even to avert complete catastrophe on the [Page 215] shoals of its own creation.

As far back as the nineteenth century Bahá’u’lláh from His prison seclusion in Palestine saw that the world was at that time entering an unprecedented period of great tribulation when hand in hand with material progress would come grave new temptations for personal fame and fortune and colossal abuse of newly released human powers.

“Behold the disturbances which, for many a long year, have afflicted the earth, and the perturbation that hath seized its peoples,” He warned. “It hath either been ravaged by war, or tormented by sudden and unforseen calamities. Though the world is encompassed by misery and distress, yet no man hath paused to reflect what the cause or source of that may be.”

Since the failure of the Versailles peace, the eyes of many men have been opening to the fact that further progress in the way of material and intellectual advance is check-mated unless the next move is very carefully made. Men of thought are realizing that the elaborate edifice of modern society is being tested in the light of ideals of international, inter-racial, inter-class, inter-religious cooperative conceptions of brotherhood absolutely essential to the health of the new world. Education in such ideals is the unconscious desire of all men, the crying demand of the times in which we live.

“The road to Utopia is clear,” once wrote Bertrand Russell. “It lies partly through politics and partly through changes in the individual. As for politics, far the most important thing is the establishment of an international government. . . . As for the individual, the problem is to make him less prone to hatred and fear. . . . With our present psychology and political organization every increase in scientific knowledge brings the destruction of civilization nearer.”

H. G. Wells has commented: “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

“The present time,” writes Hendrick W. Van Loon in a daring challenge, “is not an economic revolution but a spiritual revolution. . . . Science has made us the undisputed masters of all the forces of nature. . . . And yet the picture all around us is one of vast hopelessness and despair. . . . Something therefore must be wrong with the picture! That is what we say. Would it not be a little fairer to confess: Something is wrong with ourselves?”

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH reveals the basic flaw in modern education and its product, civilization. As he does so He indicates the certain danger that lies in the materialistic trend of progress.

“The vitality of men’s belief in God,” he declares, “is dying out in every land; nothing short of His wholesome medicine can restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society; what else but the Elixir of His potent Revelation can cleanse and revive it?” “Man is the supreme Talisman. Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess. Through a word [Page 216] proceeding out of the mouth of God he was called into being; by one word more he was guided to recognize the Source of his education; by yet another word his station and destiny were safeguarded. The Great Being saith: Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable values. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”

This is the Day of God, according to Bahá’í Revelation, the day when conflict of ignorance and Truth, passion and unification, self and selflessness is to be won by the new education which the Manifestation of God, Bahá’u’lláh, has transmitted to men in the example of His life, the precepts and expositions of His Books, and the stimulus of His spiritual love. “The potentialities inherent in the station of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised Day of God,” prophesies Bahá’u’lláh. In this dawn period of a new civilization a spiritualized humanity will bring to life a world commonwealth manifesting the principles of democracy, justice, love and creative achievement because of its newly acquired harmony with the highest laws of human unfoldment.

Such a Kingdom of God as this implies would not, therefore, be a superimposed heaven on earth, but a New Order of life expression, conceived in the heart of man through the vitalizing breaths of God’s creative power and brought to birth through universal loyalty to His known Will.

SPIRITUAL illumination is possible for all members of the human race because of the human faculty of comprehension and the included potentialities necessary for faith and obedience with which man is endowed, Bahá’u’lláh teaches. First among the favors “which the Almighty hath conferred upon man, is the gift of understanding,” He explains. “His purpose in conferring such a gift is none other except to enable His creature to know and recognize the one true God. . . . This gift giveth man the power to discern the truth in all things, leadeth him to that which is right, and helpeth him to discover the secrets of creation.”

Man is distinguished from the animal by the character of his human spirit, “that most noble and most sovereign reason” (Hamlet), designated often by philosophers as the rational soul. Because by its nature this soul potentially embraces all things in creation, it can learn to subdue and control nature through discovery and application of natural law. “Mind is the action of the soul’s powers,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes clear. “The body is the physical covering or medium in which mind acts and functions.” “As the body came from dust to dust it returns. But the human spirit comes from God and to Him it returns.”

In answering the question of an investigator concerning the connection of the spirit with the body, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained the nature of the immortality of the human soul as follows: “It (spirit) has the same connection as the sun has with the mirror. . . . ‘Mirror’ is the whole body, [Page 217] the brain in particular. . . . Only consciousness or mind, is left after death. (This condition) is one of comprehension, understanding, which involves all other things,—feelings, etc.”

The human understanding, of which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá here speaks, functions through numerous instruments which make contact with the world outside, and as a result render it possible for the powers of comprehension to develop themselves and to enlarge the horizon of consciousness.

The chief instrument so allied to the understanding is the power of vision. The senses of hearing, of the heart and of smell, and the power of speech are likewise similar endowments of man. These powers and all other powers related to them, “physical senses or spiritual perceptions, all proceed from, and owe their existence to, this same faculty” of understanding. Whatever the perceptive power which acts as the recipient of the truths of the universe, spoken of as the names and revealed attributes of God, it is bound by this relationship of subordination and dependence to the rational faculty of the human soul.

The reality of the soul, the nature of its essence, can never be fully understood by man himself, Bahá’u’lláh asserts. Remaining, as it must, forever as mystery to all but its Creator, its potentialities may be brought into manifestation through the operation of its powers when they are impelled by desire and guided by knowledge of things earthly and things divine.

“Man, empowered by mind . . . can resist nature’s control.” The conquest of natural forces, which has been the most remarkable achievement of modern science, has been possible because of the innate capacity of human intelligence. A passage from an address made by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Washington, D.C. in 1912 gives His tribute to science:

“Science is an effulgence of the Sun of Reality, the power of investigating and discovering the verities of the universe, the means by which man finds a pathway to God. . . . All blessings are divine in origin, but none can be compared with this power of intellectual investigation and research which is an eternal gift producing fruits of unending delight. . . . Therefore you should put forward your most earnest efforts toward the acquisition of science and arts. The greater your attainment, the higher your standard in the divine purpose. The man of science is perceiving and endowed with vision whereas he who is ignorant and neglectful of this development is blind. The investigating mind is attentive, alive; the mind callous and indifferent is deaf and dead.”

COMPLETE unfoldment of human faculties, however, through the development of human intelligence by human effort is not possible, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá further explains. “The intellectual power of the world of nature is a power of investigation and by its researches it discovers the realities of beings and the properties of existences; but the heavenly intellectual power . . . is aware of mysteries, realities and divine significations. . . . The divine intellectual power is the [Page 218] special attribute of the Holy Manifestations and the Dawning Places of prophethood; a ray of this light falls upon the mirror of the hearts of the righteous, and a portion and share of this power comes to them through the Holy Manifestations.”

“The human spirit or reality of man,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told His listeners in St. Paul, “unless it becomes the recipient of the lights of the Kingdom, develops divine susceptibilities and consciously reflects the effulgence of God, will not be the manifestation of ideal bounties.”

Evidence that this statement is a universally operating law of God can be found in our present civilization without much difficulty. Before the highest tribunal of wisdom and in the judgment of many a young mind there appears signs which tend to force that verdict. The intellect cannot, it seems, guarantee that its powers will be used for the good of man, even for the benefit of the soul for which it functions. Reason may find the pathway to morality, but it cannot enforce moral law. Discoveries of nature’s hidden powers, and inventions for the use of those powers, may lead the way for commercial cooperation, and in the same breath send armed ships to foreign waters and set aircraft to “battling in the central blue.” Even a most intelligent man, measured by standards of human learning and mental techniques, may be a king of some underworld.

There appear to be two very definite reasons why the intelligence of man is incapable of meeting all of the exigencies of life, and of controlling all of the factors necessary for human evolution. One of those reasons is the fact that the human mind is finite in its creation and can never through the operation of its powers be able to encompass all of the factors, past, present and future, in every situation. Complete inclusiveness is a condition necessary for perfect results in inductive reasoning. This is why even the most substantial conclusions of science must be recognized as postulates, hypotheses, little more than theories, in relation to the fuller revelations which science always hopes to obtain.

“Human power cannot hope to reconstruct the world because there is implied in the essential economic and political structure of mankind an infinite variety of incalculable circumstances,” believes one present-day thinker. “The way out must be shown by a power higher than ourselves. To the light of his intellect man must add the Light of the Spirit.”

“The light of the intellect enables us to understand and realize all that exists. . . . Divine Light can give us sight for the invisible things,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

The gifts pertaining to the human spirit are inherent in man, Bahá’u’lláh makes clear. They can free him in large measure from the limitations of the physical world about him but they fail to provide him with the potent elements necessary for liberating his soul from the demands of his body or the physical self. This is the second natural limitation of the human understanding. The search for attainment to true understanding consists of the struggle between the two natures in man. One nature is worldly, turning the attention of the [Page 219] soul to the kingdoms of creation below him; the other is angelic, endeavoring to make the attractions of the Divine world the one point on which all faculties concentrate. “If the angelic aspect becomes more powerful, and the divine power and brightness surround man, then the second birth takes place,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reveals. “Man becomes the noblest among creatures. On the other hand, if sensuous qualities surround and if terrestrial darkness and sensual passions predominate, if they meet in man only the worldly feelings, if they find him a captive of evil qualities and fallen into everlasting death, then such a man is the basest and most abject among all creatures.”

Even powers of great intelligence, when morally misused by the possessor of them, will ultimately disintegrate according to the measure of the depravity. In comparison with the light of spiritual knowledge and ideal virtues that man will be as dead. It is the “realization of this deprivation that is the true eternal fire.”

THROUGH the intellect, however, when it employs the faculty of meditation, which is a subjective state of concentration with man speaking with his own spirit, man can attain eternal life. Through meditation he receives divine inspiration. An important law which operates in the use of this faculty ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains to be as follows: “The meditative faculty is akin to a mirror: if you put before it earthly objects it will reflect earthly objects. Therefore if the spirit of man is contemplating earthly objects he will become informed of earthly objects. But if you turn the mirror of your spirit heavenwards, the heavenly constellations and the rays of the Sun of Reality will be reflected in your hearts, and the virtues of the Kingdom will be obtained. . . . May we all indeed become mirrors reflecting divine realities and may we be so pure as to reflect the stars of heaven!”

How can this be accomplished? How can the understanding be turned to the Ideal Sun? Through purification of the desire nature of man, Bahá’u’lláh teaches.

“How sad if any man were, in this Day, to rest his heart on the transitory things of this world!” He exclaims. “Arise and cling firmly to the Cause of God. Be most loving to one another. Burn away, wholly for the sake of the Well-Beloved, the veil of self with the flame of the undying Fire, and with faces, joyous and beaming with light, associate with your neighbor. . . . Think ye these words to be vain and empty? Would that ye had the power to perceive the things your Lord, the All-Merciful, doth see—things that attest the excellence of your rank, that bear witness to the greatness of your worth, that proclaim the sublimity of your station! God grant that your desires and unmortified passions may not hinder you from that which hath been ordained for you.”

[Page 220]

RADIANT ACQUIESCENCE

ORCELLA REXFORD

“The afflictions which come to humanity sometimes tend to center the consciousness upon the limitations. This is a veritable prison. Release comes by making of the will a door through which the confirmations of the spirit come.”—‘Abdu’l-Bahá

ACQUIESCENCE means to “give in,” to drop resistance, to tacitly agree. Divine acquiescence means to be submissive to the divine will. Everything in nature is acquiescent to the plan of the Universe and works in harmony with it except man. “Radiant acquiescence” means not only to give up your will to the Divine Will, but to do so joyfully and with radiance, knowing it is the best way in the end. The ordinary way of meeting the circumstances of life is to have a negative, passive submission to God’s will and to blame every circumstance that was unfortunate on the “Will of God” and to be unwillingly resigned to this condition and to do nothing to change it. Many become bitter and at enmity with life because of obstacles and calamities, and their faces register discontent and unhappiness.

“The death of one thing is the birth of another,” said Marcus Aurelius. “Watch the eternal course of destruction and realize that the universe itself sustains no harm amidst all this change. The only true good is religion, which teaches us to keep our guiding principles pure and untainted by bodily impressions. Nothing external can influence us unless we pronounce it good or evil. Cease your complaint and you are not hurt.”

Epictetus advised: “Dare to look up to God and say, ‘Deal with me for the future as thou wilt, I am of the same mind as Thou art; I am Thine; I refuse nothing that pleases Thee; lead me where Thou wilt, clothe me in any dress Thou choosest; is it Thy will that I should hold the office of a magistrate; that I should be in the condition of a private man; stay here; or be an exile; be rich; be poor, I will make Thy defense to men in behalf of all these conditions.’

“He who frets himself because things do not happen just as he would have them, and secedes and separates himself from the law of the universal nature, is but a sort of an ulcer of the world.”

Be acquiescent and things will change. God closes one door and opens another.

“Is anyone afraid of change?” [Page 221] asked Aurelius. “I would gladly know what can be done without it? And what is clearer and more suitable to your universal nature? Pray, must not your wood be transformed (i.e., into fire) before your bath can be ready for you? Must not your meat be changed to make it fit to nourish you? Indeed what part of life can go forward without alteration? Now in all likelihood a change in your condition may be as serviceable to the world in general as those alterations above mentioned are to you.”

When we are radiantly acquiescent our fears and worries disappear, what we ourselves cannot overcome or accomplish, we place in the hands of God, living in the faith that God can and will make all things well, and as our faith is, so is it always done unto us. When you feel that you live within God’s protection you will never fear, you know you are safe and secure; fully protected at all times and nothing but good can come to you.

If we would only learn radiant acquiescence. Since things cannot always be as we wish them it is better for us to acquiesce, to realize that after all in the great Divine plan it may be better for us that they are changed, therefore let us be glad!

“When things do not give you pleasure, proceed instead to create pleasure in your own heart and soul, and you can if you will always be glad. Besides things will change for the better if you continue in the spirit of rejoicing. When things do not please you, resolve to please yourself by being glad. When evil befalls you consider the fact that the good that is yet in your possession is many times as great as all the evil you could ever know.

“It is a great thing to feel, when our small plans are in a moment destroyed, our own ambitions in a moment thwarted forever, that instead of losing we are exchanging a lower for a higher thing; that the fall of the blossom means the coming of the fruit; the opening up a soul to newer and greater truth.”

Radiant acquiescence means “not my will but Thine be done.” Let us approach our disappointments, our failures with the thought, “This is all right but different,” and how much better it would be.

A famous doctor who radiated sympathy and gladness had as his motto, “That’s all right, that’s the way it should be.” Nothing ever upset him. He would work quietly to accomplish results and leave them in God’s hands, perfectly willing to accept the ends as justifiable to the means.

“Magnify the faith in yourself and you will minimize the obstacles in your way” Marden has said.

“With God nothing shall be impossible.”

When difficulties are to be met they should be met in the attitude of radiant acquiescence and joy, so that we may look upon them as a privilege through which the power of the Holy Spirit may be brought into action; this generates strong thought currents and attracts strong forces to help us.

A wonderful way to show your love for God and His Cause is to radiate from your personality the sunlight of his love. To be it is to live it.

“Resist not evil” has been sounded [Page 222] by all the prophets and a thoughtful perusal of their lives indicates how they met the circumstances in which they were placed—how they treated their enemies. To resist, to use force is against the law of harmony. All nature practices this law. In a storm when the wind is blowing, the trees in its path bend before its fury, those that resist it are snapped in two and broken off. It is better to let others learn through experience that they are on the wrong path than to force them to see it our way.

The best way to rise above the petty irritations and delays which attack the nervous system is to meet them with non-resistance. All the prophets have taught us not to resist evil. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá calls it “radiant acquiescence.” This is the most practical way to handle the affairs of life, to drop resistance to things we cannot change, be willing (and that happily) that circumstances should go against us, that others shall be unkind, unjust, impolite or disagreeable. Through this practice the mind is kept quiet and clear and a greater power to go through life successfully is engendered. Resistance produces poisonous toxins in the glands which undermine the health. Most of the nervous illness in the world today (and there is much of it) is caused by resistance to circumstances or to people, which has kept the nerves and brain in such a state of tension and irritation that a breakdown is the only ultimate result. In order to get rest and healing, we should say to ourselves, “Drop it, what difference does it make?”

WHETHER we are aware of it or not we always arouse in others what is in our own mind. Anger in you will provoke anger in another, while love begets love. So there is a great scientific principle involved in the command, “love your enemies.” Hate begets hate, and in no way can it be changed except through love. Fear begets fear and confidence increases confidence. The cheerfulness of one person can affect a roomful of people and if persistently practiced may affect the whole neighborhood.

When you feel others irritating or disturbing you, get quiet, be tranquil, summon the spirit of joy and harmony —ask for guidance and strength from the Holy Spirit. Send out harmonious thoughts and soon you will find the attitudes of others will change toward you, if you have only love in your heart. Love can melt the meanest heart. It takes two to quarrel. If one of the angry parties will practice nonresistance and puts away all discordant thinking from himself, and waits without impatience, the anger of the other must subside for it will have nothing on which to feed. Keep your mind in a condition of harmony toward the other and wait. In waiting you will accomplish wonders with the right mental attitude. “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Faith is patience to wait. There should not be any attempt at verbal reconciliation unless it comes naturally and without a trace of inharmony. The important thing is in attempting to correct one’s own faults and never interfering with another unless help is asked.

“However he treats me, I am to act rightly with regard to him; for the [Page 223] one is my concern, the other is not,” Epictetus wrote.

“Nothing another does can ever make it right for me to do wrong, because wrong is never right, and no combination of circumstances can ever make it so,” declared Aaron Crane.

TRUE self-control must not be thought to be a repression of the desire to do wrong but it must go farther and remove the desire in the thinking which will thereby remove all necessity for resistance or restraint. Substitute one thought or feeling for another.

Self-control in the spiritual sense is freedom from all control of things outside the spiritual self and of all those things that provoke discordant thoughts. The person who allows himself to be mentally disturbed is in the degree of the disturbance in the power of whatever suggested it. By relaxing the mind, by being willing that certain things should occur, by keeping the mind centered in the Holy Spirit through practicing radiant acquiescence, one will establish such habits that no attention need be given even to the control of self, because habits tend to act automatically, without conscious care or attention. This is the freedom of mind of little children. It is the freedom of heaven. “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” As thoughts precede actions, then to stop thinking certain thoughts is to cease doing certain things. Resistance always interferes with freedom of thought and action.

“Who has more soul than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. Who has less, I rule with like facility.

“The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act,” Emerson realized.

Are you in the habit of “blowing up,” of “going to pieces,” when things don’t suit you? If you are, you are indulging in an “emotional spree,” a “nervous jag.” These can be quite as disastrous to the body as an alcoholic one, due to the poisons poured out into the blood stream by the adrenalin glands. Victims of deficient self-control in time become sick, mentally. It is their excuse that something that was said or some past experience is responsible for these upsets, but the breakdown in nervous morale is due to an inflated ego, an inferiority complex or the wrong attitude toward the speech and actions of other people.

A doctor made a list of some of the things that upset some of his patients. He found as many as forty causes in the list, most of them foolish. One man was continually upset because a business partner was always saying “listen,” as an introduction to his sentences. A business man became furious if anyone in his office arrived a moment late in the morning, and he saw to it that he was there early enough to indulge in his favorite “nervous jag.”

These nervous types must remember that no matter where the blame rests, it is better to ignore things that can’t be helped, to be “radiantly acquiescent.” You can’t allow other people and the circumstances of life [Page 224] to “get on your nerves.” You cannot control the habits of the rest of the world, and therefore in self-protection you must develop an attitude toward them that is less vehement. You will have to teach yourself to live in the world as it is, not as you wish it might be. Do not take yourself and circumstances so seriously. Laugh at yourself. What difference will it make in a hundred years, whether the dinner is on time or not? Decide that you will be the master of your own environment and don’t expect to go through life and escape the experience of “self-abasement.” We can’t expect to ride on the crest of the wave always but we can direct ourselves so that we can ride more smoothly. With understanding, love, tolerance, sympathy and cooperation many of these conditions can be “ironed out.” They do not affect the man who has the “light of the Holy Spirit in his life.”

Next to radiant acquiescence, the next best cure for “nerves” is the habit of self-examination and of looking to one’s own faults. The Divine Manifestations have ever pointed out the need for man to examine his own motives first before he presumed to judge the actions of another.

“Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye. . . . Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Bahá’u’lláh in this day admonishes us: “If the fire of self overcome you, remember your own faults and not the faults of My creatures.”

Real freedom from these irritations must begin within, the motives must be changed. If we only outwardly control the appearance of anger and irritability and are a seething furnace within we have no control. We must get free from the emotion itself to be free and to be master of the situation. So everyone must look within first and be relaxed there before he can act without. “Everyone,” says Bahá’u’lláh in Hidden Words, “must show forth deeds that are pure and holy, for words are the property of all alike, whereas such deeds as these belong only to Our loved ones.”

No matter where we find ourselves in life, all sickness, either of the mind or body, comes from the breaking of cosmic laws.

When we walk in the ray of the Holy Spirit we learn to live positively and actively, to go about doing good and radiating the light of God’s gift.

Let our light shine upon those who live in the shadows, let us radiate that light of the Holy Spirit so that the moment others come into our presence they will sense our power, our sincerity, our love, and that we have something they need.

As human beings we unconsciously radiate those inner forces which we possess and we influence those who come in contact by our radiations for good or ill. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá felt the importance of this so keenly that in His correspondence He placed great emphasis on radiance of expression. He says: “The face is the mirror of the heart,” and also: “Let all people see that you have the Light, that they may recognize something in you which they themselves do not possess.”

[Page 225]

EDUCATION FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER

GENEVIEVE L. COY

THE distinguishing feature of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh is the teaching of the Oneness of Mankind. In the Words of Wisdom Bahá’u’lláh counsels humanity in these words, “O friends! Consort with all the people of the world with joy and fragrance. Fellowship is the cause of unity, and unity is the source of order in the world. Blessed are they who are kind and serve with love.”

Men and women who are now attempting to further the oneness of mankind often find themselves handicapped by the habit of thinking of some groups as inferior and of others as superior. It is very difficult to consider ourselves as equal members of one great social organism. When we try to discover the reasons for this difficulty, we find that most of us have been badly educated for cooperation. We may have had parents who have conscientiously given us the best training they could, we may have gone to excellent schools,—yet we have formed the habit of thinking in terms of inferiority or superiority, rather than in terms of equality.

We are therefore faced with the question,—How can we educate the next generation so that the amount of fellowship and cooperation in the world will be greater? This is the most fundamental problem which all real education must meet, whether it is the training of the home, the instruction in the school, or the guidance of religious groups.

The distinguished Austrian psychologist, Dr. Alfred Adler, has said that man faces three fundamental problems in life. The first is the problem of occupation,—the means of providing the physical necessities of life. The second is the problem of association with one’s fellowmen,— ways of living happily and helpfully with all the people one meets in the course of life. The third is the problem of love and marriage,—ways in which we meet the fact that mankind is created in two sexes. Only as humanity learns better techniques of cooperation can these three problems be solved in a way that will produce a race of healthy and happy human beings.

To the above problems, the Bahá’í adds that of the way in which man relates himself to God. The man who truly reverences God as his Creator must also respect and value every other individual because all have come from the same Source. In the “Hidden Words” of Bahá’u’lláh, the Voice of God addresses mankind, “O [Page 226] children of men! Do ye know why We have created you from one clay? That no one should glorify himself over the other. Be ye ever mindful of how ye were created. Since We created you all from the same substance, ye must be as one soul, walking with the same feet, eating with one mouth, and living in one land, that ye may manifest with your being, and by your deeds and actions, the signs of unity and the spirit of oneness.” From his spiritual faith the Bahá’í therefore receives an added impetus to work for a kind of education which will increase understanding, cooperation and fellowship.

The ideal school, then, makes its first obligation that of helping children to become more cooperative and, conversely, less competitive. It believes that young children can be taught to live in such a way that it is “second nature” to be a help rather than a hindrance in all their contacts with other children and with adults. It is convinced that the results of education should be groups of young people who find value and happiness in contributing to society, rather than in seeking to find people who will contribute to them. It is certain that education has failed in its task when boys and girls are guided by feelings of inferiority or superiority to others, rather than by a sense of being an equal member of a cooperating group.

When children enter school at the age of five or six they differ greatly in their ability to work constructively with teachers and other children. The intelligent teacher knows that these differences are due not to some innate strength or weakness, but to the fact that some homes have helped the development of cooperation, while others have hindered it.

THE most important part of a child’s education is that carried on by the mother in the home during the earliest years of life. Ways of looking at the problems of human association which are formed before the age of four or five can be changed later only with great difficulty. We should therefore ask what are the chief errors which parents are likely to make in their education of little children.

One of the most serious mistakes which parents make in training small children is that of doing too many things for them. A baby can be a help to his mother by the way he behaves when she is washing or dressing him, by the way in which he eats his food or goes to sleep. But the mother herself must wish to cooperate with the baby, rather than to dominate him, if such habits of helpfulness are to be formed by the child. Boys and girls of three and four should be encouraged to help dress themselves, to pick up their toys, to be thoughtful of the possessions and feelings of others. But the child who is pampered, who has everything done for him, cannot develop habits of helpfulness. Instead, he learns to whine or cry when his mother or father fails to make him the center of the family life; he has a temper tantrum when a brother or sister is treated as though of equal importance with himself. Gradually, all his creative energy is directed toward the goal of being more important than others, and he strives to accomplish [Page 227] this by pressing others into his service in many different ways. Some pampered children strive for superiority by simulated illness, others by means of mischievousness. Running away is a method used by some children, in order that other people will be more attentive to them. To “have what I want when I want it” is the goal of the “spoiled” child. Children who have been reared in this way will seldom become the kind of adults who are able to cooperate in the work of building a new social order.

Fathers and mothers who pamper their child in the hope of making him happy are actually preparing him for unhappiness and defeat in his adult life.

Less frequently, perhaps, a child is trained in non-cooperation through the hatred or neglect of parents. A baby which is not wanted at the time of its birth will sense the mother’s rejection of it, even though the mother consciously “tries to love it.” Sometimes conflicts between the husband and wife will make one of them dislike a child, and this is certain to affect the child’s outlook on life. Adler summarizes the problem of such a child as follows, “The hated child is in the worse position of never having been spoiled by anyone. Its goal is to escape and to get at a safe distance from others. Such a child is often unable to look one straight in the eyes, cannot speak, and hides its feelings in fear of abasement. . . . The unusual tension of their life makes these children postulate a higher goal of security and superiority than that of the average child.”

It is evident that the boy or girl who has been hated or neglected in babyhood has had no experience of cooperation with others, and therefore has no knowledge of what true fellowship can mean.

A HUSBAND and wife who really cooperate with one another and with their associates are almost certain to appreciate the importance of training their children in attitudes of helpfulness and kindness. The task of the parents is to win the child’s interest to the task of becoming a help rather than a hindrance in life, and to extend this attitude to as many people in the environment as possible.

The task of the teacher in her work with children is to continue the work of the father and mother, if they have made a good beginning in educating boys and girls to be contributing members of their small society. If the parents have failed in their work, the teacher must do all that she can to correct these errors. If a pupil has known defeat in his associations with others she must understand how to encourage him and show him better ways of relating himself to his playmates and to adults.

The teacher who really wishes to be of help to her pupils must be objective in her approach to them. She does not think that children “are naughty just to annoy her.” She does not use a child’s liking for her to bolster up her own self-respect. She does not become angry when a boy fails to learn his lessons.

A teacher who is training her children to be cooperative never uses as an incentive the desire to be ahead of [Page 228] others. She continually emphasizes the fact that each child in the group has something to contribute to the welfare and happiness of the others. She avoids encouraging “star performers,” both because of the harm it may do the “star” and because of the feeling of defeat it may give to the other pupils. She appreciates sincere effort on the part of every child. She knows the stage of development of each individual, and adjusts the difficulty of his work so that he can achieve success if he does his best.

The ability to fit the child’s task to his present need is one of the most important techniques of teaching. Künkel sums this up in the following “rule”:—“Arrange all tasks so that they will not discourage the child. Do not make them too hard, so that they will not of necessity lead to defeat, and not too easy, so that they will not bore. Above all, state problems so that they will not seem a necessary evil, but an enjoyable part of the child’s development.—If this is unsuccessful, then look for the error less in the schedules and prescriptions of the school authorities than in your own lack of productivity, and endeavor to regain your lost faith in life.”

If a child is to grow in self-reliance and ability to contribute the school must provide him with many opportunities for making his own choices between two or more courses of action. When once he has chosen, the teacher must see to it that he carries the activity through to a successful conclusion; or, if he fails, she must help him to understand why he failed, so that he may do better in the future. Thus, the pupil will grow in ability to take responsibility for his own decisions.

ADOLESCENCE is often considered a particularly difficult time for boys and girls, as well as for their parents and teachers. Many of the problems which arise at this period are due to the fact that the student has not learned to cooperate with others, but thinks of himself in terms of inferiority or superiority. He wishes to be considered a grown person, to make his own choices, to be independent. If he has learned to think of himself as a helpful, contributing human being, his parents and teachers can safely leave him to make a very large percent of his own decisions, since he has already learned the assistance which adults can give when his own experimental data is inadequate.

Probably one of the worst mistakes made by parents of adolescent boys and girls is that of saying, “do this because mother (or father) wants you to do it.” A boy of fifteen or sixteen should be thinking of his conduct in terms of a much wider social group than that of the home. If he does not see the relation of his conduct to a fairly large group of his associates, an appeal to the desires of “mother” is probably doomed to failure.

High school students sometimes grow impatient because they are not yet old enough “to do something about” social conditions which they wish to change. They should be helped to realize that, while they cannot yet vote or join certain organizations, they can contribute a great deal [Page 229] by making known their own attitudes of cooperation and willingness to forego special privilege. Boys and girls of sixteen and seventeen have at times been very effective in awakening their parents to the need of considering problems of social welfare.

THE problem of the content of school studies is secondary to that of the development of constructive attitudes and habits. But there is always danger, especially at the high school level, that content values will be placed above character values. All teachers need to realize that their own attitudes toward life will influence their students long after the “subjects” they taught have been forgotten.

Specific content should be chosen in terms of the child’s level of development, in so far as this can be ascertained. For young children, a large part of the material should be selected in terms of the problems of his immediate environment,—and will therefore vary from school to school, and from country to country. With older children, the content will radiate out into wider and wider fields, but the students should continually ask themselves, “How does this relate to my own ability to contribute to life? At what point can I be of help in this problem?”

A good school course should provide the simple tools of communication, —ability to write and speak simply and clearly, the ability to read with insight, the techniques of simple mathematical thinking and computation. These will be necessary tools in most occupations, and they will contribute to the individual’s association with others.

Art, music and literature should be taught in such a way that the pupil considers them not merely methods of self-expression, but also as means of understanding the desires, needs and aspirations of all mankind. History should stress man’s slow growth toward cooperative ways of meeting life’s problems; it should point out the failures as well as the successes, and strive to develop an understanding of why certain ways of life had to fail.

SCIENCE should be of special value in helping students become more objective in their approach to things, people and events.

Almost all schools need to give much more time and attention to work which prepares boys and girls for marriage and parenthood. The whole course of education should emphasize the equality of men and women, at the same time that it makes clear that a woman’s function in society is not necessarily the same as a man’s. Girls should be helped to appreciate their special contribution as the earliest educators of young children, and to realize that one generation of mothers could change our whole social order.

Older students, both boys and girls, should have an opportunity to study psychology,—or perhaps this field of understanding might better be called the study of human relations. Young people must be helped to realize that success in love and marriage is impossible unless both husband and wife believe and practice the fact that [Page 230] cooperation is the law of life,—that when one or both strives for personal superiority or special privilege the association will be unhappy and unproductive.

One of the greatest services that Religion can render to humanity is in teaching that we can build a cooperative World Order. The Bahá’í Faith is continually striving to help men and women realize that the oneness of mankind is a condition that can and must be achieved. Where Bahá’í schools exist, their first purpose is to teach children that love of God and love of mankind must go hand in hand.

WE do not think of education as something that ends when the student leaves school. We see it as a lifelong experience of training oneself away from indulgence in private values and striving for special privilege, and of movement toward a life of fellowship and unity. We find that our faith in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh is a perpetual impetus toward greater efforts in the direction of understanding and cooperation.

[Page 231]

TRUTH AND THE HOLY SPIRIT

HORACE HOLLEY

How simple and naive today seems that hopeful attitude prevailing during the last century, that in science and invention modern man possesses a miraculous power to achieve the ancient dream of peace, plenty and happiness on earth! Granting the miraculous virtue of that power to multiply material things, vastly extending even the fertility of the soil, nevertheless it has become only too clear that these beneficent results have not transformed human nature, but on the contrary have intensified the tribal instinct to express itself in some of the most grievous conflicts that history recounts.

We may, indeed, liken the new age to a verdant and fruitful garden set in the midst of a desolate waste. Entrance to this garden is free to all, but with one condition: that each who enters must abandon and leave behind his weapons of war, his habits of suspicion, his spirit of prejudice, his hopes of selfish fulfilment and his will to strife. Here we stand together in the waste land of struggle and violence, all bereft of security and assurance, while before us rises that garden of fruitful labor and inspiring opportunity—that promised age of world unity the hope of which has shed its glory upon mankind even in its most desperate hours. The power of science to produce abundance for every human being is unquestionable. That new, universal force, properly directed and controlled, can fulfil the ancient vision of a better existence on earth. It is the supreme power of a common faith and a common understanding of the fundamental nature and aim of life which is lacking from the social scheme. What we do in disunity is like a palace built of crumbling sand.

“Science,” the Bahá’í teachings point out, “cannot cure the illness of the social body. Science cannot create amity and fellowship in human hearts. Neither can patriotism nor racial allegiance effect a remedy. . . . The source of perfect unity and love in the world of human existence,” we learn, “is the bond and oneness of reality. When the divine and fundamental reality enters human hearts and lives, it conserves and protects all states and conditions of mankind, establishing the intrinsic oneness of the world of humanity which can only come into being through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Spirit is like the life in the human body, which blends all differences of parts and members in unity and agreement. Consider how numerous are these [Page 232] parts and members, but the oneness of the animating spirit of life unites them all in perfect combination. It establishes such a unity in the bodily organism that if any part is subjected to injury or becomes diseased, all the other parts and functions sympathetically respond and suffer, owing to the perfect oneness which exists. Just as the human spirit of life is the cause of coordination among the various parts of the human organism, the Holy Spirit is the controlling cause of the unity and coordination of mankind.

“Today the greatest need of the world is the animating, unifying presence of the Holy Spirit. Until it becomes effective, penetrating and interpenetrating hearts and spirits, and until perfect, reasoning faith shall be implanted in the minds of men, it will be impossible for the social body to be inspired with security and confidence. Nay, on the contrary, enmity and strife will increase day by day, and the differences and divergencies of nations will be woefully augmented.”

MAY no one misunderstand the meaning of that statement merely because it employs a different terminology than that to which we have grown accustomed in daily conversation or in the language of the daily press. Think for a moment of some experience you have had when, for example, in listening to glorious music, you felt raised up out of yourself and filled with a new spirit of communion with others, even strangers, who happened to share the same deeply moving experience. At such moments it is as though a higher power flung open the door of the heart, and in a swift influx of freedom the secret self within found wings to mount to a higher realm than one had ever known before. What though, after a time, those wings of freedom folded again, and the doors of the heart swung closed? The experience itself was real, and by it one has learned for ever that there is a reality of the spirit not less valid than the reality of the material world, and far, far more intense in its capacity to awaken the joy of being.

Universal though it be, and truly imbued with the alchemy of deepest feeling, music is not the instrument by which the slumbering soul is quickened to life. That instrument is truth—the truth that is uttered by the seers, the prophets, those who are nearest to the knowledge and the love of God. What influence ever exerted upon earth is so potent, so renewing both to the individual and to the social group, as the creative Word uttered by the chosen Messenger of the supreme Will! Under its revivifying force, peoples the most abject and impotent have been raised from servitude to become the leaders of human civilization. For hundreds of years after it is uttered, the mysterious Truth is treasured and revered, a continuous and never-failing wellspring of vision, of courage, of wisdom, of integrity, of humane character, of devotion to the highest interests of the community. Where before the souls were in the darkness of savage strife, the revealed Truth brings light like the rising of the sun. Where before the social body had been weak and [Page 233] diseased, the Truth came as a divine Physician to heal what human capacity could not heal.

“The Holy Spirit is the light from the Sun of Truth bringing, by its infinite power, life and illumination to all mankind, flooding all souls with divine radiance, conveying the blessings of God’s mercy to the whole world.” Thus does the Bahá’í teaching explain that power by which humanity, from age to age, is given capacity to rise above itself.

“The divine Reality is unthinkable, limitless, eternal, immortal and invisible. The world of creation is bound by natural law, finite and mortal. The infinite Reality cannot be said to ascend or descend. It is beyond the understanding of man, and cannot be described in terms which apply to the phenomenal sphere of the created world. Man, then, is in extreme need of the only power by which he is able to receive help from the divine Reality, that power alone bringing him into contact with the Source of all life. . . . There must be a mediator between God and man, and this is none other than the Holy Spirit . . . . The divine Reality may be likened to the sun and the Holy Spirit to the rays of the sun. As the rays of the sun bring the light and warmth of the sun to the earth, giving life to all created beings, so do the Manifestations (the prophets) bring the power of the Holy Spirit from the divine Sun of Reality to give light and life to the souls of men.”

“This divine and ideal power has been bestowed upon man in order that he may purify himself from the imperfections of nature and uplift his soul to the realm of might and power. God has purposed that the darkness of the world of nature shall be dispelled and the imperfect attributes of the natural self be effaced in the effulgent reflection of the Sun of Truth. The mission of the prophets of God has been to train the souls of humanity and free them from the thraldom of natural instincts and physical tendencies. They are like unto gardeners, and the world of humanity is the field of their cultivation, the wilderness and untrained jungle growth wherein they proceed to labor. They cause the crooked branches to become straightened, the fruitless trees to become fruitful, and gradually transform this great, wild, uncultivated field into a beautiful orchard producing wonderful abundance. . . .”

Had there existed, through the ages of man’s life on earth, real agreement upon the basic principles of spiritual truth, we would never have developed these armed and competitive national societies. He who holds to the truth that his own being was divinely created, and subject to spiritual law, and that all other men were similarly created, cannot plot violence and destruction for his fellow-man, because such action would involve not merely a conflict of human wills but constitute an offense against the will of God. International violence has therefore gradually arisen because the realization of the divine will and purpose has been everywhere incomplete, inconstant and obscured by immediate human interests. It must be remembered that primitive human society was founded upon religion, and [Page 234] that all civil codes, cultures and philosophies depended upon a religious sanction. Each tribal god was jealously limited to the advantage and welfare of the tribe. A heaven filled with competitive, jealous gods meant that the origins of civilization were rooted in the fundamental assumption that mankind is not one kingdom of reality, but diverse races and peoples. We see this ancient tribal worship practiced all too vigorously in our own day, in the attitude that man can have no higher loyalty than to his nation or state.

Before there can be any true and enduring basis of world unity, therefore, we must attain harmony and agreement in our recognition of the oneness of God and of the universality of spiritual truth.

THE Bahá’í teachings shed a clear light upon this most vital and intimate matter.

They declare that the prophets or Manifestations who founded the true religions gave their teachings in two distinct forms. In one form they expressed the universal truths which are constant and eternal; in the other form they established ordinances of a secondary nature which met the conditions of the time. For example, such matters as diet, marriage and civil administration have been explained in different ways in different ages. By holding to the universal truths—that there is but one God, that He commands love and unity— and realizing the local and temporary character of the secondary matters, the peoples of this day can, and indeed must, enter into a unity of the spirit so potent that it will bend our collective energies and social instrumentalities to the supreme task of establishing unity in the political, economic and other social realms.

Another Bahá’í commentary upon the true nature of religion is that Revelation is progressive, for each age and cycle disclosing an ever-enlarging measure of that truth which in itself is immeasurable. As man develops, he can take a larger vessel to the inexhaustible well.

This progressiveness of truth constitutes a principle of the utmost importance. It serves to test the sincerity of every faith and belief. Religion as a progressive factor in man’s life gives us a door opened to the future. Without spiritual progress, we are limited to a past which can never be restored. Can any one assert that human development has come to an end? Can any one fairly deny that it was through the revelation of new and larger truth age after age that mankind successfully attained the unity of tribe, of race and then of nation? Have these modern powers and resources, so new, so miraculous, been given us solely to make warfare and strife the predominant human enterprise? God forbid!

Therefore the world once more, as so often in the past, is in dire need of the renewal and enlargement of that spiritual truth which can alone produce order and justice in society because it alone can transform individuals from the state of the rational animal to the state of man.

[Page 235]

THE WAY OF RELIGION

BOOK REVIEW

ERNEST PYE

AT its heart religion is the experience which men have had with God. Amplified, this means that religion is the experience—it may be of fear or hope, despair or joy, unresting search or deepening surrender— which men anywhere and at any time have had with Deity—some kind of Deity. This is the bottom fact of religion. Wherever, with ethical outcome, religious experience has possessed this quality and vitality, the stabilizing norms of religion have followed as the result of healthful growth. But where such vitality is not, the institutions and organization of religion can be little more than formal.

II

None knows these things better than the author of The Origin of Religion (Cokesbury Press). Out of a long life of earnest enthusiasms, varied contacts with current forces in religion, and untiring activity as missionary to Moslems with headquarters at Cairo, Egypt, as founder and editor of The Moslem World and now as Professor of The History of Religion and Christian Missions at Princeton Theological Seminary, Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer has written out of a rich experience.

III

This latest volume from the pen of Dr. Zwemer is offered as an answer to the too easy assumption of that phase of materialistic philosophy which attempts to explain the origin of religion as the result of an evolutionary process. The book accepts biological evolution, but firmly refuses to concede that this method of development can be applied to the moral and spiritual areas of human experience. The central contentions may be briefly documented as follows: Religion came not by any process of evolution, but by revelation; the Scriptures are “our principal source-book” in the study of origins in religion; the basic unity of mankind is evidenced by the fact “that the various races are intellectually and emotionally of the same kind, while the spiritual unity of the race in their varieties of religious experience and in their response to the gospel is evident from the history of missions;” original religion among men had at its heart a primitive monotheistic faith in a High-god or Sky-god, whose attributes as conceived by primitive peoples widely scattered from each other “are always nearly the same;” the method by which that first actuality in conscious relationship between [Page 236] man and God—i.e. the religious experience —came was the method of an immediate, objective (or “subjective”?), unconditioned act on the part of Deity, that is to say, revelation.

IV

I want now to move in a little nearer to the real issue which this excellent volume seems to me to set for all those who are devoted to the better well being of mankind. Early in the book Dr. Zwemer takes the position that the way of religion on earth has been not a climbing ascent, however slow and devious the course through the waywardness of men, but that religion began at a high point from which there has since been continuous descent—“The history of religion has been one of decline and degeneration, rather than of evolution and unbroken ascent.” (pp. 15-16, cf also 92-93, 96).

Were this view of deterioration and degradation applied to specific primitive religions or even to the greater ethnic religions including Christianity, in which the comparison were strictly confined to the beginning and the present status within each, we would readily agree that in specific instances decline is sorrowfully evident. Such specific application seems to be the intent of the statements by Dr. Wilhelm Schmidt: “Nowhere do we receive evidence that these religions were developed to a higher degree of perfection by men through their own searching and finding, but, on the contrary, there is decline and deterioration.”

Bouquet, some years since reached a like conclusion when he wrote that broadly over the world there exists a large mass of traditional faith and practice which is “of extreme antiquity,” and which appears on investigation “to cohere,” notwithstanding individual nuances and national and local customs. This is spoken of by Bishop Gore as the real natural religion of humanity. Bouquet then goes on to point out that prophetic religion, founded through the leadership of an inspired person, “has always had to reckon with this extraordinary pluralistic network, and it has seldom been able to escape the necessity of coming to terms with it.”

V

With such a particularized application of the view of descent there is fullest agreement. To its general application as assessing the totality of moral worth and attitude in religion as a whole, we cannot quite give assent. Certainly there have been degradations in religions. Has there been in religion? This issue is set forth with clarity by Dr. Francis L. Patton: “The question between those who advocate the theory of development on the one hand, and that of Revelation on the other, is whether man has attained to his idea of God by slow stages and his own unaided efforts, or whether he had it to begin with and by Divine communication. It is the question whether history has been an improvement or a degradation.” In the author’s words, “the golden age is put in the past.”

VI

Before a broad survey of the ways of God and men, no certain change may usually be detected in brief [Page 237] spaces of time. Even century-long segments of life are insufficient. But if we take our stand on an average estimate of present ethical religion and from this position sight across the centuries to the earliest horizons of recorded history, it appears difficult to establish the thesis that the level on which we are is ethically less worthy, lower than was that first dawn, for us, of primitive men. I say ethically because Jesus emphasized that by the fruits of religion is its worth to be known; that as men do, is the mark of the Good Samaritan disclosed.

Now, to assert that our level today —acknowledging with humiliation the many, many things going on among and within the peoples of earth that cannot receive the approval of beneficent judgment—is lower; that the way along which humankind have come has been a continuous degradation—this leads into two fundamental problems, as I see it, which the book stops short of answering. It may be that a sequel will be forthcoming in due time which will explore for us these further considerations.

First is the position adequately supported that the pre-primitive area of life (identified here with pre—recorded history) is known to us sufficiently well to enable us to assert that at its beginning the religious possession of the race was on a level yet higher than was that at the dawn of recorded history, and that the course all the way down to ourselves has been an uninterrupted down-grade sequence?

Granted that grievous are the failures of men about us and within ourselves, still is the whole world’s life being enacted on a level a bit lower than it ever was before?—“History has been a degradation.” Granted also that events have occurred this past twelvemonth which are a denial of justice and the moral sense of humanity, the test question still remains: Has their occurrence passed with quite that degree of acceptance, as a matter of course before which helpless people are helpless and there is nothing to be done about it? Or have groups and nations made vocal an aroused sense of moral protest? Surely it is within the limits of fact to believe that there is some small degree of increment of conscience at outrage over evil, an increased effort at protest and organized resistance leading toward some better way, however futile for the moment such risings up of a purer mind and spirit may seem to be.

Second, we feel sure that the author would be among the last to rule out Purpose in the world; to urge that there is no glimmer of a teleology large enough to be unhasting and sure enough to be undefeated, as a part of present reality. But if the golden age be actually in the past and the course of history be unremittingly downward to successively lower levels of religious living, this renders a straightforward claim to Design a contradiction.

We feel with the book the force of the evidence for a High-god theory in the religion of primitive men. But is the reconciliation between this evidence and the equally compelling considerations for Design quite sufficiently set forth? The claim for a [Page 238] Divine event in history is surely valid. Causal and final thinking is here corroborated by conscious need. The claim for an active teleology here being considered would go even farther and urge that the Divine event has been continuously repeated. That there has been development through a long series of evolving stages, and that at each stage in the series something really new, that had not been present in the preceding stage actually entered into the unfolding stress of life seems to be a reasonable point of view that accords well with the facts of history and is not unhelpful to Christian teaching.

VII

But this involves a reversed view of history. It sees man arriving at stages of development in which by his unaided ability he cannot go on. It sees that first distant event of conspicuous moral impotence as less of the nature of a Fall and more of a Lift over the impassable barrier of conscious guilt; and that the redemptive event has been repeatedly a part of the slowly ascending experience of the race.

Mr. Stewart A. McDowall emphasized some time ago that “When the origin and history of man are studied from the scientific, and especially the biological side, the spiritual life, its partial failure, and the need for Atonement, far from receding into vagueness and unreality are thrown into strong relief. . . . Development except in response to environment is impossible, and . . . the appearance of spiritual phenomena in the animate world implies the existence of a vast environment to which spirituality is the suitable response. . . . By His life and death alike He showed how false was any hope that man might be exempt from the groaning and travailing for the birth-pangs of new powers and new ideals. There is no rest and no ease for that which is becoming.”

This has the look of being the pull of remedial Purpose in a legitimate teleology.

VIII

On the whole it seems to this reviewer to be most truly in accord with the religious history of man to join in the confident faith of this volume that wherever the beginning was, there God was also; that he made himself known in that first religious actuality of a man making answer to his God. But, beyond this, the method of history has been that God has repeatedly made himself known up to the measure of human capacity (“I have yet many things to say, but ye cannot . . .”) to comprehend and apply the truth in the relationships of life whether these be personal, community, inter-racial; that human capacity to utilize ethical understandings in religious living has been enlarging; that this has been accompanied by men yielding themselves to the Spirit of Truth for guidance into completer truth.

IX

In the area of religion lies ultimate unity for mankind. Fear and hope, suffering and solace, uncertainty and assurance, willfulness and surrender —these are elemental in human experience. No racial group is visited [Page 239] wholly by the first of these couplets; nor does another possess exclusive rights to the second. These are of the spirit and spirit knows neither color of skin nor tongue. Spirit knows God —or His absence. In spiritual loss and triumph men meet on common ground. It is hallowed ground. It includes time but extends beyond time inasmuch as here are problems—individual and community—whose solution cannot be attained apart from the Eternal. In this kind of triumphal solution of human nature lies unity. It is a unity which our experience intimates to our hearts is integrated both with the origin of religion and the way of religion.

These comments must not close without drawing attention, gladly, to lifting sentences and emphases running through the book: “Men believe in the immortality of the soul because of the intrinsic incompleteness of the present life.”

“No one can read the long, long story of death and sorrow in the annals of the race . . . without realizing that there is a heart-hunger for eternity; and that there is a God and Father of all who knows and cares.”

“A social gospel without an otherworldly message will not attract or win even the most primitive races. They have the far-horizon.”

On the missionary message the heart-hunger for eternity is that which “forms the best point of contact with non-Christians in the presentation of the Christian message. We preach Christ and the resurrection to those without Christ but not without a belief in a resurrection.” “Jesus Christ in his teaching and Paul in his epistles continually lay emphasis on the eternal aspects of the present life, of the Church and of the missionary enterprise. . . . The aim and goal of the missionary enterprise is not of the earth and earthly.”

Especially are we indebted to Dr. Zwemer for quoted materials from a wide range of literature on origins in religion. It is particularly gratifying that these include the work of European scholarship, which in this field quite outranks that yet done in this country. The book relies on the encyclopedic work of Professor Wilhelm Schmidt of the University of Vienna to whom the volume is dedicated.

[Page 240]

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[Page 241]

EDITORIAL PURPOSE

• WORLD ORDER MAGAZINE seeks to mirror forth the principles revealed by Bahá’u’lláh for the renewal and unification of society. These principles it recognizes as the impetus and the goal of all the influences making for regeneration throughout the world. It feels itself a part of the new world community coming into being, the commonwealth of mind and spirit raised high above the conflicts, the passions, the prejudices and the violences marking the passing of the old order and the birth of the new. Its aim is to maintain a meeting-place consecrated to peace, where minds touched with the spirit of the age may gather for calm and dispassionate discussion of truth. The scope of its content is best defined in the following summary of the Bahá’í Faith:—

• “The Bahá’í Faith recognizes the unity of God and of His Prophets, upholds the principle of an unfettered search affer truth, condemns all forms of superstitions and prejudice, teaches that the fundamental purpose of religion is to promote concord and harmony, that it must go hand-in-hand with science, and that it constitutes the sole and ultimate basis of a peaceful, an ordered and progressive society. It inculcates the principle of equal opportunity, rights and privileges for both sexes, advocates compulsory education, abolishes extremes of wealth and poverty, exalts work performed in the spirit of service to the rank of worship, recommends the adoption of an auxiliary international language, and provides the necessary agencies for the establishment and safeguarding of a permanent and universal peace.”

[Page 242]

TOWARDS THIS GOAL OF A NEW WORLD ORDER, DIVINE IN ORIGIN, ALL- EMBRACING IN SCOPE, HUMANITY MUST STRIVE