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[Page 39]

WORLD ORDER

MAY 1938

PRICE 20c

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

MAY 1938 VOLUME 4 • NUMBER 2

HUMAN LEADERSHIP • EDITORIAL .................................................... 41

CHAOS IN THE HOME • BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK ............ 43

HYMN OF THE FOREST, Poem • STANTON A. COBLENTZ .......... 49

THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS • ALFRED E. LUNT ........ 50

THE DESERT, Poem • EVERETT TABOR GAMAGE ...................... 55

EARTH BOUND, LIGHT, Poems • ARCHIBALD OVERTON HARRIS . 56

THERE WAS WINE • MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER .................... 57

SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION • SYMPOSIUM ................ 64

PAGES FROM AN ESPERANTO BOOK • LIDIA ZAMENHOF ........ 69

WHY I AM A BAHA’I • LYDIA G. WENTWORTH, ETHEL NASH CRANE . 73

ENDS AND MEANS, Book Review • DELLA C. QUINLAN .............. 76

FROM SA’DI’S ROSE GARDEN, Translation • MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER . 79

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

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 1938 by BAHA'I PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. Title Registered at U.S. Patent Office.

May 1938, Volume 4, Number 2

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WORLD ORDER

May 1938 Volume 4 No. 2

HUMAN LEADERSHIP

MEN of force, vigor, and intelligence seem to be aided by Destiny, up to a certain point, in the fulfillment of their designs. That is because the universe always rewards ability, even when that ability is dangerously used. For the universe is built of power, upon which depends its progress and fruition.

But the universe is built equally upon justice upon which depends its order and stability. Hence power dangerously used is confined within definite limitations of the Cosmic purpose. Even destruction has its place amongst the necessary events; and agents of destruction may exercise their will up to the point where destruction ceases to hold benefits for human society. And when that point is reached the agents of destructive power are themselves destroyed. This is an important lesson that history may read us, for our general hope amidst a planetary phantasmagoria of chaos.

Destiny lends splendid aids to those who exercise power for good; but may withdraw its aids when this exercise of power chokes human channels with the pride of ego. For egotists of power, whether well or ill conceived, are dangerous to the order of the universe and not to be tolerated by that Cosmic Force which creates, sustains and guides phenomenal existence. It might even be stated that in mathematical terms, the aid of the Holy Spirit is in direct proportions to the sincerity and humility of the human agent. If we would be channels for this mighty Force, we must then purify the self from egocentric urges. We must cultivate not only an altruism of flawless purity but also a humility that makes of us open and perennial channels for the flow of power.

TODAY, as never before in history, the world needs and seeks men of power. Humanity, feeble and perplexed in its mass-intelligence and will, craves leadership. Not itself discerning enough to evaluate the quality of leadership proffered, it follows with tragic and blind loyalty strong men who are able to demonstrate supernormal faith and powers of achievement. Thus in the present situation of affairs humanity seems [Page 42] bound to drift hither and thither, as swayed by the superior will and power of its supermen. Some of these supermen have great vision, all of them have some vision, but none of them have that true or universal vision which alone can restore affairs, eliminate chaos, and unite humanity in intelligent and progressive planetary purpose.

If man himself cannot furnish requisite leadership, God at least can. In successful and prosperous circumstances humanity does not turn to God for guidance, for men are more prone to worship Baal than to seek the Holy Grail. But when chaos and destruction impend, many turn toward Divine sources of aid and guidance. Here, in the midst of woe, man finds occasion to seek God and God finds opportunity to aid man. “My calamity is My providence. Outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but inwardly it is light and mercy.”

AS in the individual life, so in the collective life of humanity, humility and imploration avail much. The wider and deeper the tide of spirituality in humanity the greater its power to attract Divine aid and confirmations. That true spirituality is actually on the increase in human society, many signs bear witness. But this tide must become infinitely more powerful before the tragic triumph of chaos can be overthrown.

As spirituality increases, so will increase a type of human leadership which relying consciously upon the Divine Sources for its aid and guidance will be able to steer safely through turbulent affairs toward far havens of security. The more such leadership realizes the insufficiency of its own powers and the sufficiency of Divine Power only, the more safely will it be able to chart its courses.

A deep and unfailing humility is needed here—a humility as child-like and forgiving as that which caused Lincoln for the sake of his country to surround himself in his executive life with disdainful personal enemies; and to endure countless other martyrdoms that his country might escape its agony of internecine strife.

Those who would truly help humanity today must be selflessly insensitive to taunts and to defeats. They must be fortified against the even more dangerous foes of success and egotism. Their only power will lie in knowing themselves to be powerless; their greatest destiny in knowing how to make themselves channels for Destiny. “It is not I that doeth these things, but the Father within me.” Christ ascribed no virtue to himself, thus exemplifying that absolute humility which is both the safety and the power of angelic hierarchies, but which man can only hope partially to attain. In the degree of man’s attainment thereto, lies the degree of his sustained power for leadership and creative achievement.

S.C.

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CHAOS IN THE HOME

BERTHA HYDE KIRKPATRICK

“THERE are three kinds of homes,” writes Professor Ernest R. Groves of the University of North Carolina, “the good, the bad, and the bewildered.” It is the alarming increase of these bewildered homes which is giving those concerned with a good society so much anxiety, for often just as bad results come from the bewildered home as from the bad ones. Furthermore this bewilderment is often found among our most intelligent people. The best intentioned parents may fail because they do not know; they have no assurance and no authority. In writing of his work in parent education Professor Groves says that a “highly selected group of parents from honorary societies in college found great anxiety in rearing children.” Educators and clergy, sociologists and psychiatrists are in disagreement concerning the most fundamental relations and virtues upon which the home and family life are based,—marriage, divorce, chastity, monogamy, the function of the parent, the place and duties of the child. However poorly it may have been lived up to, seventy-five or a hundred years ago there was an accepted standard and its authority was not questioned.

A glance at titles of articles in recent numbers of our widely read magazines reveals how confused and diversified are opinions in regard to this matter of marriage and the home relations. “The Case for Chastity” and “Monogamy is an Art” present almost diametrically opposed views. “Should Marriage be Monotonous?” suggests that the writer has some of the “old-fashioned” views that perpetual ecstasy and excitement are not the goals of marriage, while “Can Divorce be a Success?” certainly hints that divorce is not always a success even though it may be. Again the title, “I have Four Parents” reminds us that the problem of children in broken families is equally as serious, if not more so, than that of the parents. And what shall we say of the matter-of-fact remark of a twelve-year old child who declared, “I like my father’s wife better than my mother’s husband?” A few years ago we heard about the “revolt of youth,” now we hear of the revolt of parents [Page 44] and one of our popular novelists presents a book which immediately becomes a best-seller, “The Prodigal Parents.”

ACCORDING to the latest statistics of the Marital Relations Institute of New York a married couple in the United States has now only 65 chances out of 100 of remaining married more than a year. More than 100,000 children are affected yearly through divorce of parents. According to 1930 statistics there were at that time approximately 3 million families broken by divorce.

Much of the blame for the appalling increase in crime, especially among youth, is blamed upon bad homes and irresponsible parents. We are told that eighteen per cent of the crime in this country is committed by youth under twenty-one and even a larger per cent by those under thirty.

Yet back of broken homes and wayward children are causes so complex and interwoven that it is hardly fair to place the blame at any one spot or on the failure of any one institution. Other institutions are breaking down; both the church and the school are confused as to their aims and methods. Tremendous changes have taken place in our industrial and economic conditions and in the status and attitude of women in our social and economic order in the last 150 years. When we consider that the family was the institution most acutely and immediately affected by the industrial revolution, the wonder is that it has stood up so well and resisted breakdown so long.

In the old order the economic importance of the wife was as great as that of the husband. She spun, sewed, prepared the food, in a word did her full share in clothing and feeding the family. Even in the early nineteenth century, although conditions were changing it was still true that most of the making of food and clothing was done in the home. It is even now true in certain small and rural communities. Whereas in the modern urban home the wife is often a complete parasite. Professor Arthur E. Holt says: “It is not often realized that one reason the modern man is so confined to his business is that he now has to provide funds with which to buy that which his grandmother made at home.”

Dr. Horace Bushnell, writing in 1851, glorifies the woman as helpmeet, but even at that date he writes as though that condition were a thing of the past: “A principle . . . was yet in vogue, viz. that women were given by the Almighty, not so much to help their husbands spend a living as to help them get one. Accordingly, the ministers were always very emphatic, as I remember, in their marriage ceremonies, on the ancient idea that the woman was given to the man to be a helpmeet for him. What more beautiful embodiment is there on this earth of true sentiment than the young wife who has given herself to a man in his weakness to make him strong; to enter into the hard battle of his life and bear the brunt of it with him; to go down with him in disaster if he fails and cling to him for what he is; to rise with him if he rises, and share a two-fold joy with him in the competence achieved; . . . [Page 45] having it also, not as his but theirs, the reward of their common perseverance, and the token of their consolidated love.”

Here was love, courage, strength of character sufficient to carry on in the face of the varying vicissitudes of life, both sorrows and joys. Dr. Bushnell would have us remember, too, that there was a strong economic advantage that held the family together. But today marriage is often an economic hazard and when we add to these changed economic conditions the changed attitude of women and of men towards women we have an entirely different picture. The new woman is the independent woman, intent on so-called freedom and self-development. The aim in present-day marriage is too often a selfish one—personal satisfaction.

ANOTHER picture of family life in the mid-nineteenth century approaches a little more nearly present economic conditions. It is given by George Herbert Palmer whose father was a well-to-do Boston merchant. There was comfort and dignity without luxury, and “on all that we possessed and did religion set its mark.” There were family prayers morning and evening, school opened with prayers and each child had his private devotions. Grace preceded each meal. On Sunday household duties were lightened so that servants might attend church. “Such unceasing presence in the Puritan home of the religious motive might easily have become unwholesome and enfeebling,” he writes, “had it not been attended by several other powerful influences which diversified it and enriched the nature to which religion gave stability. As these supporting interests are generally overlooked by those who censure the Puritan home, I name a few of them. To the family tie the Puritan gave great prominence. Marriage was a sacrament, and the family a divine institution, where each member was charged with the well-being of all. In my own family there was little authoritative restriction. With father and mother we children were on terms of reverential intimacy. They joined us in our games, were sharers in our studies, friendships and aspirations. To them we expressed freely our half-formed thoughts. If one of them took a journey, one of us was pretty sure to be a companion. In a family where there were few servants, each of us took part in household duties. There were rooms to be set in order, wood to split, errands to be run. The older children must wait upon the younger. In this way all were drawn together by common cares. Brothers and sisters became close friends. Affection was deep and openly expressed.”

Here was an ideal balance between the spiritual and material, the religious and the practical and while in many families the ideal was not so closely approached as in the one described, the ideal standard was well known. The economic burden of supporting the family was plainly upon the husband and father, yet there was cooperation in spending wisely and in sharing the daily tasks. The real bond was a desire and determination for ideal family life; the aim of the parents was to rear children [Page 46] of integrity and strength and sweetness of character; and above all there was a knowledge that the real basis of such character lies in religion —that is, true religion, not the imitation.

In contrast to this the urban home of today is too often little more than a place to eat and sleep. Schools, clubs and various activities take more and more of the time of the children, and amusements of both parents and children are largely sought outside the home. Even when parents have a desire to give moral and religious training to their children it is difficult to find the opportune time.

But while the religious training in the family gradually disappeared or became only formal, there was still left the pattern, the way of life. Lawrence K. Hart of the Board of Education of New York City puts it this way: “To marry, have children, acquire property, gain a position of respectability and dignity in the community, share in the common beliefs about the universe and man’s place therein—these made up a way of life to which the teachings of family, school and church, and the sanction of government were all directed.” Thus there was a real integration of life remaining even while the spirit that was back of it was gradually dying out. This way of life has passed, he believes. With the passing of the old mores and nothing to take their place, family life has become disintegrated, chaotic. And with the breaking down of family life individuals find themselves with no moorings and no goal. Without guide or compass unwitting parents set their unknowing children afloat upon the sea of life.

The result is that young men and women are frustrated in their life ambitions through inability either to establish a happy home and satisfactory marital relations or to get along without them. Children are deprived of the affection and security they need, of the help and sympathy necessary for their adjustment in the world because parents are completely occupied with their own problems and overwhelmed by their own lack of adjustment. So another generation grows to maturity maladjusted to the world, quite unfitted to make new and right standards in a world where the old standards are set aside and where, too, economic conditions are against them. Suicides and homicides increase, and insane hospitals and psychopathic wards become overflowing.

That there is among our more thoughtful people an awareness of the sickness of our social and economic institutions gives hope and probably at no time in man’s history were such great efforts made to remedy ailments and avert calamities. Evidence of this is in the thorough and scientific study which is being made of the matter. Departments of sociology in our colleges and universities and institutions of research have gathered statistics, made charts and graphs, informed the public in published articles. Courses on marriage and all that pertains to it and the home are given in schools and colleges. Institutes and clinics of family relations are established, clergy and teachers and psychiatrists offer [Page 47] advice. Special juvenile and divorce courts are set up. And these efforts produce some good results, but because they do not have a spiritual foundation and because people are in disagreement these good results are limited.

FIFTY years ago, in 1887, the federal government appointed a commission to investigate divorce. It reported that divorce was increasing at three times the rate at which population was increasing. Twenty years later, 1906, a second investigation showed that the rate of divorce was still increasing in spite of the fact that in most states the divorce laws had been made more stringent. The conclusion was then reached that the trouble was with marriage laws. Marriage was entered upon with too little understanding of its meaning and responsibilities.

Attention was then directed to marriage laws. Some states have improved these. But marriage is still comparatively easy and divorce needs court procedure. George Elliot Howard says, “It may reasonably be doubted whether any people in Occidental civilization has marriage laws so defective as ours. Almost every conceivable blunder has been committed.” A federal amendment has been considered which would make marriage laws uniform throughout the country. But that, some argue, would do little good— consider the futility of the prohibition amendment. Rather by research and experiment, say others, must we find a new and scientific basis for our cultural standards and then establish them by education. In viewing the situation Mr. Frank concludes: “As yet the new patterns which will guide the young man of tomorrow have not been created. In endless experiment and many futile efforts this generation is seeking them, but it has not clarified or stabilized them or given the sanctions for authoritative use.”

But what is it, we may ask, which will give new patterns authority? Through long use and habit, and general approval, and more or less satisfactory results, our mores and customs become an authority in themselves. But there is an authority back of our marriage customs. That is the authority of religion. It is the teachings of Christ in regard to marriage and divorce which we have been following for generations. The early church made these teachings a part of its doctrines. The marriage relation was a sacred relation. The marriage ceremony was a sacrament or a sacred rite according to whether one was a Catholic or a Protestant. For centuries society so accepted it with sincerity and faith, and men and women, for the most part, held to the vows “for better or worse, till death do us part” and considered them sacred even though to keep them often meant sacrifice and suffering and always adaptation and a will to make family life a success. Today religion wanes, many more marriages than formerly are performed by civil officials and vows have no deep meaning.

Not only has the respect for marriage vows become weakened but at a time when the strain of economic and social changes demands an unusual [Page 48] amount of wisdom, uprightness and strength of character, the foundation of these virtues,—example and religious training in the home—has nearly vanished. First man forgets God and His commands, then he begins to lose his ethical standards. Mores cling longer, but they, too, gradually lose their author1ty.

DOES it not seem that what is needed to restore the stability of the family is strength of character, pure love, unselfishness? And, in spite of the fact that at present masses of both young and adult condemn religion and discard it as belonging to a primitive and superstitious age, do not both experience of the past and reason point out that religious truth is the source of these qualities? Is it not true that wherever the teachings of Christ have been sincerely followed family life has been stable and satisfying?

But how is religion renewed? Many have already found the answer to this in the life and teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. These do just what Christ did—reveal to us both the love and commands of God. “This is the Day in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out upon men.” These favors are both the quickening power of the Spirit and practical directions for life in this age when all things are changing. Our part is to investigate, know, act. “Strive, that ye may truly recognize Him, and observe befittingly His precepts.”

Bahá’u’lláh has ushered in the age of unity in its fullest sense. The unity of the family is therefore assured, for this is fundamental. When asked the Bahá’í belief in regard to the family ‘Abdu’l-Bahá replied: “According to the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, the family, being a human unit, must be educated according to the rules of sanctity. All the virtues must be taught the family. The integrity of the family bond must be constantly considered and the rights of the individual members must not be transgressed. . . . Just as the son has certain obligations to his father, the father likewise has certain obligations to his son. The mother, the sister and other members of the household have their certain prerogatives. All these rights and prerogatives must be conserved, yet the unity of the family must be sustained.”

Other instructions of Bahá’u’lláh bear directly on the permanence and sacredness of the family. Monogamy and chastity are commanded. Marriage itself must be a matter of grave consideration. After the choice of the two concerned the consent of all four parents must be obtained. Since the marriage relation is considered sacred, divorce is greatly deplored. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “The friends (Bahá’ís) must strictly refrain from divorce unless something arises which compels them to separate because of their aversion for each other. . . . They must then be patient and wait one complete year.” Women must be equally well educated with men for with them rests the early instruction of the children. Equality of men and women in every respect is a fundamental teaching of Bahá’u’lláh. Children must be carefully taught in spiritual matters [Page 49] as well as intellectual and material, for only with the two wings of religion and reason can man attain his high station.

THE bewildered home, then, is one of the several tragic signs of the transitional age in which we are living and it will surely pass. But we need not seek “in endless experiment” the authority for new mores. Once again the authority of the Messenger of God has been given mankind. His commands are seen to be reasonable and adapted to the exigencies of the times. With the extension of the knowledge of Bahá’u’lláh the new age will be established and we may be confident that this all-important institution—the home—will be re-established on an even firmer basis than formerly, the home will be “a haven of rest and peace” and children will be reared in the consciousness of the love of God. If we would have the present chaos in the home pass quickly we must hasten the spread of the knowledge of Bahá’u’lláh.

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HYMN OF THE FOREST

STANTON A. COBLENTZ

This world of latticed verdure,

Green height on glimmering height,

Whispers one anthem only:

A hymn of love and light.

The bird-notes trilling, calling,

The wind that softly stirs

In many-fingered leafage

Of redwoods and of firs;

The sun whose swaying shadows

Drift on a dappled stream;

Tangles of oak; and alders

Swung in a drowsy dream;

The stony-throated canyon;

The white-lipped waterfall,

Join in a chant of worship

To the lord and source of all.

And this the benediction

The passing wanderer knows,

When the love that is the forest

Blesses and overflows.

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THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS

ALFRED E. LUNT

THERE are vast numbers of people, scattered throughout the world, who have, perhaps reluctantly, reached the conclusion that war, like Cousin Mirandy’s seventh child,— “just has to come, and there’s no use fretting about it.” To the dual, inescapable twins, death and taxes, millions among mankind have finally added the third Gorgon, Medusa herself, clothed in her brazen body and snaky locks, and her name is War. Equally unavoidable, as they think, this snaky one, like her two sisters, combines the destructive qualities of each, in that each follows in her wake. The world tasted deeply of the cup of death in 1914-18, and today pays heavily in taxes for the doubtful privilege of having slaughtered the flower of its youth, and destroyed uncounted wealth, into whose production centuries of thought and energy had flowed.

War, in one aspect, carries with it a hideousness not always exhibited by either of its aforesaid boon companions. And this is that while, as a rule, there is ample warning of the onslaught of both death and taxes, in the normal course, war has a habit, like unto the deadly beast that lurks in the shadows, of darkening the vision of humanity at the most unexpected moment. That it is the mark of Cain, is shown by its swift and unsuspected onslaught. That it is the greatest ensign of death and tax burdens is demonstrated by the fact that it anticipates the first a million fold, and sows the seeds of the latter to the second and on-coming generations.

Plainly, therefore, a curse upon the whole body of the race, an insidious ulcer gnawing at the vitals of mankind, thoughtful souls in every land are asking themselves, in greater numbers than ever before:—“Is war destined to be an eternal companion of the human race; or is it one of those evils that, like yellow fever, can be totally eradicated?” Is war so innate in the human heart as to be enshrined within the unreachable recesses of man’s ultimate being, and as impossible of removal as the jugular vein; or does it resemble more the old man of the sea, whose grisly hold upon the tortured shoulders of Hercules was finally torn asunder by the wise [Page 51] strategy of that hero?

The unnumbered martyrs of the medical profession who gave their lives in order that humanity might be freed, once and for all, from certain deadly and devastating diseases which had counted their victims, their agonies and their ravages by millions, attained their goal only by unflinching research into the furthermost roots and causes of the dread adversary to whose extinction they consecrated every energy, even life itself. Except, by uncovering the last hiding-place and refuge of that enemy of mankind, and by tracing with infinite patience its tortuous course from its birth to its lodgment and incubation in its human host, these triumphs would never have been won. Neither fear of personal danger, nor submission to the “pooh poohs” of a disillusioned and defeated army of scoffers, meant anything to those valiant physicians into whose hearts had flashed a vision, and in whose very souls was a deathless purpose.

In the face of the far greater menace of war, whose combined destruction in lives, property and human morale multiplies the cost in human suffering a thousand fold over the most virulent disease, can it be honestly said that any effort, commensurate with those just recited, can be shown? Have we not, on the whole, consistently dodged the real issue? Have any men of action appeared, resolute and determined, to walk side by side with the heroes of medicine, aflame with the avowed purpose to expose to naked view the deeply hidden psychological factors that constitute the roots and origin of war?

THE answer must be, that, save for the utterances of the Prophets, such men have been numbered among the missing, or, if existing, their voices have been too weak to gain the attention of the listening world. The financial burden of war has been most ably presented by the Peace Societies, and these Associations have performed a noble part in the education for peace. The gatherings of Peace Conferences of the nations, however, have, on the whole, been characterized by almost a complete lack of good will in any practical sense. If fear and an inferiority complex are, to a certain extent, synonymous, there has been abundant evidence of each in these international gatherings. Too often, the Peace Conferences have been poisoned with the political hypocrises of the various national representatives dominating them. Representing, as they must, the very cabinets and foreign ministries which, at the home capital, were, themselves, enmeshed in “balances of power,” “ententes,” and totally psychologized with the delusion that war must be, these officials of the Peace Conference found themselves but puppets of the various sovereign states whose seal appeared upon their credentials. Unable to agree to any far-reaching remedies looking to peace, they met, conferred, and departed, mere unsubstantial ghosts of their declared purpose.

The late Czar of Russia, at whose behest the first Peace Conference at The Hague was assembled, found himself unable to wait but a short time after its adjournment, before summoning the hosts of Muscovy to [Page 52] a war with Japan. Some of these Conferences have been described by a profound observer of human problems, to this effect: The wine-sellers call a meeting so that they may discuss the evils of wine, and remove from the world the drinking of wine; yet their own vocation is wine selling. Nations that are constantly thinking either of worldly conquest, the expansion of their own domain, or waging war upon their contemporaries, send ministers and representatives to the Congress of The Hague to discuss the problem of universal peace, and to legislate regulations for the prevention of war. These delegates who have gathered at the Peace Conference are like merchants. Each strives to compete for victory with his rival. Even if peace were established, it would be but temporary. If such conferences were endowed with the power to establish an enduring peace, the world would have been at rest long ago.

In recent years the world has witnessed a still plainer demonstration of the inability or unwillingness of the present rulers of nations to compose their differences, in the utter collapse and futility of the widely heralded Disarmament Section of the League of Nations. No sadder spectacle has ever been uncovered to the eyes of the world than this manaruvering of statesmen, leading to no definite result, clearly dominated by fear and distrust of their equally timid colleagues.

At the heart of this problem is the somewhat confused, vague realization, in the minds of most men, that war, after all, is but the expression, on the international stage, of their own passions, greeds and enmities. Aware of this, even though dimly, a certain hopelessness of conquering the deep-seated disease of war, so strangely homogeneous with themselves, has cast its gloomy shadow even upon those who should be the spiritual leaders of human society. The problem is inextricably interwoven with the still heavy grip exercised by natural law upon the destinies of the human race.

To say that, notwithstanding all this, war is doomed, may appear a mere Utopian fancy. Nevertheless, the steady progress of mankind in the field of natural law, our brilliant and startling scientific conquests of nature, in her own domain, the steady though halting advances the race has made in the arena of socialization, the growing awareness that the individual is, to some extent at least, his brother’s keeper,—these demonstrations of a social philosophy embedded in the spiritual foundations of every great religion, greatly accelerated during the tribulations of the present economic depression, point unerringly to an awakening of man’s inner reality which will not stop short of the conquest of war, his greatest demon. This new consciousness, intensely quickened by the dark experiences of the nations since the World War, needs only active, informed leaders for its greater unfoldment, and an absolutely frank education into the mysterious connection war possesses with average human conduct.

The bright lining to the cloud is that this awakening consciousness, which has been variously termed the [Page 53] New Order, and even the New Age, carries with it an ever growing determination that the evils that have stretched mankind upon the bed of a consuming disease, must be eradicated. This disease is no other than discord and disunity, the origin of every major human sorrow. In the human body, every disease arises through the failure of reciprocity between the organs and functions. Separateness, the cutting off of that cooperation innately existing in health, is the symbol of disease. The two greatest forces we know, in our physical life, are composition and decomposition. But composition, which is the law bringing together the atoms or cells of every organized being, is synonymous with the health and consequently the happiness of the organism. When the power of composition, in the body, is encroached upon, by the impairment of the lifegiving flow of reciprocal cooperation between every cell, the door swings open to the inrush of the decompositional force. At that moment, sickness, and eventually death, takes possession, unless the power of decomposition is arrested, and the innate affinities of the organism, as a unified being, restored, through the ministrations of a wise physician.

IT requires little imagination to apply this picture to the whole body of mankind. By stubbornly ignoring the supreme fact that ideal well-being for the race, itself the archetype of all organisms, is to be found only through restoring the delicate balance between the races and peoples which will permit that unity and cooperation, flowing from the beneficent law of composition, to exercise their functions, the leaders and administrators of the nations have brought mankind to its present low ebb. Whether we call this a recognition of the oneness of humanity, or brotherhood, or the love of mankind or justice between nations, matters little if the powerful and controlling effects of these two supreme forces are recognized. For these forces lie at the very root of existence, and confer good or evil in proportion to the discernment with which their essential properties are clearly visualized.

Returning, for a moment, to the relation of the individual to war it is plain, from what has already been said, that the psychology of war is, in reality, a projection, on a relatively infinite plane, of the daily life of John Smith, the average citizen. If this be a somewhat slanderous statement, and not to be taken too literally, it will, nevertheless, evoke some twinges of conscience from many of us, should we begin to analyze those impulses that bring us into conflict with neighbors, business associates, or the man in the street, perhaps a companion automobilist. These impulses are usually based upon a form of prejudice, —which means a lack of knowledge of the real motives of the person towards whom we have conceived an enmity. Particularly is this true of race, color, and religious antagonisms. Prejudice is, as a rule, nine-tenths ignorance of that which lies beneath the surface.

Prejudice is the more easily played upon when foreignness of any kind is involved. And for this reason it [Page 54] has been comparatively easy for the chancelleries of states to instill into their subjects deep-seated hatreds. But these are, as a rule, but amplifications of the minor warfares that encompass the individual environments. It can be said, however, that whereas the statesman and ruler, in carrying out his unalterable national policy, and frequently aware that the enemy nation is far from being as inhuman, or sub-human, as he depicts it for home consumption meticulously refrains from communicating this fact to his countrymen,—the average individual citizen, having less at stake, and in a position to be better informed of his personal problem, and, as a matter of fact, more generous and forgiving, discloses a willingness to accept new evidence of the integrity of his opponent, and to admit his mistake.

We cannot dogmatically say that were Smith and his associates suddenly endowed with high political office and vicariously seated in the upholstered chairs of the Prime and Foreign Ministers, Secretary of State, and the various statesmen whose conceptions have for so long hewed the bypaths of international relations, they, i. e., Smith et als, would view their new and crushing problems in exactly the same way as did those they dispossessed. We are inclined to believe at least a tendency to a new way might appear, especially if Smith and his confreres had, perhaps, stood in the trenches in the late War. It would all depend upon the degree of awareness of these new Ministers of what they were up against, to borrow a telling though uncouth phrase. They would, in any event, bring to their new duties something of the longings of the average man for peace, even if, being more or less unregenerate like the most of us, the good and evil within them were still in a state of belligerency.

THAT there is an intimate relationship between war and the individual citizen becomes increasingly clear when we recall how his fears and rancors are played upon by war propaganda. Although this propaganda, at least in Europe, has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be nine-tenths clever imagination, devoted, as it is, to the most sanguinary arguments calculated to show the unspeakable character of the contemplated enemy-people, their repulsive characteristics, and their satanic deeds of torture and brutality,—Mr. Average Citizen usually wholly fails to read between the lines, to investigate the origin of these wholesale slanders of an entire nation, and, impelled by a curious mixture of motives made up of combined indignation and atavistic memories of the fancied glories of war and conquest, presents himself at the recruiting station at nine o’clock, sharp, in the morning, thus joining the mournful procession that will, one day, return home in disillusionment and manifest loss. Meanwhile, the government has unloosed the never ending stream of golden dollars, loaning billions to its allies, and launching the country into a new cycle of expenditures, taxes, and mounting pensions and bonuses. When in an age like this, the interdependence of nations has become [Page 55] proverbial,—the signing of the Amnesty, or the Peace Treaty unveils the sad truth that both victor and vanquished have tasted the bitter fruit.

In view of the fact that the above conclusions are more or less widely realized by almost every intelligent member of society, why is it, then, that the magic of war retains its hold upon the leaders and rulers of earth? This question cannot be answered merely by pointing to the undoubted truth that the new and younger generation, deprived by natural law of inheriting the acquired characteristics and experiences of their fathers, are compelled to learn the bitter lesson for themselves. There still remains the obvious remedy of a proper system of education that would reveal even to the students of the lower grades the plain, unvarnished facts of war and peace. It might do no harm, and even do a little good, even in the face of present nationalistic tendencies, to make a part of every school curriculum instruction disclosing the basic oneness of humanity and its essential brotherhood, the elimination of race and religious prejudice, that the true grandeur of nations lies in the path of universal peace, and that all mankind are, in reality, the “leaves of but one tree.”

---

THE DESERT

EVERETT TABOR GAMAGE

Vast, arid and uncharted in the heat

Of blinding noonday sun, it sleeping lies

Beyond the point where dim horizons meet

The searching of the Wanderers’ weary eyes.

How like the stretches of the soul it seems,

Untouched, unconquered, limitless and waste

That harbor all the heart’s unanswered dreams

Of things to come, and memories of the past;

Until some day the Mighty Gardener strives

To stir to bloom and life the wide expanse

Of wasted grandeur in our weary lives

Our souls with rarer beauty to enhance.

Awake, O God, We pay with lifted hands

The deserts of the soul, and of the sands.

[Page 56]

POEMS

ARCHIBALD OVERTON HARRIS

EARTHBOUND

Earthbound, the mind to all things sees an end,

Finds time and space in prison walls confined.

The ages with whose graves earth’s rocks are lined,

Horizons dim where sky and ocean blend,

Seem limitless, and yet we comprehend

To all a limitation; thus resigned

To finite entities, the mind

Can only soar when spirit wings attend.

Yet every night the hollow of God’s hand

Is cupped about the heavens’ flashing bowl

That knows no limit and no outer land

Nor bounds of space to circumscribe the soul;

But only in the light of God we see

The infinite reveal eternity.

LIGHT

Before Man’s rudest annals were begun

That tiny star-born beam we dimly see

Launched on its wings to span infinity,

Bearer of knowledge when its course is run,

To Earth, a lesser daughter of the sun,

Itself a spark to other suns that be,

Blazing an instant in eternity,

So vast God’s scroll. And is it knowledge won

To see unveiled transcendent cosmic laws

That govern fiery Mars and Betelguese,

Yet, blind from light revealed, see not the Cause,

But only finite facts and entities?

Omniscient Wisdom, shield Thy awful light

Till mortal eyes can read Thy scroll aright!

[Page 57]

THERE WAS WINE

MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER

SOME men love women, and some love money, and some love fame. One can judge a man by what he loves. There is one type of man who loves a certain presence moving in his heart; a presence which he calls God; this type of man has always enriched his fellows, and when he dies, the flowers are a little fresher over him, and other men come, and sit by his grave, and remember what he was.

There was once a young Englishman named George Herbert; a young man more or less like any other; a well-dressed young man, slightly aloof because of some pride of birth, who wrote home regularly from Cambridge University to ask for more money, who had ambitions, who hoped that through his ability and his powerful connections he would some day become Secretary of State. A favorite of King James, he used to read the royal literary efforts to his classes at the University, and to demonstrate wherein both Cicero and Demosthenes were inferior; so that James, naturally enough, pronounced him the jewel of Cambridge. There was a careless, early-in-the-morning joy about him; he could see his life ahead, full and splendid.

And then one day King James died. Then Herbert’s other patrons fell away, and his health broke, and death jostled him; and he found himself racked by an imperious passion for this world and a quiet, half-starved agony for the next; until gradually he began to listen to some voice in his heart, and to turn away from all but the most spiritual of worldly things. A nobleman, he turned priest, a calling then in disfavor. He forgot old hopes and desires, and spent the days in guiding his congregation toward religious beauty; in savoring the countryside around his church at Bemerton, in listening sometimes to the music in Salisbury Cathedral. And so it was that he became one of the company of the lovers of God, more favored than many lovers, perhaps, because he could handle words, and he knew how to shape them till they meant what he felt. Love made a saint of him, till he must have worn a halo—not a painted one but the kind that shines around one’s shadow on bright grass, when [Page 58] the sun has just come up. He grew from a somewhat usual, brilliant young man, furnished with neat, verbal virtues, to an incarnation of priestliness, but his path was the way of the cross; he grew in pain, he had to struggle every step, to beat down his passion for worldly things, to master conflicting desires and doubts, to govern his reluctant, consumptive body. He has left us his books, to show us the way he went.

In the beginning, he wrote The Church Porch, and reading it we find a man who is still outside the Temple. He has some thought of mounting heavenward, but on red velvet carpet. He is here a courtier and scholar, admired of King James and Francis Bacon, a gay young man cleverly denouncing a great number of sins which seem only objectively realized. Only buds of qualities here, later to be forced open by suffering or blighted by prosperity, one cannot tell which. For example, he speaks of temperance:

Drink not the third glasse, which

thou canst not tame

When once it is within thee . . .

here is his feeling on mirth

Pick out of tales the mirth, but not

the sinne . . .

and here, his pride:

Do all things like a man, not

sneakingly . . . .

Towards great persons use respective

boldnesse.

His detachment:

Envie not greatnesse . . .

Be not thine own worm.

his consciousness of fine clothes, “Kneeling ne’re spoiled silk stocking,” his ecclesiastical method—“Resort to sermons, but to prayers most,” and his tact:

Draw the card

That suites him best of whom thy

speech is heard.

These views and attitudes are typical of Herbert and of many another; they present a man who thought heaven was as easy to win as a mistress—that only hope and a few bright lines were requisite. They do not set us trembling with the agony of Herbert later on, when he was older and tired of fighting, longing for the presence of his Lord.

PEOPLE said the laborers would leave their ploughs to come and hear him preach; he has left us his ideals of priestliness in a book, The Country Parson—a study which ranks in a way with the world’s utopias, the Nouvelle Héloïses and the Atlantises, but it rings truer than they, perhaps, because Herbert was living the saintly life he described— his ideal community had at least one real inhabitant. The Country Parson regards as “the two highest points of life . . . Patience and Mortification.” He is forever aware of his parishioners, and constantly adapting himself to their needs—“he hath thoroughly canvassed all the particulars of humane actions . . .” He is temperate, “For sins make all equall whom they finde together; and then they are worst who ought to be best.” This last he emphasized because of his crusader’s wish to uplift the priesthood and reestablish its honor, having said, “I will labour to be like my saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men.” The Country [Page 59] Parson is “full of all knowledge . . . even tillage and pastorage,” but as for the Scriptures, “there he sucks and lives.” He is never fanatical, and accepts the culture of other nations: “Neither hath God opened or will open all to one, that there may be a traffic in knowledge. . .” Herbert includes even stage-craft and church-setting in his directions for the Parson, and advocates the use of “gestures . . . that being first affected himself, he may also affect his people;” but he adds that “The Parson is not witty, or learned, or eloquent, but Holy” and says that every word of the sermon must be “hart-deep.” Moreover the duty of training the congregation is undertaken with all seriousness; they are to learn not as “parrats,” but reasonably; their responses are to be given “not in a huddling, or slubbering fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting . . . but gently and pausably.” If unmarried, the Parson “never talks with any woman alone, and that seldom, and never jestfully or sportfully.” If circumstances decree his marriage, “the choice of a wife was made rather by his care than by his eye. . .” In his home, “even the wals are not idle,” and cleanliness and thrift, fasting and prayer, predominate. The Parson, then, is father and doctor, comforter and judge, and has his being in a diurnal round of model activity. So much for the Herbert of The Country Parson. Here we find him accessible, easy to set forth on paper: the gentle heart untorn by struggle; the confident, directing will; the alert mind sensitive to every need of well-lived life. But this is not the Herbert of the love lyrics, the one whom posterity has cherished, the one with the nails through his hands.

TODAY’S readers, who subscribe by preference to publications dealing with “eternal triangles,” with women who “have a right to their happiness,” with men who “make good,” will fail, perhaps, to understand why Herbert chose as his main literary theme the love he felt for his Creator:

My God . . .

Why are not Sonnets made of Thee,

and layes

Upon Thine altar burnt . . .

Will not a verse run smooth that

bears Thy name?

If we remember him, it is because he revolted against contemporary poetry, which he felt to be conventionalized and fabricated and low in aim; because he redirected the love lyric, addressed it to his Lord:

shall I write

And not of thee through whom my

fingers bend

To hold my quill?

And again,

Who sayes that fiction onely and

false hair

Become a verse? Is there in truth

no beautie? . . .

I envie no man’s nightingale or

spring,

Nor let them punish me with

losse of ryme

Who plainly say, My God, My

King . . .

And further

Farewell, sweet phrases, lovely

metaphors;

. . . when ye before

[Page 60]

Of stews and brothels onely knew

the doores,

Then did I wash you with my tears,

and more

Brought you to church well drest

and clad.

Herbert’s life, like many another’s, was a transition from young joys through torturing hopes and doubts, to weary trust. In Affliction, he writes,

At first thou gav’st me milk and

sweetnesses. . . .

There was no moneth but May.

But with my years sorrow did twist

and grow. . . .

In reference to his desire for worldly glory, strengthened by environment and high lineage, he says:

Whereas my birth and spirit rather

took

The way that takes the own,

Thou didst betray me to a lingering

book

And wrap me in a gown. . . .

And his autobiographical The Pilgrimage is still hard to read calmly, though the pain it embodies was quieted three centuries ago:

And so I came to phansie’s meadow

strowed

With many a flower.

Fain would I here have made

abode,

But I was quicken’d by my houre . .

. . to the wilde of passion which

some call the wold;

A wasted place but sometimes rich

. . .

At length I got unto the gladsome

hill. . . .

And climbing still . . .

A lake of brackish waters on the

ground

Was all I found. . . .

My hill was further. So I flung

away

Yet heard a crie

. . . none goes that way

And lives! If that be all, said I,

After so foul a journey death is

fair

And but a chair.

His verse shows us all the phases of his change from a man of this world to a man of the next. Studying him, one gathers that at death there should be only the merest tracing of the personality left, like the empty gold hoop which is all that shows of the full moon when the moon is crescent; that death should find men emptied of this life, and already one with eternity. If we still read him, it is because millions of us shall change as he changed.

He began to believe that

Man’s joy and pleasure

Rather hereafter than at present is.

And to speak of earth-delights as

Foolish night-fires, women’s and

children’s wishes

Chases in arras. . . .

He upbraids his love of life:

Poore silly soul . . .

To whom the starres shine not so

fair as eyes

Nor solid work as false embroyderies.

And says, with some bravado, of women:

What is this woman-kinde, which

I can wink

Into a blacknesse and distaste?

He seems gradually to have shut out of his life all but the most objective of pleasures, and to have felt that even they kept him from heaven. Perhaps he would have been greater as a poet [Page 61] if he could have lingered with Spenser in the bowers of earthly delight, or stopped as Milton did to watch Eve glowing among the rose-bushes, or loved God with the buoyancy of an Emily Dickinson—but he was too ill for mental temperance, and lived with the fevered concentration of the consumptive:

Joy, I did lock thee up, but some

bad man

Hath let thee out again. . . .

CONSIDERING him as priest, we find that if he won his battle, he knew the value of desires he had killed; he did not bring to the priesthood qualities that were unmarketable elsewhere; he had been a success in the outside world, had tasted what the world can give:

I know the wayes of learning, both

the head

And pipes that feed the presse,

and make it runne. . . .

I know the wayes of honour, what

maintains

The quick returns of courtesie

and wit. . . .

I know the wayes of pleasure, the

sweet strains,

The lullings and the relishes of

it. . . .

Yet I love thee.

And though he felt himself constantly unworthy—

. . both foul and brittle, much unfit

To deal in holy writ, . . .

he was an ideal priest, evanescent, compassionate, tolerant. He was much more concerned with spirit than with theology, perhaps because he felt that his life was too short for argument; he turns ironical at theologians:

As men, for fear the starres should

sleep and nod

And trip at night, have spheres

suppli’d. . . .

Just so the other heaven they also

serve. . . .

Love God and love your neighbour.

Watch and pray

Do us ye would be done unto.

O dark instructions! Ev’n as dark

as day!

Who can these Gordian knots

undo?

He had a generous affection for other religionists, writing for example to the Jews—

Oh that . . .

. . . your sweet sap might come

again!

Moreover he never thought himself free of the human burden of wrongdoing:

Lord, let the Angels praise thy

name.

Man is a foolish thing, a foolish

thing. . . .

A lump of flesh, without a foot or

wing...

My God, I mean myself.

But it is Herbert as lover that we still remember. His passion for God was not an unwavering light, but a wilderness of emotions from agony to joy, from revolt to submission; an adoration still flaming after the lapse of centuries. Sometimes this relationship was intimate, conversational—

My God, a verse is not a crown . . .

But it is that which while I use

I am with thee. . . .

Again the emotion is intensified:

How sweetly doth My Master

sound! My Master!

or rises into more fiercely happy expression:

[Page 62]

My Joy, my life, my crown!

My heart was meaning all the day

Somewhat it fain would say;

And still it runneth mutt’ring up

and down

With onely this, My joy, my life,

my crown.

Until the love is so jubilant that we know mourning must follow:

Rise, heart, thy Lord is risen. Sing

his praise . . .

Consort both heart and lute, and

twist a song

Pleasant and long. . . .

I got me flowers to straw thy

way

I got me boughs off many a tree;

But thou wast up by break of day

And brought’st thy sweets along

with thee.

And then he is steeped in pain; he loses his Beloved:

Whither, O whither, art thou fled

My Lord, my Love?

He feels that sin has thrust him away —“I know it is my sinne which locks thine eares. . . .” Sins like the following:

Yesterday

I did behave me carelessly

When I did pray.

He festers with self-condemnation—

Sorrie I am, my God, sorrie I am

That my offences course it in a

ring

and even poetry cannot relieve his agony:

Verses, ye are too fine a thing, too

wise . . .

Give up your feet and running to

mine eyes

And keep your measures for

some lover’s lute

Whose grief allows him musick

and a ryme.

For mine excludes both measure,

tune and time.

Alas, my God!

Until finally he flings himself down and begs forgiveness:

O do not use me

After my sinnes! Look not on my

desert

But on thy glorie! . . .

O do not bruise me!

Dulnesse and Deniall have their share —“My soul lay out of sight, untuned, unstrung.” Then rebellion, as an inevitable variation of such a love. He writes in Longing:

Thou tarriest, while I die

And fall to nothing. Thou dost

reigne . . .

While I remain

In bitter grief. Yet am I stil’d

Thy childe.

And in a poem called The Collar he summarizes the whole story of his adoration. He revolted here against the yoke he bore; said that his bonds were “pettie thoughts,” wondered with a layman’s wonder at his self-forged cage, beat against his love, until, exhausted with anger and at the climax of passion, a single word from the Master draws him to sainthood again. We can hear yet his abrupt and labored breathing—

I struck the board and cry’d, ‘No

more:

I will abroad!’

What, shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free; free as

the road,

Loose as the winde, as large as

store. . . .

Then the dry sobs of

[Page 63]

Sure there was wine

Before my sighs did drie it; there

was corn

Before my tears did drown it;

Is the year onely lost to me?

Have I no bayes to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? All

blasted?

All wasted?

And the war-like ring of the

Not so, my heart! But there is fruit,

And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age

On double pleasures; leave thy cold

dispute

Of what is fit and not. Forsake

thy cage. . . .

And the galloping thoughts of escape —to the bowed, hushed reverence of the last line:

But as I rav’d, and grew more

fierce and wild

At every word,

Methought I heard one calling,

‘Child’;

And I reply’d, ‘My Lord.’

HERBERT is dust now under the altar of his church at Bemerton. We like to think of this man who forsook a seventeenth century world for a seventeenth century heaven; who could leave a court for a village, to see, in his dying years, that his church was “stuck with boughs and perfumed with incense,” and that his farm-laborers made their responses during service; who was lacerated by the love of God, until death healed him. We could address him with the words of another man who also loved beyond this world’s horizons; of Thomas á Kempis, saying, “Thou shalt rest in the Lord always, for He Himself is the everlasting rest of the saints.”

---

AS to the existence of spirit in the mineral: it is indubitable that minerals are endowed with a spirit and life according to the requirements of that stage. This unknown secret, too, hath become known unto the materialists who now maintain that all beings are endowed with life, even as He saith in the Qur’án, “All things are living.”

In the vegetable world, too, there is the power of growth, and that power of growth is the spirit. In the animal world there is the sense of feeling, but in the human world there is an all-embracing power. In all the preceding stages the power of reason is absent, but the soul existeth and revealeth itself. The sense of feeling understandeth not the soul, whereas the reasoning power of the mind proveth the existence thereof.

In like manner the mind proveth the existence of an unseen Reality that embraceth all beings, and that existeth and revealeth itself in all stages, the essence whereof is beyond the grasp of the mind. Thus the mineral world understandeth neither the nature nor the perfections of the vegetable world; the vegetable world understandeth not the nature of the animal world, neither the animal world the nature of the reality of man that discovereth and embraceth all things.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 64]

SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION

A SYMPOSIUM

THE teaching profession holds the key to the vast stores of knowledge of the past. Yet the teacher is limited to certain fields of knowledge, and therefore, “‘Tis part of the whole we see” in the teacher’s demonstrations and spoken word, which molds the minds of millions. Theirs is an especial gift which is the touchstone bringing forth from the past a living knowledge. Teachers of the race must exemplify the standards of truth in deed and action which flows unsullied above propaganda, which is often couched in the stature of knowledge. To the teacher inspiration must be of nobler birth.

Society of man, ever looks forward to an ordered life amongst its people. Ancient and modern society without spiritual substance of divine educators —the prophets, who founded at recurring milleniums the bases of new arts and sciences which brought unity in diversity—has ever found chaos. Man has partaken of variety in life, yet has lost the singleness of life’s purpose. Without the perfect teachers —the prophets—knowledge becomes incomplete and disconnected without purpose. Communion with these great souls and more directly with the most recent on this planet, brings at once the sense of humility for the great privilege to serve, and again to reach above for a knowledge far richer than limited minds can conceive. Bahá’u’lláh in the Tablet of Iqan shows knowledge to be of two kinds. “One appears from the inspiration of the Ideal King; the other emanates from the imaginings of darkened souls. The teacher of one is the Exalted God (through His prophets) and the teacher of the other is sensual suggestion. The fruits of one tree are patience, longing, wisdom, and love, and the fruits of the other are pride, vainglory, and conceit.” —N. F. WARD.

PERHAPS one of the greatest immediate benefits of spiritual education, is the sense of peaceful, personal progress it brings—a feeling of accented actuality of purposeful living. It is suggested by the quickening of life within a seed. From human aspiration springs a restless urge to thrust upward, like a tender shoot [Page 65] from a tiny seed, piercing the winter-hardened soil of environment in its surge to find and feel the warmth and light from the sun. Some driving impulse within the seed, accounting not of the toughness of its shell, the hard earth to be penetrated, the complex functions inherent in its activity, the mat of last year’s leaves carpeting the ground, endows the tender shoot with the power to overcome obstacles, for its spirit is quickened. Somehow, within the being of the plant, life energy is released. There is response to the spirit of growth, for is not a yearning bound up in the seed? Man yearns for the knowledge of God. This hunger is race-old but latent and impotent until recognized for what it is. Then is the spirit quickened and spiritual education begun.— DALE S. COLE.

PRAYER, meditation, work done in the spirit of service, literary effort, and many forms of study, all contribute to that conception and acquisition of inner values that may be called Spiritual Education.

As the age-old camel and caravan trails of the Orient reveal their beaten silver in the blue distance, so do these weather worn paths still invoke the spiritual explorer. The outstanding opportunities of our moment seem to lie in the direction of cooperation and peace. Since these are paths whose treading will most quickly solve the hunger and problem of our day.

The study of cooperation in all its phases extends and refines individual consciousness by purifying it of egotism, and making it more aware of collective capacity and endeavor. Without an understanding of cooperation, peace is impossible. The revaluation of peace is essential at the moment, and leads us into the more exalted issues of cooperation, since the desire for peace is a basic hunger of life and a sublimated expression of love.—BEATRICE IRWIN.

THE subject is inclusive— because it is life. Its first manifestations appear with the ceaseless movements of the new-born child tracing a pattern increasingly intricate and devious along the inevitable horizon of its path until it disappears from our apparent sight beyond the curve of death. The schoolroom is the world; the subjects legion. Dizzy we rest beside the dusty road and suddenly know that “Knowledge is one point: the ignorant have multiplied it.” But by the very breath we breathe we are pushed on. Exhaustion itself leads at last to relaxation which invites awareness. And flashes do come. A sense of proportion; the kaleidoscopic pieces fall into a pattern; for a moment we love; freed for a priceless minute from the ceaseless preoccupations with ourselves we see into the reality of another; taking our eyes for a moment from the tight-rope balancing of imagined security we find we can dance; it all comes down to attention. Where are we looking? The universe is hung with signs. “Take heed, and be watchful; and remember that all things have their consummation in belief in Him, in attainment unto His day, and in the realization of His divine presence.”—DORIS HOLLEY.

THE spiritual in education; [Page 66] the education of man into the spiritual. It may, perhaps, be summarized as a quickened perception of God’s love for man, a development of a personal devoted love for God, and a steady concern how to make this world a fitting home for God’s beloved.

To gain this spiritual education man must will to know God and to love and obey Him. As in all education a man must decide for himself that he will acquire it. “Who else but yourselves is to be blamed if ye choose to remain unendowed with so great an outpouring of God’s transcendent and all-encompassing grace, with so bright a revelation of His resplendent mercy?” Man’s help is in himself and God. He must decide for himself, then turn to the Words of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, overflowing with guidance. Through them the resolute seeker may learn the divine purposes for human life, and by obedience to them he may surely approach God, and so fulfil his destiny.

Prayer is imperative, for it attunes the human spirit to the Divine, and opens the door for the penetration of the divine Will into the human will. In every condition man must associate himself joyously with the Spirit of Life; otherwise, he can never know the eternal joy of the service of God.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “. . .the only way to approach God is by characterizing ourselves with the attributes of divinity.” Also, “If a man be just, kind, humble and merciful, and his qualities are acquired through the willpower . . . this is Godlike.” Bahá’u’lláh says: “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations in its exigencies and requirements.”

These few words alone may be taken as a corner stone of spiritual education. To translate them into every day life is not easy, and most of us fall far short in our efforts to obey them. We may, nevertheless, rest assured that whenever such “qualities are acquired through the will-power . . . this is Godlike.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has told us so.—ROSA V. WINTERBURN.

“THAT which education is to the individual, Revelation is to the race.” Religion, as revealed by the Prophets, has been the ruling principle of race education. And, in this Day, Revelation opens the heavens of a new knowledge, which is the mind’s maturity.

Unaware, our education is largely concerned with the past and content with knowledge proved by human experience. In bringing the Revelations of the past into meaning for our time, a little knowledge proves invidious and makes divisions among men. The cure lies in more knowledge, in the new knowledge or understanding of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh. Bahá’í Faith explains the past, and realizes the present while it builds the future.

So long as our knowing is confined to the past it is spiritual ignorance. The sole meaning that enlightens us is the truth for the cycle we are living. This Time is opportunity. Our pure knowledge in relation to Time is faith or that mode of education which attains wisdom through love of the [Page 67] Highest. The chastened heart lives in awareness of Spirit—and the mind is flooded with light.—HELEN PILKINGTON BISHOP.

THE social sciences, while they may deny for themselves a spiritual aspect, have a direct bearing on the religious concepts of the present era. Their underlying purpose is to observe and describe the facts of human life and thereby to increase understanding. When such understanding passes into sympathy and the will to serve society is forthwith awakened we are in the province, not merely of the “higher” education, but of the highest, the spiritual. Sociology in particular, because it furnishes an analysis of group life, is actually doing the work of enlightened religion in building toward the unification of society. Sociologists offer as a proved assertion the fact that human nature is modifiable. It is their belief that established cultures can be converted to higher forms without waiting for sporadic or random growth. How may the building of a better world be accomplished? By education in its scientific sense which is an “objective investigation of the world and of life.” For knowledge, of necessity strikes at the roots of prejudice and conflict. As Auguste Comte declared: it is lack of agreement in fundamental ideas that has thrown the world into chaos. Such agreement attained frees the energies of men toward creative social accord, inevitably in the direction of a new social order founded on justice and brotherhood. The maximum of good for each member of society is the stated goal of human endeavor. To the extent that the social studies promote this end may they be said to carry out the purpose of the great spiritual leaders of all times. —DORIS MCKAY.

PRAYER as a means towards spiritual education. The moment this thought is voiced its importance is apparent. Some teachers have, perhaps, alluded to the necessity of prayer, or expatiated upon its delights. But the definite use of it for spiritual education has been neglected.

Bahá’ís have taken upon themselves the obligation of becoming new creatures. What means has Bahá’u’lláh put at our disposal to bring about such a consummation? The occasional prayers which He has given us are these means. You cannot recite them day after day without imprinting them indelibly upon your consciousness. Moreover, you are using the Word of God Itself in your prayer; that word which possesses the mysterious creative power which awakens spiritual life in the human soul. How marvelous is the Power of God! By one Word He brings into existence a new creature, and educates it.—DELLA C. QUINLAN.

THE crying need of the whole educational process today, whether carried on within the academic field or outside of it, is for a reliable standard of value in conformity with which human thought and life may become adjusted and stabilized, and human energy may be poured into channels befitting man’s own best interests and welfare. The disorder pervading the world must be attributed ultimately [Page 68] to the failure of the educational process to inculcate proper motives and aims for action. And the lack of this element is, in turn, due to the worldwide corruption and debilitation of religion. For aside from divinely revealed religion there is no final standard upon which man can with assurance rely. With this most essential element of the educational process lacking, all the intellectual data and technical skill acquired during the process is misapplied. The situation of the world today is not unlike that of a man of keen physical and mental capacities who, through the shadow of insanity, has been shut out from the real world into an imaginary world of his own, thereby causing his outward behavior to be deprived of meaning or worth.—WILFRID BARTON.

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NOW concerning philosophers: they are of two schools. Thus Socrates the wise believed in the unity of God and the existence of the soul after death; as his opinion was contrary to that of the narrow-minded people of his time, that divine sage was poisoned by them. All divine philosophers and men of wisdom and understanding, when observing these endless beings, have considered that in this great and infinite universe all things end in the mineral kingdom, that the outcome of the mineral kingdom is the vegetable kingdom, the outcome of the vegetable kingdom is the animal kingdom and the outcome of the animal kingdom the world of man. The consummation of this limitless universe with all its grandeur and glory hath been man himself, who in this world of being toileth and suffereth for a time, with diverse ills and pains, and ultimately disintegrates, leaving no trace and no fruit after him. Were it so, there is no doubt that this infinite universe with all its perfections has ended in shame and delusion with no result, no fruit, no permanence and no effect. It would be utterly without meaning.

They (the spiritual philosophers) were thus convinced that such is not the case, that this Great Workshop with all its power, its bewildering magnificence and endless perfections, cannot eventually come to naught. That still another life should exist is thus certain and, just as the vegetable kingdom is unaware of the world of man, so we too, know not of the Great Life hereafter that followeth the life of man here below.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 69]

PAGES FROM AN ESPERANTO BOOK

LIDIA ZAMENHOF

THE influence which Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, the author of the Esperanto language, had upon the Esperanto movement, was ever and continues to be so great, that one cannot understand fully what the Esperanto cause is without understanding what were the reasons which caused him to consecrate his whole life, since the earliest childhood, to an idea which was, at that time, not only unpopular, but even considered as a crazy one.

The town of Bialystok cannot be counted even now among the most prominent cities of Poland. In the second half of the past century it could be called a typical provincial town, had it not been for one circumstance which gave that place a peculiar character. For the inhabitants of that town were of different nationalities and different languages were heard in the streets. The sounds of the Polish speech were overpowered by the official Russian language; the country-folk spoke frequently Lithuanian, and in the town itself the population of Jewish and German origin spoke their respective languages, making thus of Bialystok a small Tower of Babel. This was a complete image of what a disaster the confusion of languages is as it raises barriers between the human brothers and engenders distrust, suspicion and hatred among those who do not understand one another. Whatever suspicions are whispered by men of bad will into the ears of one nation, they will be easily believed. And such believing in the whispers of men of bad will will not fail sometimes to put Cain’s weapons into the hands of those who listen and believe. What is easier than to convince one nation that another nation is plotting treachery against it? What is easier than to convince the followers of one religion that the followers of another are capturing and killing little children to saturate their ritual bread with the blood of the innocents?

“In the streets of my unhappy native town savage men with axes and iron sticks threw themselves, as fiercest beasts, upon peaceful inhabitants whose only fault was that they spoke a different language and had a different racial religion than those savage [Page 70] ones. This was why they broke the skulls and picked out the eyes of men and women, of helpless old people and children. . .”

To this testified Zamenhof himself years afterward, standing before his fellow-esperantists.

“I was educated as an idealist; I was taught that all men are brothers. Meanwhile in the streets and in the courtyard everything at every step made me feel that men do not exist. All that does exist are Russians, Poles, Germans, Hebrews, etc. This tormented always bitterly my child-soul, though many would perhaps smile at this boy’s suffering for the world. And as at that time it seemed to me that the adults had some almighty power, I used to repeat to myself that when I am adult I shall certainly remove this evil . . .”

And to this pledge he remained true.

Remembering still the innocent blood which stained the pavement stones of Bialystok, he spoke:

“It is now known quite clearly that it was the fault of a band of abominable criminals who are artfully creating hatred between one race and another by means of most cunning and mean lies and calumnies. But could even the greatest lies and calumnies yield such a terrible fruit, if the races knew one another well, if there did not stand between them high and thick walls which prohibit them from communicating freely with one another and from seeing that the members of one race are exactly the same kind of men, as the members of our own race, that their literature does not preach any terrible crimes, but has the same morality and the same ideals as our own? Let us break, let us break the walls between the peoples!”

The little boy in Bialystok did not hear of the world-shaking call of Bahá’u’lláh; he did not know His teachings proclaiming the necessity of an international language and speaking of the creation of a new language. But does it matter whether a flower knows that the sun has risen? Does it matter whether the flower knows what time it is? When the sun shines, the flower will open its petals, for it cannot do otherwise, for it has to do this, for this is the law of nature. The laws of Spirit are even more compelling than the laws of nature. When the Sun of Spirit shines, the flowers of Spirit open their petals, though they have no clock to tell them to do this. When the Law of God is proclaimed, the same God finds souls to fulfil it, even if those souls do not know directly that it is the Law of God. This Law, however, influences them, binds them, drives them to a work and sustains them in the chosen work, however difficult, however extraordinary it may be.

A SEED that has been sown at the command of God, cannot perish. Even when the language was already created, Zamenhof had still to fight against human indifference and mocking, against poverty that checked his first steps and more than once threatened to stop his humanitarian work, to still the call of the first Esperanto paper “La Esperantisto,” and to remind the young idealist that without money nothing can be done on earth! How could be overcome all [Page 71] those difficulties that seemed sometimes to be insurmountable, had it not been through the help of God Who having once shown him the way, kept sustaining him on this way, sent him friends who understood and lent a helpful hand and aided him to raise high the green banner of Esperanto.

What could have seemed impossible to many a man of little faith, proved to be possible and real. The first International Congress of Esperanto in 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, gathered in a common family men and women from most different, even hostile nationalities. They all spoke friendly one common language. They all understood one another. The walls were indeed broken between them.

The theater wherein the Congress was held, was crowded. Such a gathering of people from near and far, burning with enthusiasm, it had never contained. And when the sounds of the Esperanto hymn were stilled, the author of the language spoke the following words:

“I greet you, dear friends, brothers and sisters from the great worldwide human family, who have come here from countries near and distant, from the most different lands of the world to shake hands with one another like brother with brother, in the name of the great idea which binds us all together.

“Sacred is for us this day. Modest is our gathering; the outer world does not know much of it, and the words which are spoken here, won’t fly on the wires of telegraph to all cities and towns of the world. Neither rulers nor ministers have gathered here to change the political map of the world. Neither brilliant costumes nor multitude of imposing decorations are shining in our hall; no cannons are firing around the modest house wherein we find ourselves. But through the air of our hall are soaring mysterious sounds, sounds very low, inaudible for the ear, but perceptible for every sensitive soul. These are the sounds of something great which is now being born. Through the air are soaring mysterious phantoms. The eyes do not see them, but the soul does feel them: they are images of a time to come, of a time quite new. The phantoms will fly into the world, will take form and power, and our sons and grandsons will see them, will feel them and enjoy them. . . .

“. . . Let us realize well the whole importance of this day, for today among the hospitable walls of Boulogne-sur-Mer have gathered neither Frenchmen with Germans, nor Russians with Poles, but men with men. . .

“After many millions of years of mutual muteness and fighting, now in Boulogne is actually beginning in a greater measure the mutual understanding and fraternizing of the members of the human race from different peoples; and once started, it will never stop, but will keep going onward with an always growing power, till the last shadows of the eternal darkness will disappear for ever. Blessed be this day and great be its results!

“. . . At this solemn instant my heart is full of something indefinable and mysterious, and I feel the desire to unburden my heart with a prayer, to turn myself to a supreme Power [Page 72] and seek its aid and blessing. But as well as at the present instant I do not feel myself a member of any nation, but simply a man, so do I feel that at this moment I do not belong to any national or partial religion, but am just a man. And at the present moment there stands before my eyes only this high moral Power, which is felt by everyone in his heart, and to this unknown Power I address my prayer:

Immaterial Mystery, Limitless Power,

Great Force over all the world reigning,

Thou Fountain of Love and Truth who every hour

All life in the world art sustaining!

To Thee who art known under many a name

But who in the heart of each one art the same,

To Thee, the Creator and Ruler, today

We Pray.

We come not to Thee with a national creed

Nor with dogmas accepted in blindness,

Religious disputings no longer we heed,

But are ruled by belief in Thy kindness.

With this belief deep in the heart of each brother,

The most pure and true, never forced on another,

At Thy holy altar, a brotherly band

We stand.

Perfect and beautiful mads’t Thou mankind,

But men fight against one another;

Nation a nation attacks with hate blind

Like jackal, a brother his brother.

Mysterious Power, whoever Thou art,

O list to the voice of this prayer from the heart,

And peace to Thy suffering children restore

Once more.

We vowed we would labor, we vowed we would fight

To bring all the nations together;

Sustain us, O Power, that through Thy great might

We fail not in earnest endeavor.

O give to our effort, we pray Thee, Thy blessing

And give to us strength as we forward are pressing

That always we may, though our enemies rave

Be brave.

We will hold high the green flag as onward we press,

It signifies all good and beauty;

Our aim, the Mysterious Power will bless

As each one is true to his duty.

The walls now dividing the peoples we’ll smash;

They will break apart, tremble and once for all crash;

Then surely will Love and Truth, never to fail,

Prevail.”

[Page 73]

WHY I AM A BAHÁ’Í

I. LYDIA G. WENTWORTH

I HAVE been a Pacifist for many years and especially since the World War have centered my energies in striving to help the cause of International Peace, approaching the subject from the political and scientific standpoints. But the longer I worked and the more deeply I studied and the more I observed world conditions and the attempts of great leaders to solve the peace and war problem along political lines, so much the more have I become convinced that politics and science as a basis for peace cannot but fail and that only upon a spiritual basis can the new world order be established and the solution of the problem of peace be found. I feel that the Bahá’í movement holds the key to the establishment of World Unity and World Order covering the whole range of present human needs.

The Bahá’í teachings are a revelation of a religion now functioning in communities throughout the world that is demonstrating its God-given power to inspire close and cooperative thought and action among peoples of divergent races and religions, that shall save humanity from its apparently impending doom of reversion to barbarism and idolatry. These teachings are founded on the same eternal truths as those of Jesus of Nazareth and not only elucidate the deeply spiritual significance of His words but demonstrate how their application to the life of today among all peoples of the world conforms to modern world requirements of equality of the sexes and universal brotherhood and peace.

These teachings do not conflict with any religion but would help to unite all. If only the world at large would listen to and accept the truly inspired words of Bahá’u’lláh and would be guided thereby—live thereby —happiness and plenty would reign over all for nation would not lift up sword against nation, brother would not strive against brother; but the world would turn with glad and rejoicing hearts from the agony and despair and terror of war’s desolation to the beauty and serenity of peace with its fruitful fields and valleys, its cities made beautiful, and all peoples made prosperous, blessed with abundance and happiness. One who studies [Page 74] the searching truths of the Great Prophet cannot fail to become imbued with the divine spirit which permeates Bahá’u’lláh’s words and to vision that peace and joy which is the divine heritage of mankind, and to long for humanity to turn to and walk in the light which reveals that heritage.

II. Ethel Nash Crane

MY early religious training was received in the Christian Church. As a little girl I attended the Sunday School very faithfully, and in due time I joined the Church by Confirmation. During those early years I felt the need of searching the Scriptures and read from them every night. At times they would depress me, since I did not understand the spiritual significance of what I read. Of course through this Christian training I had accepted Jesus Christ as the only Divine Revelator. And I believed, that the grandest thing one could do, was to be a missionary and preach to the heathen so as to save them from destruction. But, there came a time when this understanding did not satisfy, and I attended no church at all.

Many years passed. Then through great tribulation, I again felt the urge to seek for solace in religion. Through a healing received by my infant son I accepted the teachings of Christian Science. About ten years later this child passed on. I then buried myself in the work, taught the Sunday School for about eight years more and after many spiritual experiences I was elected to serve—for a term of three years—as First Reader. The discipline in spiritual thinking received in Christian Science and the realization of law and order proved of great value in recognizing the greater light which was to come.

When I accepted the office of First Reader, I pledged myself to work for God, and God alone, and I believe through such consecration my thought was prepared to receive this higher and wider message that God has planned for His children. Jesus said: “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he will not speak of himself: but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.”

It was during the second year of my serving as Reader that I heard of the Bahá’í Revelation. Upon the suggestion of a friend, I investigated its claims and obtained through such investigation a clearer understanding of the Bible; what is literal and what allegorical, and the meaning of its symbolism. I now better appreciate the works of Christ Jesus as well as the other messengers of God, Moses Buddha, Muhammad and all the others. It also gave me a new understanding that God never leaves us comfortless, that He has given us a Teacher for this Day and Age: Bahá’u’lláh, who says, “Surely the Lord hath come, the possessor of great glory. Blessed is he who hasteneth unto Him.” I already understood— through the teachings of Christian Science—that Christ is the Divine [Page 75] Manifestation and Jesus the human temple, so I only had to go a step farther to accept the other Manifestations in the same light. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Son of Bahá’u’lláh, says: “Beware of prejudice; light is good in whatsoever lamp it is burning.”

Therefore, having been chosen of God to receive this message of the whole truth it has become a responsibility to me, to accept it and go forth and teach it. “The beginning of courage is effort to promote the word of God, and to remain firm in His love,” says Bahá’u’lláh. It is now a year since I made my decision and declared myself a believer in the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.

I have been asked by my friends why I am a Bahá’í. And I have answered, that in the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh I find a perfect balance between the material and the spiritual; in reality they are one. They give me a freedom that I have not experienced before, they allow me to accept all mankind as brothers, and to study whatsoever I will. “Knowledge is like unto wings for the being (of man), and is as a ladder for ascending.” I have found the path swept free of superstition; so according to our state of conscience, we are living in heaven or hell right here. “Therefore, hath it been said: ‘Knowledge is a light which God casteth into the heart of whomsoever He willeth.’ It is this kind of knowledge which is and ever hath been praiseworthy and not the limited knowledge that hath sprung forth from veiled and obscured minds.”

The Bahá’í Revelation teaches me to love all humanity and to serve all alike. Though I may fast and pray every moment of the day, unless I serve with love my fellow man, the seed in my heart, wherein lies the dynamic force which lifts me into higher realms of spirituality, will not unfold and spring forth into new life. When asked how to attain spirituality in this life, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said: “The only approach to God is to characterize yourself with the attributes of Divinity, this is the path of intimate approach.” If we have not allowed the rain and sun of this new springtime to melt the icebergs of the long, dark winter, all the wishing to approach God is of no avail. “He who looseth his life shall find it,” and again, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” Unless we give up our selfish sense of life and strive to work for the unification of the races and religions of the world, to bring them into one harmonious whole, we are as dead.

Bahá’u’lláh has said: “Arise, and lift up your voices, that haply they that are fast asleep may be awakened. Say: O ye who are as dead! The hand of Divine bounty proffereth unto you the Water of Life. Hasten and drink your fill. Whoso hath been re-born in this Day, shall never die; whoso remaineth dead, shall never live.”

[Page 76]

ENDS AND MEANS

Book Review

DELLA C. QUINLAN

A STRANGE and remarkable thing, a veritable miracle, has happened. A book, setting forth explicitly and at length that the condition of the world from which we are all suffering is caused by the modern repudiation of religion, has come from the most unlikely source one could imagine. I refer to Aldous Huxley’s “Ends and Means.”

Here is a book from a man who has been identified with ideas, most of which are remote from religious ones, proving from every conceivable angle and unanswerably that the only solution for the present frenzied confusion of world affairs is a return to religious principles. It is sufficiently remarkable that it is Aldous Huxley who proposes this remedy for our ills. But it is more remarkable that in his development of the principles to which we should return, he should choose the ones which Bahá’u’lláh has given us, which make up our Bahá’í program.

To begin with, he points out that every one is agreed upon the “Ends” to be achieved. He writes: “About the goal, I repeat, there has for long been agreement. We know what sort of society we should like to be members of and what sort of men and women we should like to be. But when it comes to deciding how to reach the goal, the babel of conflicting opinions breaks loose.” “How can the regression in charity through which we are living and for which each one of us is in some measure responsible, be halted and reversed? How can existing society be transformed into the ideal society described by the prophets? How can the average sensual man and the exceptional (and more dangerous) ambitious man be transformed into those nonattached beings, who alone can create a society significantly better than our own?”

And he proceeds to take up the “Means” which political, economic, educational and religious movements propose, to reach this hoped-for “End.” Each one of the movements insists that its is the only true means [Page 77] by which the goal can be attained. But it is refreshing to a Bahá’í to find that Huxley is not reciting these different proposals to make a choice between them. Rather, he warns us in one of his first chapters that “Causation in human affairs is multiple—in other words, that any given event has many causes. Hence it follows that there can be no single sovereign cure for the diseases of the body politic. The remedy for social disorder must be sought simultaneously in many different fields.”

And lest any Bahá’í quote against him here: “The remedy for all your ills is remembrance of Me”—let me say, this “remembrance” covers behavior in all the fields of human action recited above. For deeds are the criterion of remembrance today. In other words, the remedy for our ills and at the same time the Means which will fulfil the prophecies of the Day of God, must be a program covering all human activity.

So Huxley takes up in different chapters, war, the planned state, education, religious practices, etc. But he emphasizes the fact that the first concern of the man of today is to do away with war. No part of our life can be brought into line with the ideal of it revealed in God’s Word, until war has vanished from the earth. For war vitiates all our efforts. If they be in education, by the necessity of training the child to the military ideal of passive obedience, which stifles all originality. If they be in economics, by the disproportionate part of the earnings of the community it demands, thus making all effort towards creating a decent life for the average citizen almost impossible. If they be in our political life, its need for a strongly centralized government fosters and creates one whose control of its citizens is so all-embracing that a tyranous and idolatrous worship is established.

The chapter that is most thought-provoking to a Bahá’í is “Decentralization and Self-Government.” Here the author discusses group action. We have been given very little on the Bahá’í solution of the economic problem. To those of us who are interested in this question, it is hard to be patient and wait until our spiritual development is such that we can understand what Bahá’u’lláh has given us. Here in this chapter I felt I had caught a glimpse of the direction from which the economic solution will come, a glimpse into that Horizon. Mr. Huxley uses these words frequently in describing the individuals of the society we are trying to establish. He calls them “non-attached, yet active and responsible individuals.” In other words, self-governed. Individuals who are members of voluntary groups. As I read this chapter, I suddenly realized the strength of this word—voluntary. That it is the absence of this principle, in the experiments certain countries are carrying on today in the political and economic fields, that causes so many of us to feel their inadequacy, their failure. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in discussing the economic question spoke of the necessity for voluntary sharing of wealth. A sharing, not compelled by law, but freely offered. Voluntary sharing of wealth is only possible to a non-attached, or to use the Bahá’í [Page 78] word, detached, individual.

THIS brings me to the point that I found interesting me steadily throughout the whole book. That is, the insistence that nothing could be accomplished until human nature was changed. Over and over he repeats in all sorts of ways and in all connections, that it is non-attachment of active and responsible individuals upon which every reform must be built. This is the assertion of religion which has been considered so foolish by the “reformers.” They have said reform society, reform education, reform political institutions, and you will find that you have reformed human nature. But Huxley roundly asserts, along with every religion that ever was or ever will be, that man is the point where reform must begin, or you will find you have no foundation upon which reform can stand. Thurman Arnold gives us an amusing picture of the idea held by most persons of the order of reform:—

“The following is submitted as a crude picture of society which the common man holds without thinking and which thinkers elaborate endlessly into legal and economic philosophies.

“At the front of the procession, headed in the general direction of progress, come the economic and social sciences. They are busy discovering principles which will lead to ultimate good. . . . Behind the advance guard of political and economic theory, marches the law. . . . Behind the law are supposed to march the institutions as they are, en route to becoming the institutions which they ought to be. They are kept in line by various types of preachers, economic, moral, social and legal. . . . To the extreme rear, digging its feet into the ground and being dragged along, we find human nature, which cannot be changed.” (Symbols of Government)

You will observe the reluctance with which human nature advances. And justly so, as it is out of its rightful place. Huxley reverses this picture, putting human nature at the head of the procession where it belongs, with the institutions which man guided by the Manifestation of God, has established, ranked behind it. In this proper order of human affairs, the institutions of man can progress to that End which God has decreed for them, harmoniously and in an orderly fashion. Should some people feel that in putting our faith in a change in human nature for the establishing of the society visioned by the prophets, we are leaning upon a reed—very well, then. Is it not your weakest point that most needs strengthening? If you can strengthen the weak link in your chain, all danger of its breaking is removed. As individual human nature is the weakest point in civilization, there is where reform must occur to be effective. This is a stubborn fact that can not be ignored. When we have a sufficient number of “non-attached, yet active and responsible individuals” our civilization will not only mend its ways, but will blossom out into the Rose Garden of the Merciful One which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us would make this earth the envy of the angels.

Huxley’s analysis of the condition of humanity today and the way in [Page 79] which the remedies proposed should be applied, leaves no place for adverse comment from the Bahá’í viewpoint. There is, however, one important exception. This is in the field of religion and is the criticism that he assigns no role to the Manifestation of God in all this bringing about of a new social order, a new world for man’s inhabiting. I feel that this is caviling, as without the knowledge that God has manifested Himself again in this Day in Bahá’u’lláh, it is impossible for the author to realize that the role of the Manifestation in bringing order out of chaos, is the center around which everything revolves. As all physical phenomena revolve about the physical sun, so all human phenomena revolve about the Bearer of the Word of God, who is the Sun of Truth to humanity.

“The Sun of Truth is the Word of God, upon which depends the training of the people of the country of thought. It is the Spirit of Reality and the Water of Life. All things owe their existence to It. Its manifestation is ever according to the capacity and coloring of the mirror through which it may reflect. For example: Its Light, when cast on the mirrors of the wise, gives expression to wisdom; when reflected from the minds of artists it produces manifestations of new and beautiful arts; when it shines through the minds of students it reveals knowledge and unfolds mysteries.” —Bahá’u’lláh.

A study of the religions of the past is not likely to bring out this idea, as in all of them the place of the Manifestation in society has been given over to the priest or minister. Thus insuring, by a static leadership, that in the battle which poor human nature makes to bring out its hidden spiritual capabilities, it shall be so heavily handicapped that instead of leading the procession towards a better state of society it has been found, as Mr. Arnold said, “to the extreme rear, digging its feet into the ground and being dragged along.”

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FROM SA‘DÍ’S ROSE-GARDEN

A KING was sailing in a ship with his Persian slave. The slave had never been on the sea before; he began to weep and cry out and to shudder with fear, and however much they sought to quiet him he would not be still. The king’s excursion was in a fair way to be spoiled and none knew what to do. Then a wise man who was on the ship said to the king, “If thou wish, I shall quiet him.” The king answered, “Truly this were a gracious deed.”

The wise man bade them throw the slave into the sea. After he had choked down some water they seized him by the hair and drew him toward the ship. He clung to the ship with [Page 80] both hands, and once out of the water he sat in a corner and was still. The king was astonished, and asked, “What wisdom lay in this?” The wise man answered: “The slave did not know what it is to drown, and thus he did not value the safety of the ship. Even so doth a man value security who hath known calamity.”

A THIEF crept into the house of a holy man, but wherever he sought, he found nothing to steal. The holy man woke. He rose from his mat, and threw it to the thief, lest the latter’s heart be saddened.

I REMEMBER one night that my beloved came into my house, and I leapt up so swift that my sleeve brushed the lamp and put it out.

He sat and chid me, saying, “Why didst thou put out the light when thou sawest me come?”

I said, “Because I thought the dawn had broken.”

I HAD never complained of the ways of the world, nor had I drawn together my brows over the accidents of life, until once when I found myself barefoot, with no money to buy shoes.

I went into the mosque at Kúfih, bewailing my lot. And then I saw a man who had no feet. And I thanked God for my blessings, and I went barefoot.

I SAW an Arab amongst the jewelers of Basra and he was saying: “There was a time when I had lost my way in the desert, and my provisions were gone, and my mind was fixed on death. Then I found a bag full of pearls. I shall never forget my joy when I thought the bag was full of roasted wheat, nor my despair when I saw it was pearls.”

THEY asked of Ḥáṭim-i-Ṭá’í, “Hast thou ever seen or yet heard of any man nobler than thyself?”

He answered, “Yea. There was a day when I sacrificed forty camels and summoned the chieftains of the Arabs to a feast. Then it chanced that I went out to the desert’s edge, and I saw a thorn-gatherer bearing a bundle of thorns. I said, ‘Why goest thou not to the feast of Ḥáṭim, since many have gathered at his banquet-cloth?’ He answered, ‘Whoso earneth his bread by his own hand hath no need of bounty from Ḥáṭim-i-Ṭá’í.’”

Translated from The Persian by Marzieh Nabil Carpenter.

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