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WORLD ORDER

OCTOBER 1938

PRICE 20c

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

OCTOBER 1938 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 7

HUMANITY IN PERIL • EDITORIAL ............................... 243

OUR INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE PROBLEM TODAY • ALBERT GUÉRARD ... 245

BAHIA: CITY OF CONTRASTS • EVE B. NICKLIN ................... 250

INTER-AMERICAN UNITY, Symposium ............................. 253

THE LAW OF DUTY • STANWOOD COBB ............................. 258

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI • ANNA McCLURE SHOLL .................. 264

ISLAM, I • ALI-KULI KHAN .................................... 273

PAIN AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION • MATHEW KASZAB ............... 281

KNOWLEDGE, Poem • FLORA HOTTES .............................. 284

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 and Horace Holley. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Alice Simmons Cox, Genevieve L. Coy, G. A. Shook, Dale S. Cole, Bertha Hyde Kirkpatrick, Marzieh Carpenter, Hasan M. Balyusi, Shirin Fozdar, Inez Greeven. 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.

October 1938, Volume 4, Number 7

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WORLD ORDER

October 1938 Volume 4 No. 7

HUMANITY IN PERIL

MANY years ago ‘Abdu’l-Bahá declared that the life of humanity at this stage of its development was in danger of annihilation. Secure in the power of their great populations, their factories, their governments and their cultures, the nations deemed themselves forever secure upon the path of progress. How could a few words of warning, uttered by one man, penetrate through the storm of ambitious hopes and materialistic expectations to the hearts of the leaders, the rulers, the proud?

The speed is incredible, as history goes, with which the worldly scene has been transformed. The fulfilment of political policy, of class struggle and of ecclesiastical activity comes to a climax in a world that staggers along the precipice of war. One by one the issues that loomed so consequential during the past twenty-five years, to meet which such vast preparation was made, dissolved into some new issue so immediate that the very preparation prevented the new issue from being clearly understood or adequately met. It is as though a madness of uncontrollable passion had seized upon the nations, thrusting them more and more rapidly along the path they had voluntarily chosen but whose end was other than they had dreamed.

There is a moment of supreme clarity, it is said, that descends upon human beings at some overwhelming climax of their lives. They behold as from another dimension the real meaning of the fates they had freely established for themselves. They become able to judge themselves, not from within the selves which had felt the freedom, but from outside, from above.

May such a moment of intense realization illumine the souls of the anxious multitudes who, throughout the world, begin to understand the inevitable disaster emerging from the condition in which they had associated their hopes and their fears! May it at last become possible, ere black night descends, to know the meaning of human relations in all their range from the spiritual point of view. How like the subhuman gibberish of the ape and the tiger seem now those cravings for triumph and power [Page 244] which stimulated these frantic and lustful passions, released so much potential destruction and blinded so many to the inevitable outcome of their actions and plans.

Addressing the son of an Oriental official so cruel that he was known as “The Wolf,” Bahá’u’lláh informed him that such worldly glory is like the illumination cast by the setting sun upon a mountain peak. The glittering light gleams for an instant, to be followed by eternal night.

The whole frenzied movement of forces released at this hour is nothing more than a desperate effort to avoid penalties long incurred, to annul laws of cause and effect that were established in the creation of the universe and of man. Effect follows cause until a new quality of causes is set into operation. The causes resident in civilization are productive of conflict, not of peace, of agony, not of healing, of destruction and poverty, not of creative progress. Motives identified with such causes will never change the result. The scenes are shifted and the players change, but the plot unfolds to the end.

That clarity of complete illumination is the supreme gift of God to man, enabling the lost individual to find his true self in a universe created for that discovery and not for eternal bewilderment and frustration. But where is the race to seek illumination upon its collective self, its nature as mankind, at a time when mankind has neither conscience, nor mind, nor power of understanding nor action for the sake of its collective and highest interests?

That finding of mankind, too, is the gift of God. That capacity to attain a world mind, a world heart and a world spirit is the goal of true religion in its full historic process. Bahá’u’lláh came to create mankind, as distinct from race, nation, class or creed. He has shed into the world the rays of the World Spirit, potent and dynamic to establish the qualities of Man. From His teachings emanate the collective faculties of which previous ages were deprived. His Faith is the essence of that Peace which stands as the only security for the race; His World Order is its substance which can and will transmute these scattered peoples into the body of mankind.

“O Son of Man!” Bahá’u’lláh cried to the individual, “Thou art My dominion and My dominion perisheth not, wherefore fearest thou thy perishing? Thou art My light, and My light shall never be extinguished, why dost thou dread extinction?” And to the race He declared: “Witness how the world is being afflicted with a fresh calamity every day. Its tribulation is continually deepening. . . . Its sickness is approaching the stage of utter hopelessness, inasmuch as the true Physician is debarred from administering the remedy, whilst the unskilled practitioners are accorded full freedom to act.”

H.H.

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THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE PROBLEM TODAY

ALBERT GUÉRARD

IN a world of immediate and tragic needs, the International Language Problem may seem academic and remote. For the last twenty years, it has not perceptibly evolved: it would take but a brief appendix to bring my old book up-to-date. Outwardly, the movement has receded. The Totalitarian States frown upon it: Government would not permit Peano to attend a convention of Interlinguists. Men, money and ideals find it increasingly difficult to cross the bristling frontiers. In many countries, it has become impossible to join foreign societies and subscribe to foreign periodicals. We are, alas! a very long way behind the pre-war days, when the movement counted over a hundred monthly magazines, and when Esperanto congresses attracted several thousand enthusiastic participants. Even from the technical or purely linguistic point of view, there has been no very definite advance. Jespersen’s Novial was something of a disappointment; and Ogden’s ingenious Basic, as un-neutral as Standard English, does not fulfill the prime condition of the problem. Esperanto is still the standard bearer; de Wahl’s Occidental and Peano’s Interlingua are still the most attractive and the most carefully worked out among the rival solutions.

Yet the advocates of the idea are not disheartened. In a direction not apparent to the general public, there has been steady progress. The movement has lost popularity as a fad: it has gained immeasurably in scientific seriousness. Scientists, who are working for international standards and an international nomenclature in their several fields, have long been ready for an international language. But for the professional philologist, the very notion, a few decades ago, was still anathema. Nineteenth Century Romanticism had over-emphasized the unconscious, the irrational, the mysterious element in language. We now realize that in every official, standardized, literary language, evolution [Page 246] is checked or directed to a large degree by man-made norms. No “national” language today is wholly “natural,” just as no city is a mere unplanned conglomeration of houses.

For this change of heart among scholars, no one is more directly responsible than Otto Jespersen, whose authority is particularly great in the English-speaking world. For a new attitude of courteous, dispassionate, truly scientific cooperation among Interlinguists, we have chiefly to thank Mrs. Dave Morris. Of this new spirit, the quiet, thorough, convincing work of the International Auxiliary Language Association is the fruit. When the world is ready to tackle the problem, it will find the facts collected and sifted, the principles thrashed out, a technique fully evolved, a body of competent investigators trained for the work, a large degree of sympathetic interest among all scientists, including psychologists, philologists, sociologists and educators.

When the world is ready: the last twenty years have taught us that no improvement, however obvious, can be secured, unless the public actively demand it. We are all tepidly in favor of international and social justice, of peace, of disarmament: but our faint desires have remained pious wishes or mere velleities. The technical perfection of the solution offered matters very little: a far cruder League than Wilson’s would have served as a starting point if we had been so minded; Volapük, or a worse scheme than Volapük, could have given us all the essential advantages of an auxiliary language more than half a century ago. In both cases, League and Language alike, usage would have removed or softened all minor difficulties. The best project is only an incentive: the decisive step demands an act of the will.

Now, we believe that, out of sheer despair, the world is forcibly driven into international cooperation. Eighteen years ago, the Senate committed “the great refusal,” and denied the existence of world order. Gradually, one great nation after another, Germany, Japan, Italy, followed our example, and joined us in the dynamic fellowship of world anarchists. Anyone not blinded by fanaticism knows that this “sacred egoism” is madness, and that “the wages of sin is death.”

The world’s ills are not a chance accumulation of local troubles—here an ill-drawn boundary, there an unequal treaty, race friction, too scant a place in the sun. Every one of these difficulties could be settled amicably, but for the obstacle of passionate nationalism. Militant nationalism is the sole enemy. Our problem is to “crush the Infamous One,” as Voltaire used to say, without any sacrifice of tender and sacred traditions; to respect and foster Patriotism, yet to make the international spirit, the human spirit, prevail.

OF this problem, the International Language is the symbol and the key. Those who welcome such an idea are potential world citizens. Those who reject it are nursing the defeatist delusion that nothing can be done to cure the ills of this world, or else they are still worshipping the idols of tribal selfishness and pride. A victory of the interlinguists will [Page 247] not suddenly transform the world: it will, however, be a symptom that the world is recovering sanity.

The approach to the International Language problem, therefore, is frankly idealistic: so it was with Dr. Zamenhof, so it remains with the best of his followers. The material advantages of an Interlingua are many, and it is not amiss to emphasize them. But they can not accrue until the battle is won, and the fight itself calls for self-sacrifice. The next generation will reap abundant results: greater facilities in trade, travel, education, congresses of all kinds, scientific literature; but the time and money we devote to the cause will bring no immediate, personal reward.

Such an appeal, I contend is not unrealistic. The desire to check brutality and blind hatred, the pride of feeling oneself among the prophets, and not the profiteers, the will to build up a saner world: these are “realities,” in all nations and in all classes. Cynics are blind: our world is teeming with men ready to die for a cause. There is no lack of idealism of the most robust kind today: the one thing needful is to turn it into peaceful channels.

What is the opposite of violence? Cooperation without predominance. This defines both Liberty and Equality. Every claim to supremacy breeds resentment, resistance, latent or open warfare. Let us take this lesson to heart: we may believe ourselves peaceful because we are sated, but the pride taken in numbers or wealth is tantamount to a policy of Might. Jingling the dollars is little better than rattling the sabers. Every form of insolence is a challenge. The one way out is Gleichberechtigung, strict equality of status, among races, classes, creeds, nations, languages. And of this ideal, the Interlanguage is the living symbol.

That is why such a language must be neutral. Many fine internationalists and pacifists, even H. G. Wells, even Sir Gilbert Murray, believe that English is destined to be the future Interlingua. This would mean that the world would acknowledge Anglo-Saxon supremacy: an unworthy dream, for it is the very thought of supremacy that must go. Why do the Irish strive so hard to re-learn Celtic, why do the Afrikanders cultivate Cape Dutch, why do the Filipinos want to make Tagalog their official tongue, if not as a protest against the specter of alien predominance? Long before English reaches the universality that French enjoyed in the eighteenth century, the nations will rebel against its spread. It might pay them to adopt English; but, strange as it may sound, men are not primarily ruled by economic considerations.

THE sole way of respecting all national languages is to abolish the distinction between “major” languages, endowed with privileges and prestige, and the rabble of “minor” tongues, doomed to subordination and ultimate extinction. Every language is a fact of historical consciousness, and is entitled to respect.

Let us see how these principles would apply to some of our present difficulties.

First of all, the plight of the League. A bilingual League, French and English, gave the impression which [Page 248] was not wholly erroneous, of being dominated by England and France. Germany, Japan, Italy, withdrew. The smaller countries felt uneasy. This suspicion of selfishness ruined the moral leadership of the two Liberal Powers, and with it, their physical might. So they are checked, browbeaten, humiliated at every turn by the Dictators. In a revitalized League of Nations, it is obvious that genuine, unconditional equality must prevail. It is inconceivable that German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, should be considered in any way inferior to French or English. But both Poland and Brazil have already shown great touchiness: they do not accept a secondary position. And it will be impossible to stop with nine official languages: Chinese, Hindustani, Arabic, will put in their legitimate claims; then Serbian, Rumanian and Czech; Catalonian, Irish, Romaic Greek; Tagalog, Afrikans, and the Haytian patois. Only a neutral tongue will settle the difficulty.

Take this epitome of European conflicts, the Czechoslovak State. Bohemia at any rate possesses some kind of geographic, historical, economic unity, which it would be madness to disrupt. But Bohemia itself is divided linguistically. The Czech claim predominance, although willing to grant certain rights to the minorities; the Germans spurn such favors: they have no doubt as to their own superiority, supported by the formidable encircling Reich. In the nation as a whole, we find four Slavic languages, Czech, Slovak, Polish and Ruthenian, and in addition, German and Magyar elements. No map can be drawn that will make sense: there is a strong German minority in the very city of Prague. Eternal wrangling? Teaching now the Czech then the Germans “who is boss?” Why not let every man freely use his own speech and freely teach it to his children? For all communications outside his own group, let him use a neutral federal language.

The Wilsonian conception of mandates marks a genuine progress over the old colonial system. The mandates are, in sober fact, the last free trade areas in the world: Japan outsells France in Cameroun. Yet the former masters, and the rest of the world, have a legitimate grievance. If the language of administration and education is English or French, the country will to a large extent be anglicized or frenchified. German or Polish traders or planters will feel that they are placed a trifle below the ruling caste. Turn the whole of tropical Africa into mandates; use a neutral language as the official medium; and the dispossessed countries like Germany, the ‘forgotten’ countries like Poland, will no longer have a genuine cause to complain.

Even such a reactionary leader as André Tardieu fully accepted the idea of an international police force, and particularly of an international air service, both commercial and military. But if the staff of such an organization adopted a single national language, the result would be jealousy, disloyalty, disruption; if all languages were accepted on an equal footing, not even the most highly trained body of interpreters could avert chaos. On the contrary, with a neutral language, [Page 249] this insuperable difficulty melts away.

THESE are practical instances of what the international language could do for us, if our minds were ready for it. This, I repeat, is the one essential condition. Geneva, in a sudden fit of common sense, might adopt Esperanto; a new Carnegie might endow an International Language Institute with a hundred millions; and the world would not be the better for it, unless it had also, pari passu, grown wiser.

“The world” is nought but ourselves: it is for every one of us to help, by bringing our ideal to consciousness, by using the international language as the symbol and instrument of the international spirit. We need not wait for sluggish official action: We can create the world republic today.

This Utopia within immediate reach is an old dream of the early Esperantists, under the leadership of Zamenhof. Dimmed by the war, it remains alive. If we so will it, every one of us, by learning the International language, can become a citizen of the International Commonwealth. Esperantoland, twenty-five years ago, had its flag with the green star, its anthem, La Espero, its yearly congresses, its growing and vigorous press, its Yearbook, its academic diplomas, and even its ‘Consuls’ and its currency. This, like the League of Nations, the World Court, the Disarmament Conference, can and must be revitalized. As it is voluntary, as it does not have to wait for official sanction, it can grow with the support of each individual member. Each one of us can start building the New City here and now—and first of all in his own heart. This implies no hostility to any class or country, no disloyalty to any tradition, no surrender to a super-Totalitarianism.

The world commonwealth comes to consciousness within the nations, not against them, by emphasizing what is best, what is most human in each. Internationalists of all countries, unite!

The author is a member of the faculty at Stamford University.

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BAHIA, CITY OF CONTRASTS

EVE B. NICKLIN

BAHIA, Brazil—city of contrasts where the old treads at the heels of the new, and where we are ever made aware of lights and shadows. For it is gay with pink, yellow, and sky-blue painted houses of the well-to-do that rival in color the 1933 Chicago exposition, or it is drab with the clay-baked huts of the very poor —huts that crowd the hillsides tier upon tier.

The business section is divided into upper and lower town. The lower town is a labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets, commercial buildings, warehouses, and a large market place that is the especial delight of tourists. Modern electric elevators take us from lower city to upper city where avenues are wide, shops more up-to-date, the air is cooler, and there is a splendid view of sea and ships and far-away hills.

Everywhere fashionably dressed men and women jostle elbows with people in the dress of another day— quaint in their full skirts, bright-colored shawls, and sandals. All things seem to be moving by on the heads of picturesque negro Brazilians —baskets of fruit, furniture, luggage, an empty coffin, or perhaps the day’s supply of meat exposed to air and dust.

We dodge swiftly moving automobiles in truly New York style only to pause on the other side of the street to watch a vendor and his donkey— a donkey that is wearing a license plate on his forehead, and both of them are making their leisurely way down the avenue unconcerned about traffic.

Little excursions down side streets reveal cheerless homes often with windowless rooms where women are sweeping the dirt floors with brooms made of grasses. The day’s washing is hung on bushes outside to dry, and the iron is a little stove fed with coal. The cooking stove is a crude built-in oblong block of cement, and a little girl can be seen using a straw fan to persuade the flames to burn more brightly. Pigs, goats, chickens and naked children are all a part of the picture—and the household.

It is a city of yesterday in a city modern. On every available space commanding a view of the magnificent [Page 251] sea front, smart new homes are being erected. Overhead can be heard the hum of an airplane reminding us that it is the accepted mode of travel from Rio de Janeiro; we talk over dial telephones, and we are invited to a “swanky” Yacht club, or given our choice of a French, German, English or American movie.

Bahia de São Salvador de Todas os Santos (Bay of the Holy Savior of All Saints) is a mecca for pilgrims coming to visit the many churches. Some say there are 365 churches, one for every day in the year.

Sixteenth and seventeenth century relics, leaf gold, and precious stones can be found in many of these cathedrals and monasteries.

But voodooisms borrowed from darkest Africa is a part of the Christian worship among certain groups whose minds have been shackled with superstitions and fears, and yet, here as in all parts of the world, as we contact the thinking class, we recognize the light that is dispersing the shadows.

Soon we become a part of this strange city of contrasts, and learn to love and understand its people—a people composed of native Indian, the Negro from Africa, and the Portuguese settler.

We decide that perhaps, after all, the most interesting of all interesting things about Bahia situated on the Eastern coast of South America is its natural spiritual resources. We note that even its name has a striking similarity to the name of a great world religion known as the Bahá’í Faith, and discover that its message has already been proclaimed here.

Concerning prejudice: barriers among races and nations are little apparent. There are no laws discriminating between races of people— they sit side by side at theatres, ride the same bondes (street cars), eat at the same table, and are invited into the same homes. Worth, not color, is the criterion in business and professional fields. They read with astonishment of race riots and lynchings in the United States, and express gladness that there is a movement in the world that is trying to bring about the oneness of the human family.

A newspaper writer recently said, speaking of Bahia, “Its people are a composite of races around which a marvelous new civilization may yet be molded.” This is but an echo of the prophecy of that great world educator of the nineteenth century, Bahá’u’lláh, who compared the whole world to a garden, “Each flower hath a different charm, a peculiar beauty, its own delicious perfume, and beautiful color, and, so it is with humanity, black, yellow, brown and red, but they all come from the same God and all the servants of Him. . . . the variety of races and differences existing between countries will become the cause of embellishment, decoration, and elegance of the world of humanity.”

True hospitality is, perhaps, only taking time to be gracious and kind— it is found here in Bahia—an honest friendship that warms the heart of a lonely foreigner, and makes him forever in their debt. Often we are made aware of the words of that master teacher, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Nothing is too much trouble when one loves, and there is always time.” And there is [Page 252] always time for coaching in Portuguese, assisting on shopping tours, even to helping find private pupils for English tutoring. Thus a stranger is made to feel at home in a strange land.

Slowly, equality of sex is being recognized among a Latin people who for centuries favored male supremacy. Women are entering the business as well as the professional world, and now there are even special pensãos, or boarding houses for business and professional women. The Bahá’í principle of equality of sex is not viewed with alarm today—a principle that likens the world of humanity to a bird having two wings, “one the male, the other the female. When both wings are reinforced with the same impulse the bird will be enabled to wing its flight heavenward to the summit of progress.”

Bahia has already shown an interest in a universal language for there is an organized group of Esperantists in the city. One of the great steps toward universal peace is the establishment of a universal language. Bahá’u’lláh commanded that the servants of humanity should meet together, and either choose a language which now exists, or form a new one as an auxiliary language to be taught in all the schools of the world. “It will” He said, “enable man to communicate with any and every man in the world, and thus it will be the means of breaking down barriers that now exist.”

This city is not only one of the leading ports, but it is noted as a medical center with hospitals, clinics, and a new nursery school, while the Rockefeller Foundation has waged war against yellow fever. So, medicine and prevention of dreaded epidemics has proved a healing and a blessing among a people subject to many tropical diseases.

There are many schools, too, free public elementary schools, and yet it is a rule that a child must wear shoes to attend them. Many girls and boys cannot afford even a pair of the cheapest sandals so that the shadows of ignorance are sharp against the light of education.

The cinema has brought Europe and the United States to this half of the globe. The American films are preferred, though, stimulating an eagerness to learn the English language but with United States idioms and slang. More and more, many ambitious young folk are learning several languages, French, German, and English which makes a North American conscious that he is language lazy.

These citizens of Bahia are lovers of freedom. Along the sea front is the old trading post, a mute historian of the fact that for 300 years it was the center of their country’s slave trade, and now they will not even handcuff prisoners because it is a reminder of the shackles of slavery. The words “Order-Progress” are written in bold letters across their national flag. True liberty the world over consists in man’s submission to God’s commandments of Justice, Love and Brotherhood. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Exemplar of the Bahá’í faith, once said, “. . . that because Bahia has for sometime been known by that name its efficacy will be most potent.”

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INTER-AMERICAN UNITY

A SYMPOSIUM

I. THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN PAN-AMERICANISM

Philip Leonard Green

RECENTLY the United States Office of Education presented a series of radio broadcasts known as “Brave New World,” planned to help the people of this country achieve a better understanding of Latin American cultural and historical backgrounds. This was in itself something novel in international relationships—the first time a government had spent money to educate its own people regarding other nations. But what was even more astounding was the response of the listeners. Over 70,000 of these wrote in, asking for more information about Latin America. This certainly disproves the oft-heard statement that people in this country are not interested in Latin America.

As a demonstration of popular interest in the country, the “Brave New World” series no doubt produced a most favorable impression in Latin America, quite apart from the effective, educational function it exercised in the United States.

It is to be hoped that this good work may be continued and that it may be but the beginning of a much larger educational program, participated in by governments and private groups, cooperating with each other.

This larger program, however, should not be shaped by fear of what other countries are doing or may do in Latin America in the way of propaganda. On the contrary, it should be geared in the main to long-time, positive aims, keeping in mind that non-American governments, however much their ideologies may differ from our declared belief in democracy, have as good a right as we to sing hosannas to the climate, the scenery, the art, the efficiency and the merchandise of their own countries.

There are many who would have us suddenly catapulted into a propaganda race in Latin America, to wrest markets from other nations. Among these people there are, no doubt, a considerable number who could have had markets in Latin America years ago if they had only taken the pains to cultivate them. Now that other countries are making forward strides there, as was repeatedly predicted years ago, they cry out [Page 254] in dismay and charge it all up to foreign propaganda.

Our approach toward better relations with Latin America should be along entirely different lines. It should be a continuous, coordinated, scientific effort along all fronts—cultural as well as material—conceived in the light of expert knowledge concerning the psychological problems involved. There are matters in which some Latin American nations are, in the very nature of things, much closer to Europe than they are to us. There are others in which there is an underlying, natural unity between them and us. Let us frankly separate these in our minds and direct our activities in Latin America accordingly.

Much has been said and written regarding the need for spreading more information throughout the United States with regard to Latin America and in Latin America with regard to the United States. Considerable progress has been made in this direction within recent years.

However essential this may be, it is not enough. People may know about each other or even know each other personally and yet not cooperate to the fullest extent to which they are capable. The reason for this is that attitudes, while owing part of their origin to knowledge, are not altogether determined by it.

Good-will springs from a combination of knowledge and character. It is the individual character of those called upon to carry on inter-American relations, that ultimately determines the policies adopted with regard to those relations, and upon the individual character of the people at large, that the popularity of these policies depends.

This calls, as the discerning reader can readily see, for building up nothing short of an inter-American integration of ethical-social values.

If this seems like an unattainable objective, then genuine inter-American brotherhood, too, must seem unattainable.

There are on the other hand, those who believe with Símon Bolívar, the first great inter-Americanist, that the New World has a unique destiny to fulfill and who are willing to lead their entire lives in the light of this destiny. It is to these people, spread throughout the length and breadth of the American Hemisphere, working together much more closely than is possible today, that we should look for the development of those ideologies and techniques which may ultimately grow into the bases for a genuine Pan-American movement.

The author has been instructor of Latin American affairs at the College of the City of New York, and is now with the Office of Education, U. S. Department of the Interior.

2. A HIGHER STANDARD

Alice Simmons Cox

SECURITY for this hemisphere does not lie in focusing our protective resources in an attitude of defense against menacing powers, whether rising at home or flaunted from abroad. Some degree of safety might be acquired through action that rallies to the challenge of distrust or fear, but in this unique era such traditional procedure would ultimately fail.

[Page 255] What seems urgently essential is a finer tempering of the American soul until it is strong as steel in the conviction that love for all men is the enduring factor that can help us emerge triumphant.

Were fear to be the motivation of union for the guarding of our shores, in the moment of victory after conflict this would dissolve in pride and further isolation. Self-righteous hands would taint another peace. How could we expect to lift from the ruins a genuine appreciation of others, cooperation, justice and a love that forgives and heals? What unifying power would prevent the appearance of the same discordant foes from within in the dress of racial hostilities and class discontent, which even now we fear? Would there be worth in that which might survive?

It becomes increasingly evident that the Americas are being tested by a standard higher than that of nature or of man. No longer is it clouding the issue to say that this standard is the spiritual truth of human oneness. In the direction of this goal of consciousness, evolution in the Americas has been guided by wisdom and aided by circumstance. If we can now perfect the will to associate as brothers, a will that must be born of holy desire in each citizen soul, we will have inherent in our American unity a nuclear center of supreme inspiration and energy. If we can heroically build for this kind of protection, though forced through the purifying fires of further world ordeal, we may hope to salvage the best from our rich experience and preserve for the children of men the priceless, bursting seeds of the Kingdom of God.

The author’s “The New Creation” appeared in World Order, Vol. II.

3. WORTH A TRIAL

Charles E. Martin

THE more recent development of the Monroe Doctrine has been humorously described as the “new streamlined Monroe Doctrine, the continentalized, Pan-Americanized, multi-lateralized Monroe Doctrine.” Even so, the jest contains much of the truth about the new application of the foremost foreign policy of the United States.

Our Latin American friends have gained much in the way of security, protection, independence, and freedom from the need of huge navies and standing armies through the application of the Monroe Doctrine in its original form, unilateral though it was. Let it also be said that the United States, while taking a certain risk of war and defense, realized great benefits from it as well.

The later Applications of the Doctrine have not been so fortunate, from the standpoint of both our Latin American friends and the United States. Departures from non-intervention, and from defacto recognition, easily justified from a unilateral interpretation of international law, have nevertheless occasioned a certain distrust on the part of the nations to the South as regards our professions of friendship, viewed in the light of some of our official actions. It has been said that we speak in words of cooperation, under a profession of “Pan-Americanism,” while we act singly and selfishly under a declaration of the Monroe policy. Can these policies be harmonized?

[Page 256] An attempt to do so has at last been made, and should receive the encouragement of all countries of this hemisphere. If a policy which is for the good of all, can be interpreted, declared, and applied by all, most of the objections made against the Doctrine will be removed. Doubtless this can be done in most instances. Should an emergency develop threatening the independence and integrity of one or more of the nations of this hemisphere, even unilateral action would be welcomed, provided its objective is expressly limited to the purposes of the Doctrine as stated by President Monroe. The dissatisfaction with the Doctrine has not concerned its original purpose, but has arisen from later interpretations, and aggressive action based on such interpretations.

The recent effort may fail. But it is worth a trial—a forth-right and sincere trial—by all members of the American family of nations.

The author is a member of the Department of Political Science, University of Washington.

4. VISTAS OF PEACE

Loulie A. Mathews

EARLY in the last century the revelation brought by the prophet Bahá’u’lláh reflected its light into sensitive minds. In those early days the patterns of the Oneness of Mankind, universal peace and brotherhood cast their shadow so that here and there could be found a man who thought in terms of a new era in distinct contrast to the prevailing thought of the age.

Thus we find Símon Bolívar of South America envisioning peace as a practical plan. Although he was aware of South America’s widely diverse racial composition, of its separate interests and occupations he, nevertheless, felt that if a common denominator could be found, that individual effort could be galvanized into united action that might end incessant warfare. With these ideals in mind, he called the first Pan American Conference. It was held in Panama in 1821 with representation from six nations. He outlined a plan of cooperation to take the place of warfare. The delegates listened in indignant astonishment; they did not possess the vision of Símon Bolívar. They knew only one way to right their wrongs—that was to fight for them. Battle to the death—honorable battle they termed it, no other means were possible. Deaf ears were turned to Bolívar’s plea and they returned to their native lands indignant that such a useless program had been laid before them. But that was a hundred years ago.

In 1889 James F. Blaine held a Pan-American Conference at which, contrary to former conferences, ethics were not stressed; trade became the basic note and has been so maintained ever since.

When Cordell Hull appealed to Latin America to hold a Peace Conference in 1933, twenty-one nations responded. Dreaded topics such as the Chaco War and questions of oil and nitrate were brought into the open and freely discussed.

Pressure from without and within were forcing the people to relinquish old ideas and opening their minds to [Page 257] new possibilities.

Religious dogma had been weighed in the balance and found wanting; the honorable warfare of their forefathers had failed to bring victory; poverty and debt followed. Envious eyes looked upon their abundant crops. The delegates of the last peace conference listened eagerly to plans of cooperation, and this time help from sister nations seemed a natural safeguard. Fear and loss helped to forge chains of unity and agreement.

Thus Latin America is ready to take her place among the progressive nations. In the Bahá’í writings we find North and South America have a common destiny. The Americas are to lead the way in the peace of the world. They are to be the first to exchange parliamentary conferences for warfare. They are to put arbitration above political measures and stabilize commerce through cooperation. That destiny is already unrolling before our eyes.

The author is chairman of the Inter-America Committee of the American Bahá’ís.

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THE unity which is productive of unlimited results is first a unity of mankind which recognizes that all are sheltered beneath the over-shadowing glory of the All-Glorious; that all are servants of one God; for all breathe the same atmosphere, live upon the same earth, move beneath the same heavens, receive effulgence from the same sun and are under the protection of one God. This is the most great unity, and its results are lasting if humanity adheres to it; but mankind has hitherto violated it, adhering to sectarian or other limited unities such as racial, patriotic or unity of self-interests; therefore no great results have been forthcoming. Nevertheless it is certain that the radiance and favors of God are encompassing, minds have developed, perceptions have become acute, sciences and arts are widespread and capacity exists for the proclamation and promulgation of the real and ultimate unity of mankind which will bring forth marvelous results. It will reconcile all religions, make warring nations loving, cause hostile kings to become friendly and bring peace and happiness to the human world.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 258]

THE LAW OF DUTY

STAN WOOD COBB

INFANCY and childhood have no responsibilities. Youth has little responsibility beyond that of self-development and self-unfoldment through education. This is in itself a serious responsibility and should be so considered and acted upon by youth. They owe something to that provision on the part of the adult world which makes education possible for them. They owe still more to themselves in the way of developing to the utmost their intellectual capacity. But apart from this duty of intellectual training and the acquisition of knowledge and of skills for the future career, youth is practically free from responsibilities.

Thus youth should be and usually is a delightful period of growth, expansion, discovery of capacities and dawning use of personal powers. In this period of life, physical and mental recreation plays a larger part than in any other period; and deservedly so, for the budding powers of youth should not be strained by overwork or overstudy. The physical frame has not yet reached its peak of development and hardihood; the nervous system is still less developed than the physical and suffers perhaps permanent injuries from overstrain during the teens. The present system of education tends to overstrain young people and may cause permanent injury to the nervous system. Five hours a day given to intellectual work is all that should be required of youth.

Youth should be a period of joyous self-expression, self-exploration and discovery. The youth’s contact with the world about him should also be made harmonious and joyous. This is a duty which the world owes to childhood and youth. A happy childhood and youth builds into a wholesome mental hygiene in later life. Whereas an overstrained, unhappy childhood and youth builds up complexes which make for neurotic qualities in later life. Therefore the adult world is obligated to see that the early years of life on the part of the growing generation are made joyous and wholesome.

THERE comes a time in life, however, when responsibilities creep in upon the individual. As graduation [Page 259] from college approaches, youth begins to feel the weight of the future years upon it. Now is the time when life must be faced seriously. It is necessary to go forth from the cloistered halls of learning prepared to earn one’s livelihood. Not to be able to earn a living at maturity is a sign of imperfection, weakness, irresponsibility. (This statement, of course, holds true only for normal times, not for the abnormal conditions prevailing in our present depression.)

The first responsibility which the individual is apt to incur, then, is that of earning a livelihood. Soon there ensues the choice of a mate and the responsibilities of married life. Now the individual has to buckle down to real work and duty. Marriage is a great discipline and training of character. It induces the individual cheerfully to accept responsibilities which he would have been apt to throw aside in the more free and untrammeled condition of bachelorhood.

Now that maturity is reached and married life engaged in, with children to support and bring up, the individual passes through the cycle through which his parents have formerly passed—the cycle of duty, of work, of responsibility; responsibility to the family, responsibility to the neighborhood and city, responsibility to one’s country, and (in the coming years) responsibility to a World State.

Those adults who chronically avoid responsibility remain to that extent immature and imperfect souls. They may make alibis for themselves, and their family and friends may accept these alibis. But God does not. The order and equilibrium of the universe must be maintained. That mysterious equilibrating Force—the attribute of God called Justice—causes pain and suffering to attend as consequence of every chronic neglect of cosmic law and order. Those souls who fail to mature here will have to mature in other existences, at an even greater price than they should have paid here.

ALL religions inculcate the fundamental virtue of duty and powerfully motivate the performance of duty. When individuals accept and adequately perform their responsibilities to family and mart and country, society prospers and government has equilibrium and security. When, on the contrary, religion wanes and with it disappear the sanctions of authoritative truth and the compunctions of conscience, then duties fail and disorder and insecurity spread throughout society.

The great central law of the universe is responsibility. Everything in the cosmos, animate and inanimate, must obey this law. It is the foundation of order and equilibrium and harmony. Man cannot escape this law. Here is a form of character development which existence thrusts upon us. Every human being has to acquire and practice responsibility or pay the price in a chaotic and unhappy if not eventually tragic existence.

The universe is an expression of immutable law which applies on every plane of being—physical, mental, moral, and spiritual. We cannot fool this law. We cannot cajole it. We cannot plead exceptions to it nor escape its punishment if violated. In [Page 260] this respect the universe is a stern reality—impersonal, unforgiving. God as Law is a stern judge. It is this attribute of Deity and this understanding of phenomenal existence which gave rise to the saying, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.”

APPARENTLY life is free, elastic, mutable; the universe is at our beck and call as the instrument of our self-expression. In reality, our freedom lies between very narrow walls. If self-expression becomes selfishness and egoism, the universe begins very soon to shut down upon us and to imprison us. Like criminals against society, we eventually find ourselves living within those prison walls which immutable law creates for the wrongdoer.

Christ made this plain in describing the spiritual law of cause and effect. “What ye sow, that shall ye also reap.” There is a certain harvest for every kind of sowing. Sow thistles and reap the whirlwind.

When we understand this great law of spiritual cause and effect, then right action and morality become simply an expression of the higher intelligence and wisdom. Unrighteous action, on the other hand, is a symptom of gross ignorance of the essential moral and spiritual structure of the universe. Those who conceive that by wrong-doing they are going to advantage themselves are simply blind to the essential truths of existence and are laying up for themselves black tragedy.

Wrong doing needs no personal judge, no legal system, to bring it to task and punishment. The universe is automatic in this respect. The judgment is automatic. The award of punishment is automatic.

It is this moral aspect of existence which Theosophists describe as karma, a concept upon which their whole structure of ethics is built. It is, in fact, the teaching of all the Prophets who come to warn human beings of the dangers and consequences of evil doing and of the beneficent rewards of right doing.

The words of the Prophets are not all milk and honey. Many of them sting like scorpions. They wish to bring before humanity all the harshness of punishment which sin entails thus warning in language so vehement as to stimulate reform.

The dire aspect of cosmic punishment is apt to fade away from the human consciousness in epochs of irreligion. The very concept of sin fades away in such an age, as it has faded away today.

That men may be unaware of God as Ruler and Judge and blind themselves to the consequences of sin does not in any way change, however, the nature of the universe nor enable humans to escape the individual or collective disaster which unrighteousness entails.

On the other hand, a knowledge of these laws and a full understanding of the beneficence which righteousness brings to life is one of the most powerful incentives for moral living and for the perfectioning of character. It is, in fact, the most powerful incentive commonly current and available to human beings.

I wish that all people could realize [Page 261] the mathematical severity and simplicity of this Cosmic Moral System. It stands inviolate above the self-seeking will of man, crushing that will inevitably into submission through agony and abasement.

The knowledge of this Law is the most important step in the growing mental and moral development of a human being. It is far more important a law to understand than any law of physics, of chemistry, of mathematics or of the social sciences; a law so simple that even in one’s early ’teens one can realize it effectively as a guide to conduct.

The ethical system of Socrates and Plato was based upon this principle of law. Wisdom, understanding, intelligence would, according to Socrates, be sufficient to inspire goodness. To practice evil is simply to be unintelligent. Therefore, said Socrates, teach youth to understand the cosmic laws and they will modify their behavior towards goals of righteousness.

Plato developed this idea into one of the most glorious intellections which humanity has evolved: That Goodness, Truth and Beauty are but three aspects of one central essence. That to live the Truth is to express Righteousness and enjoy Beauty.

How important it is to realize these great laws. How infinitely more important for us to be able to predict the results of moral or immoral actions than to be able to analyze or synthesize the chemical elements of nature or to discover new constellations and new universes.

WE have certain definite responsibilities as individual units of the family and of social and political groups. No individual is an isolated unit of existence, just as no sun or planet or atom even is isolated in the Universe. Everything in phenomenal existence is integrated, connected by invisible links, one with the other. It is these necessary ties linking us one with another that create our responsibilities. To come to appreciate and satisfy these social and spiritual obligations is but the part of wisdom.

Responsibility is not equivalent, on the spiritual scale, to altruism. It is but a debt we owe to the existence we are staged in, a debt that must be paid if we would live a free and wholesome life. It is a law of nature and a law of fulfillment. A law which we are destined fully to realize, if not in this life then in the next.

Perfect freedom on the part of the individual, in the sense of untrammeled expression of his egocentric will, is an impossibility in a universe dedicated to harmonious order. True freedom is attained by submitting one’s self-will to the Cosmic Will, so that one’s life flows in universal channels. Only thus does one find that life becomes untrammeled and unimprisoned. Those iron doors which shut upon the evil doer exist not for the righteous.

The greatest mistake a spiritually aspiring person can make is to conceive that any exercise of spiritual zeal can absolve him from the material and secular responsibilities of life. The Bahá’í teachings condemn all forms of retirement from human obligations. Monasticism is forbidden. No one is to expect to be maintained in existence through the work [Page 262] of others in order to idly meditate and pray. Even zeal in working for God cannot condone the violation of life’s necessary obligations.

The doctrine of karma as expounded by the Theosophists has one most important omission—the “grace of God.”

Prayer and repentance for wrong action, leading to actual reform, can attract the Divine forgiveness. There is a certain amount of Cosmic grace available to an individual or a people who have done wrong. As in the world of nature there is usually a lag between abuse of the body and the natural suffering which follows it, so on the moral plane there may be considerable leeway between a series of wrong acts and their moral and spiritual consequences. This is illustrated in the maxim, “The mills of the gods grind slowly.”

But this cosmic elasticity, grace, or forgiveness cannot go beyond a certain point. When that point is reached, the universal law becomes a grim reality to us. There is no avoiding the penalty. When we have used up our last bit of credit we become spiritually insolvent. Nothing but suffering and catastrophe can ensue at this point. Therefore it is wise to avoid the ultimate point of wrongdoing, as in fact it is wise to avoid any wrongdoing.

That attribute of Deity which we call Justice is the equilibrating force of the Universe. When an individual or a people depart too far from the natural orbit of law and order, they are pulled back with terrific corrective force. The suffering which ensues from such a cataclysm may be looked upon not so much in the light of punishment as in the light of a stern guidance. “Calamity is my Providence to thee. In appearance it is fire and vengeance, in reality it is light and mercy.”

“Wisdom is manifested in the operation of the principle of Justice. This principle, as exhibited in the lower departments of nature, acts as a regulator among the essences, elements, and forces that operate in all substances. In other words, it seeks to equalize all the agencies of activity, and aids in combining the different elements into harmonious forms and beautiful proportions. Justice is the great balancing-power of the Universe; it seeks to balance all accounts, to settle all difficulties, to harmonize all interests. It is God’s peacemaker, fulfilling its mission in the various departments of nature, by properly adjusting all elements, and combining all forms according to their material qualities or spiritual essences. It seeks to harmonize man with his fellow-man, as the legitimate means of producing harmony with the great laws of his natural and spiritual being. Thus, by harmonizing man with himself, justice rejoices in having harmonized man with his Divine Author.

“If in any department of nature a law is violated, Justice sees that the violation is followed by a corresponding effect, in order that the violator may be induced to desist from his course, and that the wonted harmony may thus be restored. Thus ‘chastisement’ is inflicted for the purpose of causing the transgressor to return to right relations and their accompanying enjoyment.”

[Page 263] EVERYTHING in existence obeys two forces. One is the centrifugal force of self-expression; the other is the centripetal force of the law of duty.

Self-expression is always joyous, for Destiny has generously associated pleasure with wholesome functioning. Duty seems to be made of sterner stuff. But this forbidding appearance of duty is not its real aspect. For duty is the natural corollary of self-expression, and when willingly performed becomes also a source of joy. Self-expression without duty would be aimless and in time vapid.

Responsibility is the fruit of the tree of life, of which self-expression is the blossom. For a tree to blossom without culminating in fruitage is to fail of its destined mission. So also for man to be seeking always his satisfaction in egocentric forms of self-expression is to negate his spiritual and creative station.

Duty is the track upon which the creative will of man makes progress. Its purpose is beneficent.

Its proper functioning is spiritually joyous.

A chapter from “Character: A Sequence in Spiritual Psychology,” Avalon Press, Washington, D. C.

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ALL the heavenly books, divine prophets, sages and philosophers agree that warfare is destructive to human development, and peace constructive. They agree that war and strife strike at the foundations of humanity. Therefore a power is needed to prevent war and to proclaim and establish the oneness of humanity.

But knowledge of the need of this power is not sufficient. Realizing that wealth is desirable is not becoming wealthy. The admission that scientific attainment is praiseworthy does not confer scientific knowledge. Acknowledgment of the excellence of honor does not make a man honorable. Knowledge of human conditions and the needed remedy for them is not the cause of their betterment. To admit that health is good does not constitute health. A skilled physician is needed to remedy existing human conditions. As a physician is required to have complete knowledge of pathology, diagnosis, therapeutics and treatment, so this world physician must be wise, skillful and capable before health will result. His mere knowledge is not health; it must be applied and the remedy carried out.—‘ABDU’L’BAHÁ.

[Page 264]

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL

UNTIL the opening of the Christian era the emotion of joy was seldom an integral part of religious experience, even among the Chosen People, whose history, indeed, precluded it. Beginning in slavery, proceeding in migrations and sporadic strife with hostile tribes it continues to this day without the reassurances of stability. Even what was Imperishable in the Hebraic revelation was transmitted amid the lightnings and thunders of Mt. Sinai. Little place for joy except in the heart of David, shepherd, musician and king.

The philosophers of the pagan world rose to solemn heights of speculation, but they left it to the rabble to assign to the Olympians such joys as could be recognized in the marketplace. Even these held an element of fear as if, in effect, the multitude’s message to Jupiter and his gay or sinister relations was, freely translated; “Now enjoy yourselves and forget us.”

Isolated souls of that marble world turned magic mirrors to the universe, but the reflection did not sparkle either in Greece or Rome. As Frederick Meyers wrote of the station of these philosophers in his essay on Virgil: “It was elevation, but it was not ecstasy. It came to them not as hope but as calm.” They had not dared rejoice in their self-discipline of search.

Little trace exists in the Four Gospels of the asceticism of intention but much of the asceticism of preoccupation of which joy is the natural fruit. The Kingdom of Heaven was a Pearl beautiful to behold. One glimpse of it and the eye no longer delighted in lesser loveliness. The pleasures of the senses were forgotten rather than crucified as enemies. “Mary has chosen the better part.”

The early Christians had great joy and exaltation, even St. Paul, with his strong sense of world tragedy, placing it as the second gift of the Holy Spirit. The walls of the catacombs still witness to the lightheartedness of those who stood under that Dawn. But the bright stream of revelation had to be forced through the constricting channels of human experience, held narrowly and safely between the prim banks of a canal. The wind bloweth [Page 265] where it listeth, but human nature capturing celestial fire lays it on a hearth.

Joy as the first fruit of the Second Birth survived in the first centuries of the Christian era despite all mortal odds against it, for the pagan civilization, even as ours now, was rotting to its end, and like all slipping forces could exhibit vitality only through violence. The quiet growth of the mustard seed was not in it.

When even Christian men could no longer rejoice they fled to the deserts. The precious gift of persecution was about ended, and Christianity received a heavy blow in what Dante terms “the fatal gift of Constantine,” the imperial patronage. Security on a large scale never helped the spiritual life. The will to explore, the will for migration dies. Yet it lives again. Ouspensky’s theory of eternal recurrence has deeper implications than the merely material.

AFTER the passage of the first thousand years of the Christian Era—the Dark Ages as our Darkest Age insolently terms them from its own nadir of lost light—when the year, approximately 1183, was reached and Pope and Emperor were at grips turning every hill-town of Italy into a fortress, there was born to Ser Pietro and his wife, Madonna Pica of Assisi, a son. They named him Francis because he was born while his merchant-father was on a trip to France.

Legend, always busy with marvels, relates that the birth was hard; almost despaired of when a pilgrim knocked at the door and bade her attendants remove Madonna Pica to the straw of the stable. There the child was born, as after generations lovingly thought, in Francis’s first imitation of Jesus Christ.

He was gay and gallant by nature. Throughout Europe the troubadours were singing of love and war, and Francis’s whole heart responded. He grew up without the least desire for trade and the plodding life of the merchant. He would to the wars! Certainly there was no lack of them. Any citizen of any hill-town of Italy had only to go to the crossroads, revolve on his heel, and coming to rest, start out in the direction he faced. A mile or two and he would find himself in the thick of a fight!

War broke out between Assisi and Perugia. Francis, a mere stripling, was taken prisoner at the battle of the San Giovanni bridge. With his fellow captives he was in jail a year, but even there, light-hearted, untroubled, his high spirits were a tonic for everybody.

On his release the boy yielded to the glamor of popularity, to his own bright love of life and became a ring leader to the gayest band of young men in Assisi. He sang, he laughed, he danced, and youth danced with him. After a time a strange restlessness seized him. He had dreams of walls covered with armor. He would go to the wars again, not knowing that he had beheld the whole armor of God.

He was off in the train of Duke Walter III of Brienne. Nearing Apulia a fever seized him, and he was obliged to go wearily home, a haunted knight who had not yet found his liege lord.

[Page 266] The psychological changes which take place in a nature advancing towards reality are not fundamental in the sense of displacement of vitalities. Rather they change their direction. Francis was still to be radiantly joyous, still a knight and a troubadour; but in the divine exaltations which set no limit to chivalry and no end to a song.

This was yet to be achieved since spiritual joy is a stable endowment not subject to the fluctuations of mood. Francis lay ill a long time in his father’s house; and when he rose from his bed at last he knew that what he had fled from he must now embrace; that he must give the kiss of peace even to what was repellant. He was beginning to understand that the divine has many disguises.

HE was laying the foundations of that joy which cannot be taken away because it is high above the reach of the envious and the bitter. His first conquest of himself was in the embracing of a leper, the poor outcast whose physical anguish was augmented by the spiritual torture of seeing the healthy only from a distance. Never the clean, pure flesh of a fellow close at hand. The violent drama of repulsion in Francis’s soul ended in his beholding the divine in the leper, even as the Monk Martyrius had found not the leper he had succored in his arms, but Christ Himself.

At Rome on a pilgrimage he begged there, to share the feeling of the destitute, but this was the divine in travesty. The haunting voices demanded that he lose all to gain all.

Self-conscious asceticism for its own sake holds danger. Lovers know the asceticism of preoccupation, and artists and creators even as Edison working for days without sleep. Francis was preoccupied and this involvement with new love caused strange happenings. He sold his father’s goods and gave the money to the poor. He heard a voice saying, “Francis, repair my Church which has fallen unto ruin.” Taking the words literally he toiled up the hills with stones for the ruined church of San Damiano.

Mad! Quite mad! The safe, respectable world of Assisi, that comfortable world of the Via Media, headed by Francis’s own father, was up in arms. What! take the words of Christ literally! “Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven!” And be looked down on by the neighbors!

Gentle Madonna Pica yielded her son to the divine summons and sorrowfully dreamed of him in the rich, silent house from which he had removed greater treasures than bales of silk and brocade. Ser Pietro accusing Francis in the bishop’s palace, the boy, for he was little more, stripped himself naked, casting his clothes at his father's feet. Henceforth he would know only a heavenly father.

Someone threw him a cloak and out of the city gates and up the hills he went to begin a pilgrimage all the world would watch through the centuries. In his testament it is written. “The Highest One, himself, revealed to me that I should live in accordance with His Gospel.”

Clad in a hermit’s garb—Francis [Page 267] never became a priest—he began to repair the ruined chapels of the vicinity and to beg his bread, or to beg stones and materials for his masonry. He would espouse Lady Poverty forever. But this fair Lady was not poverty as the modern world has seen it and defined it; but the Lady of “free giving” as he styled her, who would own nothing that Her footsteps might be light on the blessed earth, that She might receive from Heaven the day’s needs, working for food but never for money. Her love for humanity would be Her dowry, Her utter faith Her treasure-chest. Ser Pietro nearly died of shame, not understanding his son’s beautiful young wife—eternally young and rich from divine sources.

The industrial era did not have to arrive to make lack of money a disgrace, though this disgrace grew almost a crime in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. In Francis’s day money had not yet become a commodity capable of reproducing itself in interest and usury. The mediaeval Church, indeed, called the taking of interest usury and that evil fell into the hands of the dwellers in the Ghetto. Gradually the idea grew that money was not a symbol but a commodity in itself and therefore preferable to goods or labor. But to Francis the divine bounty was the only coin of the realm and from that estimate he never wavered. Little by little be advanced to that high station and piercing spiritual vision which saw even the garbage sometimes doled out to him as food celestial. From these poor scraps he learned the taste of the manna of heaven.

His first disciples came to him as to a warm hearth in a bleak land and he bade them both preach and labor, but for their labor they were to receive not money but food. When they could find no work they were to beg their way without shame. They were to have no permanent shelter, only the hut of boughs or wattles.

A STRANGE ideal to this closing era at whose height, in the United States especially, to make money was the mark of nearly all the virtues; to amass it still greater virtue, drawing praise from the world. To be poor was to be found “undesirable,” or, by implication, lazy or stupid. Preachers avoided the text about the rich man and the Kingdom of Heaven. Probably that text was avoided, in Francis’s day.

But Francis saw the entire world, visible and invisible, as riches and he knew that coins held close to the eyes can obscure the Sun. He had no condemnation for the coin lovers, but he had seen a vision which compelled him to place his followers in the train of Lady Poverty. “He that hath two coats let him give to him that hath none.” Francis would not daily bite the dust of mortality as did those who sought in it for the money they had buried yesterday or the coins they would use for tomorrow. For himself he interpreted literally the words of Christ: “You cannot serve God and Mammon.”

Human nature in the mass could not then and cannot now accept the Sermon on the Mount literally, concentrated as it has been through countless ages on the struggle for survival. [Page 268] Racial memory is etched too deep to accept as Francis did, and with glorious returns, the promises of God. The tired eyes of the race saw matter as dead stuff. What lived was an enemy at the worst, at best intractable.

What the scientists seven centuries later were to discover Francis knew by the light of the Holy Spirit, that matter is not dead; that dynamics exist which elude the severest tests of the laboratory; that the Secret of Life is impenetrable except (and this science cannot know) to the humble and pure-hearted.

Francis, born joyous, submitted his spirit to those operations, painful at first in themselves, which remove joy to the supernatural plane and establish it there beyond contradiction. To Francis as to all saints this is the imperishable treasure. The only thing he feared was searching for happiness in the places the short sight of humanity has designated. Even average experience supplements the a priori judgment of the saints. Of what service is the money chest when the child dies? To bury it beautifully perhaps!

The saint’s progress in the following of Christ was both painful and joyous as joy always walks hand in hand with pain suffered for an ideal. Francis preached and labored and trod the roads of Italy in storm and sunshine singing the praises of his Lord. “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven.” Since the divine is always young such dew of unearthly mornings rests on these pilgrimages of Francis as the world had not seen for a thousand years. Such perfect adjustment to the universe would quiet in time even mockery and abuse.

Bernard of Quintivalle was Francis’s first follower. . . . Johannes Jörensen in his life of St. Francis, (Longmans, Green and Co.) describes thus poignantly his conversion.

“What seized him now was the feeling which Sabatier has in one place so beautifully called la nostalgie de la saintete—homesickness for holiness. The sacred fire burst out within his soul—the desire for over-sanctification which is the innermost kernel of Christianity . . . the desire to be satisfied with little, a deep supernatural longing as well as an insatiability than can never get enough.”

Francis and Bernard, opening the Gospels on the altar of San Niccolo in Assisi read; “If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. . .” Francis knew that the over-familiar text meant a search for affirmation beyond impairment. The partial witness of the incomplete self must be supplemented by the Man born from above. The denial was of unfinished experience deemed final.

Francis entered into the All of God’s providence, and a gaiety was released over which time could have no power. “These men are full of new wine,” said the rabble listening to the apostles after the Day of Pentecost. Spiritual light is inebriating and contagious. Francis’s divine adventure began to draw others, Giles and the blessed fool, brother Juniper and brother Leo, “Little sheep” as Francis endearingly named him. Later, a dark, Judas-like shadow on the Order, Brother Elias full of worldly wisdom.

[Page 269] The dawn was, as yet, unclouded. It was Christ come again some said, walking the bright, gay ways of eternity under the very eyes of mortal men. But Italy was not Palestine. These brethren had yet to be proved. Wandering friars were no novelty. In the Church were the Humiliati, outside of it the Cathari, the purified ones self-styled.

THE teachings of these scattered sects, both within and without the Church, leaned to the controversial. In Francis there was no controversy. It was the Life itself, visible to all. For him the sacramental life was realised not only by participation in the sacraments, but by their extension every hour of the day.

The office of the priesthood was to him glorious, and in his humility he never embraced it. “The only criticism he understood,” Jorgensen writes of him, “was self-criticism.” Over all men he threw the mantle of his perfect charity.

They wandered, they preached, they loved—those footsore, half-starved tramps of God, hilarious with a secret which turned every sunset into a burning antechamber of eternity, every dewdrop into a mirror of the ineffable, every rosy blossom into a cherub’s face, every spear of sunlight into his pointed wings.

In time they were given the ruined chapel of the Portinuncula, “the little portion,” by the Camaldolites to whom every year Francis sent as rental a basket of fish—shining currency from the clear mountain streams.

The divine folly of the friars minor spread through all Italy. Brother Juniper became almost as well-known as Francis, himself. A blessed simple soul, he was once discovered outside the gates of Rome playing see-saw with the children while a delegation of “the foremost citizens” awaited him in the city. Of this same brother St. Clare, Francis’s first woman disciple, asked on her death-bed, “What news of God?”

In eleven hundred years nothing like this joyous intoxication, this crystal clear vision of the universe, no longer broken but One in love. The white flame of Christianity swept the hills like the fires lit on St. John’s Eve. By their light men beheld paradise. Clara fled to Francis from her noble kinsmen and in San Damiano lived with her Poor Clares the Franciscan life. But Lady Poverty did not forbid her to fill her convent garden with roses and lilies.

All Italy pondered on Francis even Innocent III carrying these fresh tidings of God into his dreams where he beheld the walls of the Lateran prevented from falling by an humble friar. “Francis, repair my Church which has fallen into ruin.” The Pope next morning sent eagerly for the saint who, a few hours before, had humbly asked for the Church’s approval of his Rule and had been answered with indifference. John of Colonna had pleaded with his fellow-cardinals in irrefutable words; “These men only want us to allow them to live after the Gospel. If we now declare that this is impossible then we declare that the Gospel cannot be followed.”

The Gospel triumphed. Francis returned to his preaching, to his stabilization [Page 270] of joy through its removal to the supernatural plane. But what distinguished him from his fellows was that the supernatural penetrated the natural, making all things novel to his eyes, all holy. Yet there was nothing Wordsworthian in his response to nature, rather the rapture in the heart of a lover who from a far land received the glorious raiment worn by the Beloved. Here are the soft laces of the mist. Here the gold girdle of the sun. In his joy he writes the Canticle of the Sun, his amazing brother.

“Most high omnipotent good Lord,

Thine are the praises, the glory, the honor, and all benediction.

To thee alone, Most High, do they belong,

And no man is worthy to mention thee.

Praised be thou, my Lord, with all thy creatures,

Especially the honored Brother Sun,

Who makes the day and illumines us through thee,

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor

Bears the signification of the Most High One.

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,

Thou hast formed them in heaven clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be thou, my Lord for Brother Wind,

And for the air and cloudy and clear and every weather

By which thou givest sustenance to thy creatures.

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Sister Water,

Which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be thou, my Lord, for Brother Fire

By whom thou lightest the night,

And he is beautiful and jocund and robust and strong.

Praised be thou, my Lord, for our sister, Mother Earth,

Who sustains and governs us,

And produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbage.

Praise and bless my Lord and give him thanks

And serve him with great humility.”

The animal world, the beasts and the birds also shared this overflowing paradisal love which found nothing untouched by the finger of God. Legends? these stories of the dumb things answering Francis in their own tongue? But it is no legend that every day men and women love their dogs or cats or birds into almost human understanding. The story of the wolf of Gubbio tells that the city’s terrified inhabitants appealed to the saint to rid them of a wolf, the fierce ringleader of a pack which was destroying their live stock. To the fear and horror of his followers Francis sought the wolf’s den. The conversation that passed between them is known only to God, but the outcome was felicitous. Saintly hand and hairy paw came together in a pact not to be broken. The wolf of Gubbio became the pet of the city, and in heaven’s name why not? The underlying verity of the story does not need the testimony of the wolf’s bones recently unearthed in the crypt of a church in Gubbio. Francis would have blessed Brother Science, and brother scientists, and said to them; “Go to my [Page 271] Lord in your own way, only go to Him!”

The story of Francis and the wild turtle doves in the Fioretti is so beautiful that it is best told in the words of that enchanting little volume of a divine Spring-time.

“It befell on a day that a certain young man had caught many turtledoves; and as he was carrying them for sale, St. Francis who had ever a tender pity for gentle creatures, met him, and looking on those turtledoves with pitying eyes, said to the youth: ‘I pray thee, give them to me, that birds so gentle, unto which the Scripture likeneth chaste and humble and faithful souls, may not fall into the hands of cruel men that would kill them.’ Forthwith, inspired of God, he gave them all to St. Francis; and he receiving them into his bosom, began to speak tenderly unto them; ‘O, my sisters, simple-minded turtle doves, innocent and chaste, why have ye let yourselves be caught? Now would I fain deliver you from death, and make you nests that ye may be fruitful and multiply according to the commandments of your Creator.’ And Francis went and made nests for them all; and they abiding therin, began to lay their eggs and hatch them before the eyes of the brothers; and so tame were they, they dwelt with St. Francis and all the other brothers as though they had been fowls that had always fed from their hands, and never did they go away until St. Francis with his blessing gave them leave to go. And to the young man who had given them to him, St. Francis said; ‘My little son, thou wilt yet be a brother in this Order and do precious work for Jesu Christ.’ And so it came to pass; for the said youth became a brother and lived in the Order in great sanctity.”

Francis’s missionary journeys extended to Egypt to the court of the Sultan Melek-el-Kamil, of whom Father Cuthbert in his life of St. Francis writes; “The courtier-Moslem was much of a rationalist and was not averse from debating the relative merits of the Gospel and the Koran as an intellectual pastime. He was, moreover, a curious mixture of ferocity and chivalry, even as were his Christian enemies.”

On the saint’s return to Europe he found that with the growth of his Order certain compromises had crept in. The light was more diffused but less crystalline. In the dawn of a great religious revival men are praying and singing. At noon they work and plan and become executive. Sometimes dissent creeps in. The great stream moves on, recognizable, even if less crystalline. Clare among her nuns at San Damiano understood, Brother Juniper in his divine folly understood and the mystical-minded Cardinal Ugolino. Doubtless many unrecorded Franciscans saw the full glory of the vision. Francis went on his illuminated path, mounting to the heights of Mt. Alvernia, or leading to Greccio where he made the first Christmas “crib” with the bleating sheep about it. The Nativity was re-enacted before the wondering eyes of the simple people. Drama springs from wonder and does not abide where life is taken for granted.

The Friars Minor, the First Order of St. Francis, had now, besides the [Page 272] Second Order of Clares, the Third Order, called Tertiaries, founded for the laity who desired to live the life of Francis in workshop and home. The Lady Giacoma di Settesoli, once Francis’s hostess at Rome, belonged to the Third Order, and Lord Orlando of Chiusi who gave Mt. Alvernia to Francis for a wilderness retreat.

To the summit of this wild mountain Francis ascended for a supreme experience, only Brother Leo, “little sheep,” with him. There he fasted and prayed many days, withdrawing even from his companion, and steadily advancing to the unearthly climax described in the Fioretti. “He was altogether transformed into Jesu through love and pity. . . . and saw descending from heaven a Seraph with six wings, resplendent and aflame, and as with swift flight the Seraph drew nigh unto St. Francis he saw . . . the image of a man crucified. . . . it was revealed by Him that appeared to him; that by divine providence this vision had been shown in such form, to the end that he might understand that not by the martyrdom of the body, but by the enkindling of his mind, must he needs be wholly transformed into the express image of Christ Crucified.”

Not by the martyrdom of the body! Francis received the Stigmata, and the knowledge that the body, too, enters into the stabilization of Joy. As Dante wrote in the Eleventh Canto of the Paradiso;

“On the hard rock,

‘Twixt Arno and the Tiber, he from Christ

Took the last signet.”

THE marriage of Pain and Joy was completed. Brother Fire was Brother Fire still, even though in the ignorance of the times red-hot irons were applied to the saint’s eyes that had weakened under the weight of the inner vision. Sister Water was still humble and precious to him. There remained yet Sister Death, and the great Canticle of the Sun, chanted by the brothers at his deathbed, received a few more lines;

“Praised be thou, O Lord, for our Sister Bodily Death,

From whom no living man can escape.”

An exquisite and tender humanity, even toward himself, fills the last days of Francis with as lovely a light on the human scene as ever rested on the divine realms he beheld with the eyes of the spirit. He sends messages to Clare among her roses and lilies. He would have a messenger dispatched to his former hostess in Rome and devoted friend, the Lady Jacopa de Settesoli, asking her to bring a grey habit for his burying, a square of linen to cover his face; and would she bring also the delicious sweet he had once tasted at her house? Brother Body, too, at the end, must have his “little portion.” Before the messenger started the couriers of love and devotion had reached her. She arrived with all he had asked for.

In the evening light of October 4th, 1226, the sweetest, most Christlike soul Christianity had produced took its flight to God amidst the ecstatic singing of larks. Two years later his devoted follower Cardinal Ugolino, become Gregory the Ninth, canonized him.

[Page 273]

ISLAM

ALI-KULI KHAN

I

THERE are two sources for data for the life of Muhammad and Islam: 1—Qur’án and 2—Tradition. The Qur’án was the inspired Word, revealed by the Prophet and written down by one of those present on palm-leaves, leather, stones, bones, etc. But upon his death, the Cannon was closed, and traditions began to be related by the companions and their posterity.

Early Moslems memorized the various Suras, and the reading of the Qur’án was enjoined as a duty and blessing. The Qur’án was not repeated in any fixed order as, after the Prophet’s death, the various parts were compiled into a volume. There are, however, certain Suras such as Joseph, Sura the 12th and the description of Paradise, Sura the 55th, which are complete and integral. However, all fragments were strictly Muhammad’s own composition. Hence the Qur’án contains His words and sentences and is His in relation to the context as well.

Transcribing the Qur’án was common amongst the early Moslems. Those who were sent to preach to outside tribes carried in writing parts of the Revelation, and those on which the ceremonies of Islam were based. Such copies increased when the Prophet and His book became the recognized authorities of Arabia.

After the Prophet’s death, for fear that the transcription of parts of the Qur’án should lead to difference and discrepancy, Omar and the first caliph, Abu Bekr, agreed and requested Zeid Ibn Thabit, the Prophet’s chief amanuensis, to search out the Qur’án and bring it together into one manuscript. After much hesitation, these scattered and confused parts were, within two or three years, reduced by Zeid to the present order and sequence of the Holy Book. Since, however, difference of texts in the numerous copies made from Zeid’s manuscript led to confusion, in the caliphate of Othman all transcripts were gathered and destroyed, and the original copy formed by Zeid was adopted as the authoritative text.

There are traditions showing that Othman eliminated certain chapters [Page 274] or parts which favored Ali, but others state this improbable since at the time when Othman’s edition was arranged no open rift had occurred between the Omeiyads and the Alids.

The conclusion reached from the study of controversies upholds the Qur’án in its present form as the authentic record of Muhammad’s Revelations. And as Von Hammer, the great German scholar, states; “The Qu’ran is as surely Muhammad’s word as the Muhammadans hold it to be the word of God.” The importance of the Qur’án is confirmed by the belief of the early Moslems that the Prophet’s character is the Qur’án.

Next is a study of the authority of Tradition, as the other source of early Muhammadan history. For tradition furnishes the chief data for a life of the Prophet. Tradition consists of sayings handed down by a chain of narrators which is traced to the early date of Islam, and it was oral for the most part. Traditions related of the “Companions” are considered with great reverence. As Islam spread in other lands, and its Empire expanded, the simple system derived from the Qur’án needed further expansion to meet the complicated problems which arose in regulating the state affairs, religious, social, and political. Hence the acts and sayings or habits of the Prophets that were relevant to the points at issue were to be remembered, recorded, and applied to the various needs. First in authority as narrators of traditions were the “Companions” or Asháb, and then their followers or “Successors” the Tabi’un.

The Qur’án is, to the Moslem, the source and authority for rule of conduct, but the unforeseen circumstances which arose, and for which the Qur’án had made no provision, necessitated the adoption of the Prophet’s “Custom” or “Sunna” which consisted of His “sayings” and His “practice.” For the Moslems not only believed the Qur’án as the Word of God, but since the Qur’án was the character of the Prophet, His sayings and wonts were reverenced and accepted as emanating from a divine source.

Search for traditions during the first century of Islam gave rise to a new order of men called “Collectors,” who devoted their lives to the task of tracing traditions to their original sources. There are various standards by which to judge the authenticity of a tradition. The leading amongst these are: (1) That a tradition should directly or indirectly be supported by a text in the Qur’án and (2) that the early Companions, and according to the Shi’ites, the Twelve Imams, should be the source to which a tradition is traced by the narrator. For those two classes, after the Prophet, are amongst the foremost authorities for their faith and integrity. As regards all other traditions, to them the rule laid down by one of those authorities is applicable, namely: “A report (or tradition) may be correct or incorrect.”

Traditions, almost in general, were orally related during the first century of Islam; but as they gained in importance at the end of that century the Caliph, Omar II, issued orders for the formal collection of all extant traditions.

Muhammad lived for ten years after His Hijra, or flight from Mecca to [Page 275] Medina. The division which almost immediately violated the unity of Islam and began the Sunni and the Shi’ite sects, was not published until some time later. Also during the thirteen years of the Caliphates of Abu Bekr and Omar which followed the death of the Prophet, there was no schism manifest.

But Othman, the third Caliph’s weakness and vacillating policy led to his murder by the conspirators who attacked Medina and gave rise to factions and new candidates for the Caliphate. Tradition was used by each party to support their respective claims. Then came the Caliphate of Ali, who was assassinated after four and a half years. And the Omeiyads cleared the ground for unchallenged supremacy. Muaviya, who reigned until 60 A.H., was a descendant of Abu Sufyan who for long years was a great opponent of the Prophet. Both the Omeiyads and their opponents, the Alids, i.e., the “School of the Twelve,” cited traditions to support their claims. But we believe that there are ample proofs based on the authority of the Prophet’s sayings and “customs” which uphold Ali and his lineal descendants, i.e., the eleven Imams, to be the spiritual successors and the true interpreters and custodians of the sacred spirit of Islam, while the Omeiyads, according to the Alids, usurped the authority vested in the theocracy of Islam which they supplanted by the temporal empire evolved under their leadership.

Toward the end of the first century the Alids, and later the Abbasides, descended from Al-Abbas, the Prophet’s uncle, attempted to dethrone the Omeiyads, claiming that not only the spiritual, but the temporal rule was vested in the divine right of the family of the Prophet. This is the basis for the Alid belief in the subsequent emergence of the hidden twelfth Imam to conquer the world in the name of Islam. But the Abbasides, who helped the Alids against the Omeiyads, overreached the former by raising an Abbaside Caliph to the throne. Tradition again, both authentic and fabricated, was called into play by one side or the other in support of their respective claims.

The Abbaside Caliphate occupied the throne in 132 A.H. and the instrument of the Alid sect which worked in distant parts of Persia attained the prestige of sovereignty, which resulted in the extirpation of the Omeiyads.

The earliest biographer of the Prophet, Ibn Is’hak, wrote under the auspices of the first two Abbasid Caliphs. Hence in his work the Omeiyads were denounced and traditions supporting the Alids were cited.

The famous Al-Ma’mun was the fifth Abbasid Caliph during whose reign of twenty years, literature flourished. He befriended the followers of Ali who had suffered persecution under the Omeiyads and he supported the teachings of the Mo’tazila sect, who are praised by historians as the “rationalists” of Islam.

The “rationalists” disbelieved the “eternity of the Qur’án” and opposed the orthodox in asserting man’s free will. In his support of Ali as the noblest of mortals, Al-Ma’mun denounced Mu’aviya as the basest and punished those who spoke well of him. He is one of the early Muhammadan [Page 276] Caliphs who came nearest to establishing a sort of inquisition in Islam and punishing those who opposed his views. The three other great biographies of Muhammad which (next to the earlier by Ibn Is’hak) are most reliable, were composed under his reign; the one by Al-Wakidi, and the others by Ibu Hisham and Al-Mada’ini. The Caliphate of Al-Ma’mun lasted from 198 to 218 A.H. (813-853 A.D.). Al-Wakidi died in 207 A.H., Ibn Hisham in 218 A.H., and Al-Mada’ini in 215 or 225 or 231 A.H. These biographies show this reign as the busiest age of traditional writers. Hence a claim is made by certain European historians that the recorded traditions in those biographies under such a reign show a decided partiality in favor of the Alids and towards establishing the Divine Imamat or headship of Ali.

Albukhari, who travelled far and wide in search of traditions, concluded that out of 600,000 only 4,000 of them were authentic. Aliben-Dawud of 500,000 rejected all but 4,800.

Albukhari wrote the “Sahih” (correct) which contains the most reliable of traditions. He and many other “Collectors” were honest and sincere. For in main historical and biographical outlines the traditions adopted as authentic are at one with the text of the Qur’án. Sprenger in his “Muhammad” is favorable to tradition although, he states, they are at a distance of 100 years from the time of Muhammad.

As to the earliest biographers of Muhammad, Az-Zuhri was one who died in A.H. 124, aged 72. His work is not extant, but the other available biographies copiously quote from it.

In the 2nd century A. H., Musa Ibn’Okba and Abu Mas h’ar wrote biographies of the Prophet. Their works are not extant, but Az-Tabari quotes them in his work. Abu Is’hak, who died in 188 A.H. and Al Mada’ini, who lived to the beginning of the 3rd century, also wrote the Prophet’s Life, but their works are not extant.

Those authors whose works are extant are Ibn Is’hak, Ibn Hisham, Al Wakidi and his secretary Ibn Sa’ad; and Al Tabari.

1. Mohammed Ibn Is’hak died in 151 A.H. or twenty years after the fall of the Omeiyad dynasty. The Abbasid Caliphs published his works. No copy of his work in the original is available.

2. Ibn Hisham died in 213 (or 218) A.H. He greatly drew upon his predecessor Ibn Is’hak.

3. Al Wakidi was born at Medina in 130 A.H. and died in 207. He wrote under the Abbasids, whose patronage he enjoyed at Baghdad.

4. Al-Tabari, or Abu Jafar Ibn Jarirat Tabari, lived in the latter part of the third century. He was also a great jurist and interpreter of the Qur’án. He was born in Amul in Tabaristan (or Mazanderan, Persia) in 224 and died at Baghdad in 310 A.H.

ARABIA before Muhammad was inhabited by pagan Arabs. Christianity had made no appreciable impression on its people, except in the extreme north near the Syrian frontier. There was no hope of saving it from national idolatry. Its people were highly conservative and all [Page 277] thought of reform seemed impossible. Few tribes, including Beni Harith of Nijran and the Beni Hanifa of Al Yemama, had been attracted to a type of Christianity. Judaism was also known to a certain extent, but not as a faith to wield any influence. Muhammad appeared and worked this scanty material of Jewish and Christian faith into a great weapon with which He conquered all Arabia to Islam, the faith in Divine Unity. Had he not been chosen to be the inspired Prophet of a new faith, fair-minded Christians believe he might have promoted Judaism and Christianity and left a name as “Saint Muhammad” or, more likely, “Muhammad the Martyr.” Muhammad formed Islam, for no Islam or pre-existing Muslim spirit moulded Muhammad.

MECCA IN PRE-HISTORIC TIMES

Al-Tabari writes that The Ka’aba was built by Abraham. Hagar, wandering with her boy, reaches the valley of Mecca. Thirst leads them to the hills of Safa and Merwa. Ishmael kicks the ground and lo! water flows. This is the genesis of the Well of Zamzam! Amalekites and Arabs settled near the water. On a later visit Abraham and Ishmael erect the Temple where it stands.

The Koreishite stock is traced to Abraham, whereof is Koreish’s inherited right as custodians of the Ka’aba. This right was usurped by the tribe of Jurham. In the second century A.D. the Khaza’a tribe from Yaman in the south went north and seized Mecca and ousted Jurham in the third century. Their last king, before leaving, buried in the Well of Zamzam his treasures consisting of two gazelles of gold, and swords and suits of armor.

The Khaza’a continued masters of Mecca for 200 years, leaving only certain inferior offices of the Ka’aba to the original tribes. In the middle of the fifth century Kosai, a bold Koreish, supplanted the usurpers and gained for his people the supreme control of the Holy City. His rule was obeyed and venerated both before and after his death. Kosai was the fifth ancestor of Muhammad. The rites of the Ka’aba pilgrimage as practised in the time of Muhammad were handed down by Kosai. They include visiting Ka’aba at the center, kissing the black stone built into the eastern corner, and making seven circuits around the sacred Temple. The Omra or the “lesser pilgrimage” includes passing to and fro seven times between the eminences of the Safa and the Merwa. Before entering the sacred precinct, one assumes the pilgrim garb and when ceremonies are concluded, one shaves his head and pares his nails. These rites are performed at any season, but the “greater pilgrimage” is performed only during the holy month Dhu’l-Hyja. Small stones are cast at certain objects in the Mina Valley and victims are sacrificed there at the end of the pilgrimage.

In those times an area of several miles around Mecca was called “Haram” or sacred and inviolable, and regarded as such from time immemorial. Four months of the year, three consecutive and one separate, were held sacred, for in those months all hostile feeling by mutual consent was suppressed, [Page 278] and all Arabia enjoyed amnesty. During these months pilgrims from all parts would safely visit Mecca and attend fairs, as merchants or for poetry contests. The poem judged the best was hung on the wall of the Ka’aba. Hence the mention of the seven “hanging poems” chosen amongst the best in Arabian poetry.

The Ka’aba is of remote antiquity. Herodotus mentions as one of the chief Arab idols “Alilat,” showing that “Al-lat,” the great idol of Mecca, was worshipped at that early period. He also speaks of Arabs as worshipping stones, which refers to their veneration of the “black stone.” Men yearly visited Mecca from the Yemen, the deserts of Syria, and the shores of the Persian Gulf; also from Al-Hira and Mesopotamia. The native faith of Arabia was Sabeanism, idolatry, and stone worship. Sabeanism, once a pure religion, was corrupted into the worship of stars. The book of Job, as well as certain early names of the Himyar kings, prove its ancient origin, while up to the fourth century A.D. sacrifices were offered in the Yemen to the sun, moon and stars. Even the seven circuits of the Ka’aba seem derived from the Sabean observation of the revolution of the heavenly bodies. There were also minor idol shrines scattered throughout Arabia wherein even misshapen stones were worshipped. The taking of a stone from Mecca as a sacred relic on a journey is likewise a remnant of the stone-worship of the Sabean days.

The ceremony connected with the Well of Zamzam and the pilgrims wandering to and fro between the Safa and the Merwa are in memory of Hagar’s and Ishmael’s search for water. Abraham and Ishmael built the temple in which they placed the Black Stone and for all Arabia pilgrimage to Arafat was established. The stones flung by pilgrims are thrown at Satan and the sacrifice offered at Mina is in memory of the vicarious sacrifice by Abraham. Muhammad founded His faith upon the universal familiarity of Arabians with the records dealing with Abraham’s building of the sacred edifice. While He retained the rites of the Ka’aba, He eliminated all idolatrous forms and thus revealed the theism of Islam as the foundation of faith in the divine unity.

FOREBEARS OF MUHAMMAD

The civil polity of the Arabs was based on the habits of the wandering tribes called Bedouin. Before Islam, no supreme authority existed with a law. The Arabs consisted of many independent tribes. Retaliation and blood feud aroused tribe against tribe. The chief’s word was a pledge to be fulfilled scrupulously. All source of authority resided in the Ka’aba and the pilgrimage and the custodians who controlled the pilgrimage. About the middle of the fifth century A.D. Khosai was the highest chief. His eldest son, Abd-ed-Dar, inherited the authority. His powerful rival was his brother, Abd Menaf, whose influence was inherited by his sons. The chief amongst the latter were Al-Muttalib, Abd-Shams, Naufal, and Hashim. Discord fell amongst them. Hashim took the lead as a claimant of the high dignity of [Page 279] the family of Abd Menaf, but Dar’s sons refused to give up their rights and an open rupture ensued. Koreish was also divided. The conflict continued until a truce was called, Hashim and his party being given the office of providing food and water for the pilgrims, and Dar’s descendants retaining the custody of the Ka’aba and council hall and the right of hoisting the war banner. Peace was made on these terms.

Thus Hashim, in a time of famine, relieved his fellow citizens by conveying a stock of flour from Syria to Mecca. He also had the camels slaughtered and roasted, and divided them among the citizens. Hashim concluded a treaty with the Christian Ghassabid, Prince of Syria, a tributary of the Roman emperor, allowing Koreish to travel through Syria in peace. A similar treaty was made with Abyssinia by Abd-Shams, while Naufal and Al-Muttalib entered into an alliance with the King of Persia, which allowed the Meccan merchants to trade in Irak and Fars; also with the Kings of Hamyar in southern Arabia, which permitted commercial operations in the Yemen. Every winter a caravan set out for the Yemen and Abyssinia, and every summer another visited Gaza, Incyra, and other Syrian marts.

Hashim’s glory provoked the envy of Omeiya, the son of his brother Abd-Shams. This led to a struggle resulting in his defeat and exile from Mecca to Syria. The subsequent struggle between the Hashimite and Omeiyad factions which shook the Caliphate had its origin in this incident.

Hashim married Selma, daughter of Amr, of the Khazraj tribe, who bore him a son in 497 A.D. After Hashim’s death his dignities reverted to his brother Al-Muttalib, who called the former’s son when grown into boyhood, from Medina. He was called Abd-al-Muttalib or the servant of Muttalib. But Muttalib stated that the boy was not his servant, but the son of Hashim, his brother. Hence the name Abd-el-Muttalib continued that of Hashim’s son thereafter.

This son inherited his father’s estate and possessions and succeeded him in the office of entertaining the pilgrims. He it was who discovered the ancient well, Zamzam, which had been choked up and even forgotten for a long period in which Mecca had been given up as a center of trade. Aided by his son Harith, he dug into the well deeper and deeper and discovered the two golden gazelles and the swords and suits of armor buried there by the expelled Jurhamite king three centuries before. The Koreish questioned his right to this possession and finally, by casting lots and by the decision of the Arrows of Hubal, the god whose image was in the Ka’aba, the gazelles fell to the share of the Ka’aba and the swords and suits of armor to Abd-al-Muttalib. The Koreish drew a blank, but agreed in the divine decree and abandoned their claim to the well. Abd-el-Muttalib beat out the gazelles into plates of gold which he used as ornaments to the door of the Ka’aba. The Well Zamzam, to the glory of Abd-al-Muttalib, gave a plentiful flow of fresh water, supplying the pilgrims and enjoying the sacredness of the Ka’aba and its rights. Abd-al-Muttalib became [Page 280] prosperous, but having only one son he felt weak in contending with the large families of his opponents. He made a vow that if God should grant him ten sons, he would offer one as sacrifice to the deity. In time this vow was fulfilled, and as he cast a lot with an arrow to choose one amongst them to sacrifice, the arrow fell upon Abd Allah, the youngest and most cherished son. As he proceeded to fulfill the vow, his daughter wept and persuaded him to cast lots between Abd Allah and ten camels. Each time the arrow falling on the son, finally lots were cast between Abd Allah and one hundred camels. This time the lot fell on the one hundred camels, which the father joyfully sacrificed as a ransom for his son. The camels were offered between the Safa and the Merwa and the city people feasted upon them, but Abd-al-Muttalib’s family would not partake and the residue was left to the beasts and to the birds. That was the origin of the sacrifice offered by Mecca pilgrims to this day. This Abd Allah was the father of Muhammad.

Abdul Muttalib made a league with the Khosa’ite tribe of Mecca, thus increasing his prestige as above the Omeiya. This league was reduced to writing and hung up in the Ka’aba.

In 570 A.D., or seven years before the death of Abd-el-Muttalib, Abraha, the Abyssinian Viceroy of the Yemen, invaded Mecca. He had built a great cathedral whither to attract the worship of Arabians. His failure provoked his attack upon Mecca. He had an elephant in his train. Hence the story of the “Companions of the Elephant” in the Sura speaking of the miraculous destruction of that army by small pebbles thrown down from the sky by flocks of small birds called “Ababil.” Others speak of a pestilence having decimated the invader’s hosts.

In the latter days of Abdul Muttalib, there were two fractions led by Kosai’s two sons, Abd-e-Dar and Abd-e-Menaf, following his death. The former’s descendants were in abject circumstances, while those of the latter enjoyed great prosperity. Among these, another faction had arisen, namely the families of Hashim and Abd Shams.

But in the “Year of the Elephant” a son was born who was destined, within fifty years, to eclipse the glories of both factions. That child was Muhammad.

(To be continued)

[Page 281]

PAIN AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION

MATHEW KASZAB

BAHÁ’U’LLÁH states that the two pillars of justice are reward and retribution. Without these two pillars there can not be a just and integrated society because everything is thrown out of balance.

Reward is pleasurable, retribution is painful. Pain is even more necessary than pleasure as a factor in evolution.

When someone asks: “If God is a loving God why does He make us suffer?” The answer is: He makes us suffer because of the very fact that He is a loving God, as pain is a factor in our growth and development. However, God is responsible for our pain only in this sense—that no conscious creature escapes pain in the course of a lifetime. God could have created us without a nervous system so we would be incapable of experiencing pain, but without a nervous system we would freeze to death in the winter or drop dead from all sorts of ailments without even knowing something was wrong with us or feeling any pain. With a nervous system we are forewarned if anything goes wrong with our body so that we may do something about it before it is too late.

To keep from experiencing mental pain we would have to be in the state of a drug addict who has taken an injection of cocaine. This is a very unreal world in which to live! The other alternative would be to have been created in the condition of a vegetable but this would defeat the purpose of being brought into this world since the whole purpose of the creation of human beings is to evolve consciousness. Of what value is an unconscious person?

Those individuals who have escaped struggle and difficulties seem to be weak and characterless. They are generally vain, egocentric, lack sympathy for the suffering of others and their higher attributes are undeveloped. Their spiritual muscles are weak and they are useless elements in any form of positive social integration.

Although pain is something that no conscious creature can possibly avoid, yet some pain is, in a sense, useless and avoidable. It is brought about by our own negligence and [Page 282] should be avoided. At other times we get into difficulties because of a lack of knowledge of what to do or what to avoid. In this case suffering teaches us how to handle the situation the next time we come in contact with it. We cannot be negligent about it because the pain increases and forces a person to face reality. In this way knowledge, courage, wisdom, and other attributes are evolved and strengthened. This is true both for individuals and groups.

Some people egotistically feel themselves so superior they think God is unjust because He subjects them to the test of pain. This is a purely blind and emotional reaction to pain, not at all logical or philosophical. These people do not meditate on what caused the pain and how it could be removed, or what experience could be gained by positive reaction to it. In fact suffering is largely an emotional reaction towards external stimuli. The stimuli itself may or may not be painful or harmful but our fear of what may be the outcome and our imagination magnify the predicament.

TYPES OF PAIN AND SUFFERING

Pain is either physical or mental and emotional. Although suffering may have a physical basis, yet in itself it is psychological and comes about oftentimes through the collapse of our self-esteem or punctured pride. For example, one may be physically handicapped; and although he could function with his physical equipment, yet the attitude of others towards his deficiency reacts upon him and makes him sensitive. Egotism, selfishness, fear, prejudice, in fact, all the negative aspects of a personality, inevitably cause pain not only to the person himself but to others who come in contact with him. And as everything is interlinked the whole of humanity suffers.

The greatest and most tragic suffering comes about from a sense of frustration or a feeling of inferiority. When a person is prevented from developing his talents or if he is kept from expressing his capacities in the outer world, he feels at a disadvantage with other people and a sense of inferiority and frustration results. This is not merely a temporary predicament but it keeps on nagging the individual continually, sometimes wrecking his whole life unless he finds the way to overcome it.

HOW TO OVERCOME SUFFERING

The outer circumstances may not be under the control of the individual but may be environmental or hereditary. For instance, a woman may be born ugly. A combination of environmental and hereditary forces may be working against a child before he is old enough and mature enough to know what to do about it. He may not have sufficient knowledge at hand, the advice and sympathy of wise people may be absent and by the time he has grown up the damage has been done and he does not know how to cope with the situation. This tragedy of frustration is even intensified and causes inestimable suffering and loss both to the individual and to society when it is enacted on the higher plane and a person’s highest attributes [Page 283] and loftiest aspirations are kept from unfolding.

Suffering is caused by negative qualities and a negative reaction to our environment as I have indicated before. However, dwelling and concentrating on them, only helps to aggravate them. The only way to overcome the negative attitude is to place yourself en rapport with the most positive and dynamic force in existence —the Manifestation of God. To do this, a very bold thrust is necessary. Through the power of your will, you must (at least temporarily) cut yourself loose from all previous modes of thinking and throw overboard all preconceived ideas, make your mind a blank, then read the Word that has been written by the Supreme Pen and meditate on it. Bahá’u’lláh states, “Release yourselves, O Nightingales of God, from the brambles and mire of wretchedness.” This is difficult but you can do it for at least two or three minutes at a time and as you continue the manifested attributes of God (the positive and dynamic qualities) start to reflect in your soul and it becomes easy and joyous. Do not become discouraged by preliminary failure as the power of meditation is a cumulative process. You must “make of your will a door through which the confirmations of the Spirit may descend.” In spite of the preliminary difficulty it is better to do anything than to continue to suffer this sense of frustration and all the difficulties in which we involve ourselves through weakness of character.

No matter what your difficulty is, whether you are suffering physically or psychically, “God suffices all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God suffices!” This works both for individual integration and also for community integration. Spiritual Force emanating from the Manifestation of God is universal energy and can be applied in all situations and His Intelligence is All-Comprehending and can resolve all problems. “He is the King, the All-Knowing, the Wise.” “The Word of God is the storehouse of all good, all power, and all wisdom.” So be sure that you read the Word of God that has been revealed by the Supreme Pen for this dispensation because you are not living in the past. Do not rely on your own imagination to try to escape your sense of inferiority and inadequacy, because merely to imagine that you are superior, powerful, beautiful and adequate is only egotistical. To use your imagination to try to escape reality in this situation is merely a defense mechanism and is again only a negative orientation. When put to the test it collapses. It is the cowardly way. It is like a toy balloon drifting in the breeze. As long as the gentle breeze carries it along, it survives, but when a violent wind starts blowing, it explodes. Unfortunately for the little toy balloon of imagination, in this terrific age, “the winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction.”

The power emanating from the Manifestation of God is reality and the test of it is that it survives when human imagination collapses. Those who are weak are strengthened and those who are cowardly acquire courage. “When man is associated with [Page 284] that transcendent power emanating from the Word of God, the tree of his being becomes so well rooted in the soil of assurance that it laughs at the hurricanes of scepticism violently attempting its destruction.”

Once we have solved the problems involved with the inferiority complex we have done away with the source of the most acute suffering that afflicts a great portion of humanity. Once a person has felt this power from Bahá’u’lláh reinforcing him can he feel himself a weakling? All human beings are weak and all power is from God anyway so where does the superiority of other people come in? Once he associates himself with this Supreme Outlook how can he be inferior to those who do not?

Are other people rich? Their money purchases things only on the outer plane. It is not legal tender in the higher realm. Are other people beautiful? Reflect the Ancient Beauty. On this higher plane there is an entirely new set of criteria and the former vanities are meaningless. Your problems are resolved in a new light, a new consciousness and you are fighting with new weapons. When it comes down to a final analysis: “Is there any remover of difficulties save God?”

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KNOWLEDGE

FLORA HOTTES

Glory of God, we have not seen Thy Face,

Nor heard Thy Voice its priceless message tell,

Yet each in his own spirit’s sacred place

May sense Thy Truth divine, how clear, how well.

Glory of God, we may not touch Thy robe,

Nor walk the paths Thy holy footsteps trod,

But we can set our feet upon Thy way

That leads from self to Thee, and Thee to God.

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