# The Sheltering Branch

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Marzieh Gail, The Sheltering Branch, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> The Sheltering Branch
> by
> 
> Marzieh Gail, M.A.
> 
> “… This Branch of Holiness; well is it with him that hath sought
> His shelter and abideth beneath His shadow.” Bahá’u’lláh.
> 
> George Ronald
> First published by George Ronald
> 46 High Street, Kidlington, Oxford
> 
> All rights reserved
> 
> First edition 1959
> Reprinted 1968, 1974 and 1978
> 
> Printed in Great Britain by
> Fletcher & Son Ltd, Norwich
> 
> Contents
> 
> The unity of East & West ................................................................................4
> The manuscript of Florence Khánum ........................................................... 11
> The Master in ‘Akká ...................................................................................... 14
> The attainable perfections of man ................................................................23
> How to kill prejudice ..................................................................................... 35
> Man, the preoccupied ................................................................................... 37
> The development of love ...............................................................................39
> Love is not enough ....................................................................................... 42
> The trap of imitation .....................................................................................45
> Mankind is one people .................................................................................. 55
> Show forth true economics ...........................................................................56
> The assassin’s prisoner ................................................................................ 58
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s birthday ............................................................................... 62
> The gift of health ...........................................................................................65
> Death, the welcome messenger ................................................................... 69
> Science a pathway to God ............................................................................. 72
> Men and women are equal ............................................................................ 74
> The struggle for the tomb ............................................................................. 79
> God the Unknowable .................................................................................... 81
> The coming of the Glory .............................................................................. 84
> 
> The unity of East & West
> A member of the Académie Française is reported as saying that
> the most interesting life of the nineteenth century was Benjamin
> Disraeli’s.
> This statement reminds us, if we need to be reminded again,
> that even to European intellectuals the nineteenth is still the
> unknown century. At a certain point in time two thousand years ago
> there was only one pivotal fact in the world: the life of Christ. And
> the nineteenth century in its turn, saw only one pivotal fact:
> intertwined lives of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh; the life and martyrdom
> of the Báb, and then, “after the lapse of a few years”, the “Beauty of
> the Báb … arrayed in a new raiment …”1
> As another aspect of this central fact, the nineteenth century saw
> the birth, and the first fifty–six years of the life, of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; of
> Him Who “forms together with them … the Three Central Figures of
> a Faith that stands unapproached in the world’s spiritual history.”2
> For the Father, in the nineteenth century, brought down the bread
> from heaven once again; and it is man himself who has preferred a
> stone.
> To study a man’s life is to live in his presence, through his words
> and the words of those who saw
> 
> 1    Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Section
> LXXVII, p. 147.
> 2    Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 131.
> 
> him or who have thought about him; and especially it is to see him in
> the lives of those he has influenced. Now that His pen is stilled, His
> voice hushed, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words are the Bahá’ís; they are His
> message to the world; His conversation with mankind; and they
> reflect, however tentatively at this early stage of apprenticeship in
> Bahá’í living, the life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—of Him Who is “the Master”,
> “the Centre of the Covenant”, “the Mystery of God”, “the Limb of the
> Law of God”, “the Interpreter” of the mind of Bahá’u’lláh, “the
> Architect of His World Order”, “the Exemplar of His faith”, and “the
> Ensign of His Most Great Peace”.1
> After Bahá’u’lláh ascended, a prisoner and exile, near ‘Akká in
> 1892, a telegram was sent to the Sultan whose prisoner He was. It
> read: “The Sun of Bahá has set.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was left then, almost
> alone in the world, to face the enemies who were massed against
> Him—enemies from within and without the Cause, some His Own
> blood relatives, others as close at hand, others in faraway countries
> where renown of this Faith had even then penetrated.
> Even before Bahá’u’lláh had declared His mission in 1863,
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as a child of eight, had recognized His Father’s station
> and had thrown Himself down and asked to die for His sake.
> Bahá’u’lláh addressed Him:
> “O Thou Who art the apple of Mine eye!”2
> and wrote:
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, pp. 242, 245
> 2   Bahá’u’lláh quoted in Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh,
> p. 135.
> 
> “We have made Thee a shelter for all mankind, a shield unto all
> who are in heaven and on earth, a stronghold for whosoever
> hath believed in God, the Incomparable, the All-Knowing.”1
> And once when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was on a visit to Beirut, Bahá’u’lláh
> in ‘Akká, said of His departure:
> “Sorrow, thereby, hath enveloped this Prison-city, whilst
> another land rejoiceth. … Blessed, doubly blessed, is the
> ground which His footsteps have trodden, the eye that hath
> been cheered by the beauty of His countenance, the ear that
> hath been honoured by hearkening to His call, the heart that
> hath tasted the sweetness of His love, the breast that hath
> dilated through His remembrance, the pen that hath voiced His
> praise, the scroll that hath borne the testimony of His
> writings.”2
> He was the beautiful, the brilliant, the adoring eldest Son to
> Whom Bahá’u’lláh, in His Will, entrusted His Faith; Whom He
> singled out for honours and blessings on account of His sheer merit—
> and Whose perfections aroused, Shoghi Effendi tells us, an envy as
> deadly as that of Joseph’s brothers, as deep as that in the heart of
> Cain.3
> The Muslims have a holy tradition to the effect that in the latter
> days, the sun will rise in the West. It was ‘Abdu’l-Bahá Who, in the
> black time after His Father left Him, directed His thoughts westward
> and began to focus the light of the Faith on North America. The
> result was that sixty years after the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh, the
> Guardian of
> 
> 1   Bahá’u’lláh quoted in Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh,
> p. 135.
> 2   ibid., p. 136.
> 3   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 246.
> 
> the Cause could draw a map tracing the development of the newlylaunched ten-year Bahá’í crusade for the spiritual conquest of the
> planet; and this map, which shows the directional movements of the
> crusade, features great rays radiating out across the world from
> North America. For a remarkable thing had taken place; there had
> been a swing outward from Persia, where the light of God first struck,
> and (to borrow from Fitzgerald’s phrase) a noose of light had caught
> the towers of the West; a mysterious agency had linked Chicago and
> Shíráz.
> “The establishment of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh in the Western
> Hemisphere”
> was, the Guardian writes,
> “the most outstanding achievement that will forever be
> associated with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry ….”1
> The Báb and Bahá’u’lláh had been Prisoners.
> “For the first time since the inception of the Faith, sixty–six
> years previously, its Head and supreme Representative burst
> asunder the shackles ….”2
> the Guardian tells us, saying too that the Master’s three years of
> travel (to Egypt, Europe and America)
> “mark … a turning point of the utmost significance in the history
> of the century.”3
> “‘Abdu’l-Bahá was at this time broken in health. He suffered
> from several maladies brought on by the strains and stresses of a
> tragic life spent almost wholly in exile and imprisonment. He
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 279.
> 2   ibid., p. 280.
> 3   ibid., pp. 279–80.
> 
> was on the threshold of three-score years and ten. Yet as soon
> as He was released from His forty-year long captivity, as soon as
> He had laid the Báb’s body in a safe and permanent restingplace, and His mind was free of grievous anxieties connected
> with the execution of that priceless Trust, He arose with sublime
> courage, confidence and resolution to consecrate what little
> strength remained to Him, in the evening of His life, to a service
> of such heroic proportions that no parallel to it is to be found in
> the annals of the first Bahá’í century.”1 “Inflexibly resolved to
> undertake this arduous voyage, at whatever cost to His strength,
> at whatever risk to His life, He, quietly and without any previous
> warning, on a September afternoon, of the year 1910, … sailed
> for Egypt …”2
> The first time that the Master set out for the West, He had to
> abandon the voyage. He had remained about a month in Port Said,
> “and from thence embarked with the intention of proceeding to
> Europe, only to discover that the condition of His health necessitated
> His landing again at Alexandria and postponing His voyage.”3 And
> these Western journeys “called forth,” the Guardian further says, “the
> last ounce of His ebbing strength ….”4
> Perhaps this is one reason why, when very old and ailing
> believers arise in these days to leave their homes and emigrate for the
> Cause, the Guardian
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 279.
> 2   ibid., p. 280.
> 3   ibid.
> 4   ibid., p. 309.
> 
> encourages their going. Certainly this exodus of young and old from
> their countries is an echo of the travels of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. This mass
> pioneer movement of Bahá’ís, in respect of the distances traversed
> and the complexity of the problems faced, has no precedent in
> history. Thousands of Bahá’í families and individuals have left their
> homes, not for war or pilgrimage or travel, not as fugitives, not as an
> employment or to seek their health or fortune, but for the sole sake of
> spreading Bahá’u’lláh’s Cause around the world. Such journeys
> however arduous, bring a special consolation to those privileged to
> take part in them; the Master compares them to the departures of the
> disciples of Christ … God says in the Qur’án: “And they who have
> fled their country and quitted their homes and suffered in My Cause,
> and have fought and fallen, I will blot out their sins from them, and I
> will bring them into gardens beneath which the streams do flow. …
> They shall abide therein forever.”1
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá travelled through the United States (and to
> Canada) for nine months, sowing a harvest so vast that time will
> never be able to gather it all. In a published letter, He is reported as
> saying of these travels that He had “breathed on the souls and spirits
> of all the Bahá’ís in such a way that had it been upon bone, it would
> have taken on flesh ….”2 And America became the “cradle of the
> Administrative Order”,3 as Persia is the cradle of the Faith; of that
> 
> 1   Qur’án 3:194, 197.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá quoted in Star of the West, 8 September 1912, Vol. III:10,
> p. 16.
> 3   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 329.
> 
> Administrative Order which is “the nucleus [and] very pattern of the
> New World Order”,1 so that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament,
> proclaiming and formally establishing the Administrative Order,2 is
> at the same time the “Charter of a future world civilization”.3
> In Bahá’í history, then, Persia and America are indissolubly
> linked; “the seed of the Divinely-appointed Administration” lay, the
> Guardian writes, “In the blood of the unnumbered martyrs of
> Persia”.4 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá desired “a perfect bond between Persia and
> America ….”5 He told the Orient-Occident Unity Conference in
> Washington:
> “For the Persians there is no government better fitted to
> contribute to the development of their natural resources and
> the helping of their national needs in a reciprocal alliance than
> the United States of America, and for the Americans there
> could be no better industrial outlet and market than … Persia.
> The mineral wealth of Persia is still latent and untouched. It is
> my hope that the great American democracy may be
> instrumental in developing these hidden resources …. May the
> material civilization of America find complete efficacy and
> establishment in Persia, and may the spiritual civilization of
> Persia find acceptance and response in America.”6
> From such a connection, He said, there would be “great harvests
> of results”.7 He prophesied that
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 144.
> 2   ibid., p. 147.
> 3   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 328.
> 4   Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 52.
> 5   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 35.
> 6   ibid.
> 7   ibid., p. 36.
> 
> the time would come when the East and the West would embrace
> “like unto two lovers”.1
> 
> The manuscript of Florence Khánum
> In the days when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was still a prisoner in ‘Akká, a
> young Bahá’í woman, nursing her first baby, left New England with
> husband and child and went on a pilgrimage to see Him. She was the
> first American Bahá’í to marry a Persian, and the Master had written,
> “This is the first conjugal union between East and West.” He had
> named her little son Rah.ím (the youngest pilgrim who had come to
> Him from the Occident), “the first fruits of the spiritual union
> between East and West.” Half a century has now gone by since that
> pilgrimage. The young woman grew old and died, and when her
> papers were opened the manuscript was found of a book that she had
> written, called Wanderers (taking this title from the marriage Tablet
> revealed for her husband and herself by the Master which said:
> “They are wanderers in Thy domain, and enamoured of Thy
> beauty.”) Some sections of this manuscript will be given here; the
> account has only the status of all other pilgrims’ reports, but it helps
> to recapture a time long gone (as human lives are measured), and it
> gives an impression of the Master as seen through Western eyes, and
> focuses attention on this central theme of His ministry: the unity of
> East and West. The writer’s name was Florence Breed. She was
> called Florence Khánum. I knew her very well; she was my mother.
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá section in Bahá’í World Faith, p. 356.
> 
> Fifty years ago the average young American gentlewoman did
> not venture far into the East; and if there, she went gingerly, carefully
> insulated.     Florence begins by describing her first visit to
> Constantinople, where her own mother had taken her on what was
> known as the Grand Tour. She then proceeds to contrast this with
> her second visit to the Turkish capital, on her way to ‘Akká as the
> wife of a Persian Bahá’í:
> “On my first visit to Constantinople as a girl of seventeen with
> my dear mother and younger sister Alice, when we visited the
> Stamboul bazaars Mother always cautioned us upon entering
> the dim, arched interior, ‘Turn right, to the European bazaar,
> where we shall be perfectly safe ….’ I remember how we walked
> demurely along following our dear mother—and how the
> Eastern merchants seeing apparently ‘rich Americans’ strolling
> by, rushed out of their ‘boutiques’ with articles in their hands,
> vociferously imploring us to buy—following us with pleadings,
> until our mother’s final decisive ‘No’s!’ dismissed them in the
> end.
> “So when Khán1 said, ‘Today we lunch with the jewellers to the
> Sultan, they are Bahá’ís,’ and I asked, ‘Where is the luncheon?’
> and he replied, ‘We go into the bazaars to their office’, I recalled
> the earlier visit in my girlhood. Arriving at the
> 
> 1    ‘Alí-Kuli Khán, Nabíl-i-Dawlih, Florence’s husband, the author’s father.
> Qulí (Kuli) means “son of”.
> 
> bazaars we entered, and instead of turning right towards the
> prosperous-looking, better-lighted, European section, we turned
> left and walked into the dimmer less—frequented ‘Oriental’
> bazaar. Following my husband (who was wearing a Turkish fez
> to facilitate our movements in Turkey), and with some
> trepidation of heart, I recalled my dear mother’s warning, which
> hardly allowed our glances to look at the Oriental section, and
> here was her daughter not only actually penetrating those dim
> corridors, going towards an unknown, Eastern goal, but going as
> the wife of an Easterner!
> “‘Kismet!’ I murmured to myself. ‘Destiny! What am I
> adventuring into? However, so far, so good. And it is
> undeniable I dearly love and trust my husband. So here goes!’
> On we went, hardly meeting anyone, and turned into a vast open
> courtyard, also nearly deserted. My husband, with our son, led
> the way to some steps, going down into a kind of cellar. Here
> came forward the Bahá’í brothers hospitably greeting all three of
> us as warmly as long lost, old, dear friends. We were at once
> comfortably installed in the pleasant, underground room, and a
> servant appeared, bearing goblets of delectable, cool Persian
> sherbet, most welcome after our warm walk. … In such
> kindness, and perfect atmosphere of loving brotherhood, all
> strangeness disappeared. I felt completely safe. … ‘What a
> 
> Faith!’ I thought, ‘that can unite East and West! That can make
> an American feel at one, in spiritual sympathy, with an
> Easterner. Indeed, the Bahá’í Revelation is a key to unlock
> hearts, to unite in fellowship and understanding the people of
> the world, whatever the race, whatever the spiritual
> background!’
> “So, little by little, I was learning to modify my ignorances and
> prejudices of the West—that burden of inheritance that the
> people of Europe and America are born into, without realizing it,
> ever since the Middle Ages!”
> 
> The Master in ‘Akká
> It should not be surprising that the offer, with kindness, of a
> cool drink should help to change a Westerner’s long-established
> attitudes. World peace will be founded on small actions within the
> reach of everyone, and given such actions no charts or scholarly
> treatises to prove the oneness of mankind, or to solve the economic
> question, are necessary.       “Tender, loving care,” as Western
> psychologists now say, is the only prerequisite. Those who think that
> by love for humanity is meant an academic abstraction, who “love
> humanity” but not one human being, have never studied ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá. The love He teaches is nothing else than the service embodied
> in His name, ‘Abd—Servant. “He who serves (mankind) has already
> entered the Kingdom and is seated at the right hand of his Lord.”1
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 186.
> 
> He says that Bahá’ís must be as kind to people as God is:
> “We must consider none bad, none worthy of detestation, no
> one as an enemy. …
> “Bahá’u’lláh has clearly said … that if you have an enemy,
> consider him not as an enemy. Do not simply be long-suffering;
> nay, rather, love him. Your treatment of him should be that which
> is becoming to lovers. Do not even say that he is your enemy. Do
> not see any enemies. Though he be your murderer, see no enemy.
> Look upon him with the eye of friendship. Be mindful that you do
> not consider him as an enemy and simply tolerate him, for that is
> but stratagem and hypocrisy. To consider a man your enemy and
> love him is hypocrisy.”1
> The present writer, after many years of thinking over this
> statement (which in Christianity has remained only a counsel of
> perfection for twenty centuries) has come to understand it in terms
> of a statement attributed in the East to Plato: that Heaven is a bow,
> and events are arrows; man is the target, and God the archer. … The
> event is, it would seem then, to be loved, because it comes from the
> Archer. In any case, if mankind will relinquish its hatreds and
> deliberately substitute love—the love which results from the
> performance of loving acts—’Abdu’l-Bahá offers this spectacular
> promise:
> “If you attain to such a capacity of love and unity, the Blessed
> Perfection will shower infinite graces of the spiritual Kingdom
> upon you, guide, protect and
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 267.
> 
> preserve you under the shadow of His Word, increase your
> happiness in this world and uphold you through all difficulties.”1
> Non-personal only in the sense of being impartially distributed,
> the Master’s was a warm mother-love; each one felt that ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá’s love was especially for him, just as each one appropriates his
> own place in the sun. This is how Florence Khánum describes the
> first time she saw the Master:
> “With what a thrill of the spirit, with what gratified joy of the
> heart I silently mounted that long flight of stone steps—nearer
> and nearer to the Heaven of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s presence! At the
> top, we were led to the right, through a little stone vestibule into
> a long and bare living-room, with many windows overlooking
> the sunshine and colour of the blue Mediterranean. A divan,
> Eastern fashion, ran along all the walls.
> “The Master stood by the window facing our entrance. Khán in
> extreme emotion advanced ahead to the Master, Whose loving
> arms encircled him as they embraced, and Whose
> strengthening, cheery, encouraging voice cried out in great
> heartiness, ‘Marh.abá! Marh.abá! Welcome! Well done! Well
> done!’ Khán, half weeping, and trembling in excessive love and
> joy, overcome with the Master’s welcome and praise, brought
> Rah.ím and me forward. ‘My wife and son!’ Again came the
> glorious words, ‘Marh.abá’!
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 24.
> 
> Marh.abá! You went one to America, Khán, and you return
> three!’”
> Many people were overcome in the Master’s presence, because
> the impact of His perfection was too hard to bear. As the days
> passed, Florence was able more calmly to contemplate this Being,
> Whom she calls the Archetypal Man of the great Bahá’í Era”. At His
> table, where she, the only woman present, sat beside Him at
> luncheon and dinner almost without exception (once He entertained
> official guests in a big white tent, and again served two hundred
> people on His birthday, so that the regular meals were interrupted)
> during her thirty–three days’ visit, she watched and listened; when
> He addressed her, Alí-Kuli Khán translated in a low voice.
> “As I gazed at Him, I became aware of a kind of spiritual vision.
> He seemed to be deeply breathing the airs of an upper ether, to
> be inhaling the Breath of Life from a source and an atmosphere
> far, far above the ken of men and angels. From a world higher
> than our world and superior to it … [He is] in our world, in a
> lower, an alien element, but draws His breath, life and
> sustenance from the Higher Spheres. … In studying ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá in the first day or two (for after I had discerned His
> perfections there was no more attempt to ‘study’ Him) I could
> only gaze at Him in shyness and in awe. … ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wore a
> snowy-white scarf wound about a café-au-lait soft, tassel-less
> kind of fez. Over His white,
> 
> long over-dress, He wore a thin ‘abá, sometimes a ‘dust-’abá,’ of
> black or brown thin material, oftener one of café-au-lait colour.
> In the snowy scarf about His waist, I saw a pink rose
> occasionally tucked, and on a devastatingly hot midsummer
> noon, I was surprised to see the rose as fresh and dewy-looking
> as if it were the dawn.
> “At times, the prized, first odour of the East emanates from
> Him—attar of roses—while there is ever a spiritual radiance and
> fragrance which one perceives spiritually and which uplifts one’s
> inner being and … brings one into the ‘garden of Abhá’.”
> She tells of walking through the soft Eastern night, going across
> the courtyard under the big white stars, on her way to the evening
> meal, and saying to herself,
> “‘I am on my way … and who am I? to take dinner with the
> Divine Host of the world!’ … Upon entering the hall, we stood
> about awaiting the arrival of the Master. Never was this ‘Rose of
> the World’ alone! Always accompanying Him were a number of
> faithful Eastern Bahá’í men, in the dress of their respective
> countries—wearing the red fez, the black kuláh, the white
> turban.”
> She tells of seeing the Master in the bright moonlight. He
> “raised His beloved face, and gazed upward lingeringly at the
> glory of the full moon. I can
> 
> never forget those moments of beauty—the moon, a masterpiece
> of God, shining in full glory in the high heavens, being
> admiringly looked upon by a, masterpiece of God on earth:
> ‘Abdu’l-Baha!”
> One night she had a strange, subjective experience:
> “One evening, after sunset, Khán came in great enthusiasm and
> excitement to our room. ‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘that
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said He would answer all the letters we brought to
> Him from America before we left?’ ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Then come
> quickly. It is too wonderful! The Master is pacing to and fro, in
> His sitting room—I cannot see the secretary—and He is replying
> to those letters, as if He had known the inmost secret of the
> writers’ hearts, from the cradle! Yet He has never met nor seen
> one of them. You can see Him from the corridor beyond the
> little room, each time He passes the open doorway!’ So, Rah.ím
> being peacefully asleep, I returned with Khán, to his post,
> outside the doorway which led to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s long room with
> its many windows looking over the Bay of ‘Akká to the
> Mediterranean beyond. I heard the dear Master’s beautiful
> voice, and then saw Him, as He strode by the doorway of His
> lighted room. We were in the dark, looking through the small
> darkened antechamber. I recalled how, never, at the daily
> luncheon table,
> 
> and never at the late evening dinner, and never at any time, had
> I satisfied my longing to gaze more fully upon the Master’s
> beautiful, noble and spiritual face. I used to glance admiringly
> at the snowy, scarf-enfolded headdress, and at the beautiful,
> silver-white hair falling softly to the shoulders; and at the lofty
> arch of His forehead, at the expression of His eyes, indescribable
> in human language; now they seemed blue—and now brown—
> and again partly of each colour, or hazel—but always illumined,
> loving and understanding; sometimes raised in holy reverence,
> in silent prayer, sometimes gently smiling—but always kingly
> and supreme. … Then, I could never get my fill, so to speak, of
> the divine beauty of the lower part of His face. It expressed only
> a perfect sweetness, a heavenly, Divine perfection of
> spirituality—a gentleness—a holy patience—no sign whatsoever
> in lines or expression of the lower traits of human nature, only a
> Divine perfectness. It was astounding. I had never seen a face
> like it. Selfless. The stamp of suffering upon it; alas for
> humanity, which crucifies God’s messengers!1
> “So, I thought exultingly, ‘Now if only the Master would pause a
> moment in His doorway, as I am here in the dark, I could look
> upon His
> 
> 1   Florence Khánum is not implying that the Master was a Prophet. “…
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is not a Manifestation of God … though the successor of
> His Father, He does not occupy a cognate station ….” (Shoghi Effendi:
> The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 132) M.G.
> 
> face to my heart’s content, and no one would notice me!’
> “Instantly, the Master stopped in His doorway. Silhouetted
> against the light, I clearly saw Him in His beauty, and I began a
> sort of’ ‘visual devouring’ of that wonderful face! I looked, and I
> looked, and I looked. After a few moments, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> withdrew, and resumed His pacing to and fro and revelation of
> the Tablets.
> “After watching for a while, half timorously the thought arose in
> my heart, ‘Oh! if only He would stop once more in the doorway!’
> “At once the Master stood in the doorway, silent, and seemed to
> be looking upwards towards the stars. ‘Now, I will look!’ I
> thought in breathless joy.
> “This time as I gazed silently upon that matchless face, a golden
> light shone forth from His entire figure. This light intensified,
> and intensified, as I looked, and looked, until I began almost to
> be afraid.
> “I said to myself, ‘However bright it grows I am going to keep
> my eyes open! What a wonderful sight! What a miraculous
> opportunity!’
> “The outline of light grew more and more intense, yet I looked,
> and I looked, until it seemed to me, I must fall upon my knees.
> Just as it seemed I could no longer bear such a vision, the
> Master withdrew.
> 
> “‘Take me to my room,’ I said weakly, much overcome, to Khán.
> ‘I have just seen the transfiguration upon the Mount!’
> “Later I asked Khán if he had seen anything unusual. ‘No,’ he
> replied. ‘I noticed that the Master stopped twice in the doorway,
> and that He looked very beautiful. That was all.’
> “Then he advised me that whatever I saw, of the miraculous, at
> ‘Akká, I had best not teach it in America. ‘A Bahá’í is not
> supposed to teach by relating the miraculous, if it come within
> his experience,’ he said. ‘Because his listener has not seen it,
> and much as he may believe the person who has, it may convey
> nothing to him.’”
> This scene of the Tablets reminds us that almost without
> interruption, ever since 1844, thousands of Tablets, and in our times
> of the Guardian’s letters, have been showered on the world. By the
> mass of mankind unnoticed as the air, many of these are general
> epistles to society, while others are highly personal, so that many an
> individual life has been founded on one or another of them. In this
> connection the writer cannot help remembering how a well-known
> Christian evangelist, current model, answers his mail. According to
> the magazine Match (8 June 1957), this man receives from ten to
> fifteen thousand letters a week. In a locked room, seven young
> women, working at top speed, open these letters, quantities of which
> contain money gifts, and all of which ask for advice. The letters are
> then
> 
> read by eight secretaries, who, using different-coloured pencils,
> underline the key words. The words thus underlined determine the
> answer which the seeker of advice is going to receive, since, in the
> majority of cases, the answer is composed by a robot typewriter in
> which has been placed a key corresponding to one of some forty
> principal letter-topics: unbelieving husband, segregation, atomic
> tests, recent conversion, baptism, military service, etc. It is certainly
> appropriate that in our age of mechanization human beings should,
> in their desperate hours, turn for solace to a machine.
> 
> The attainable perfections of man
> For our present purposes we shall define ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s
> message as the affirmation of the perfectibility of man. “The greatest
> bestowal of God to man,” He says, “is the capacity to attain human
> virtues.”1 And elsewhere: “The purpose of the creation of man is the
> attainment of the supreme virtues of humanity through descent of
> the heavenly bestowals.”2 The goal He sets is the “happiness of
> humanity” to be achieved by man’s accumulated perfections, as these
> are realized by man’s own unceasing effort. In His farewell to a
> group of Bahá’ís He told them:
> “This is our last evening and I ask God that His confirmations
> may encompass you … May you all be united, may you be
> agreed, may you serve the solidarity of mankind. May you be
> well-wishers of all humanity. May you be assistants of every
> poor
> 
> 1    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 378.
> 2    ibid., p. 4.
> 
> one. May you be nurses for the sick. May you be sources of
> comfort to the broken in heart. May you be a refuge for the
> wanderer. May you be a source of courage to the affrighted
> one. Thus, through the favour and assistance of God may the
> standard of the happiness of humanity be held aloft in the
> centre of the world ….”1
> When facing the mystery of any human being, even of this
> “Mystery of God”, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, one key to his nature is the words or
> expressions that he often repeats. With the Master, one finds, over
> and over, such words as “Arise, go forth, strive; advance, become,
> attain.” Choosing at random the first thirty–five pages of the book
> The Promulgation of Universal Peace (‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s talks during
> His nine-months’-long journeys in North America) one finds that,
> while it is not possible to make an exact, objective count, ideas
> connected with these words and their synonyms occur at least one
> hundred and twenty–five times. Arise, go forth, strive; advance,
> become, attain.
> Humanity today has lived through two world wars. Adults living
> today have been forced to look on scenes of horror that they can
> never forget. Their hearts have been disfigured by grief. Avidly
> enjoying a few years of respite now, many of them are pursuing the
> things of this world as relentlessly as those unscathed materialists in
> the so-far-untouched sections of the globe. When approached by a
> Bahá’í their comment is: “You can’t change human
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 425.
> 
> nature.” An astronomical number of times, when you talk to the
> average man, you get some such answer as: “I’m only the little
> fellow. It’s the big fellows who make the wars. Nothing I do can
> change anything.” They answer in this way first out of despair, then
> as a convenient rationalization of their chosen way of life, but
> fundamentally because they do not know what man is.
> This modern phenomenon of despair, which has made suicide
> so common in our times that every high bridge and building must
> have some structural provision against it, is in Islamic prophecy one
> of the signs of the Day of Resurrection; Muhammad foretold that on
> that Day a man, passing by another’s grave, would say: “Would to
> God I were in his place” (Sale, Preliminary Discourse).
> Against this universal phenomenon of despair, speaks out
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. The Manifestations of God, He says, are sent
> “… to uplift the human race from the abyss of despair ….”1
> and again, “They liberate man from the darkness of the world of
> nature, deliver him from despair ….”2 One of His prayers says:
> “In the darksome night of despair, my eye turneth expectant
> and full of hope to the morn of Thy boundless favour and at the
> hour of dawn my drooping soul is refreshed and strengthened
> in remembrance of Thy beauty and perfection. He whom the
> grace of Thy mercy aideth, though he be but a drop, shall
> become
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 405.
> 2   ibid., p. 466.
> 
> the boundless ocean, and the merest atom which the
> outpouring of Thy loving-kindness assisteth, shall shine even as
> the radiant star.”1
> This theme is also stated in the only recording we have of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s voice.2
> Modern man belittles himself and fritters away his days because
> he does not know what he is. To awaken him before his moment in
> the light is gone forever, the Master echoes around the world His
> Father’s statement on the power of one righteous act:
> “One righteous act is endowed with a potency that can so
> elevate the dust as to cause it to pass beyond the heaven of
> heavens. It can tear every bond asunder, and hath the power
> to restore the force that hath spent itself and vanished ….”3
> He urges man to read The Hidden Words, where Bahá’u’lláh
> says to humanity:
> “Thou art even as a finely tempered sword concealed in the
> darkness of its sheath and its value hidden from the artificer’s
> knowledge. Wherefore come forth from the sheath of self and
> desire that thy worth may be made resplendent and manifest
> unto all the world.”4
> To prove man’s perfectibility, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains what man
> is, and where man stands in relation to man, to the world, and to the
> Lord of the world. Man, He says, is the world-tree’s fruit;5 man is to
> the world what the spirit is to the body,6 what the head is to the
> human form;
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Bahá’í Prayers (USA), p. 31.
> 2   Note. Since this [book] was written, a double-sided recording of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s voice has come to light, one side in Persian, the other in
> Turkish. Mr Rustom Sabit informs us that through the good offices of
> his father, this recording was made by Pathé of Paris. Copies are
> preserved in the Bahá’í International Archives at Haifa.
> 3   Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 287.
> 4   Bahá’u’lláh: The Hidden Words, Persian No. 72.
> 5   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 201.
> 6   ibid.
> 
> “… we imagine a time when man belonged to the animal world,
> or when he was merely an animal, we shall find that existence
> would have been imperfect—that is to say, there would have
> been no man, and this chief member, which in the body of the
> world is like the brain and mind in man, would have been
> missing. … for man is the greatest member of this world, and if
> the body was without this chief member, surely it would be
> imperfect.”1
> He is the vital life of the world, and present-day man in his
> foredoomed attempts to compete with the animal, to burrow down
> and hide in the animal kingdom, is depriving this world of its
> quintessential life.
> “Man is the life of the world, and the life of man is the spirit.
> The happiness of the world depends upon man, and the
> happiness of man is dependent upon the spirit.”2
> As He glances around the world, assigning to each phenomenon
> its rank and place, the Master has much to say of the five divisions of
> the spirit:
> “The greatest power in the realm and range of human existence
> is spirit—the divine breath which animates and pervades all
> things. It is manifested throughout creation in different
> degrees or kingdoms. In the vegetable kingdom it is the …
> power of growth …. In this degree of its manifestation[,] spirit
> is unconscious of the powers which qualify the kingdom of the
> animal. The distinctive virtue or plus of the animal is sense
> perception; it sees, hears, smells, tastes and feels but is
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 177.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 240.
> 
> incapable, in turn, of conscious ideation or reflection which
> characterizes and differentiates the human kingdom. … From
> the visible it cannot draw conclusions regarding the invisible …
> this power is a distinctive attribute of the human spirit …. The
> animal spirit cannot penetrate and discover the mysteries of
> things. It is a captive of the senses. No amount of teaching, for
> instance, would enable it to grasp the fact that the sun is
> stationary, and the earth moves around it. Likewise, the
> human spirit has its limitations. It cannot comprehend the
> phenomena of the Kingdom transcending the human station,
> for it is a captive of powers and life forces which have their
> operation upon its own plane of existence, and it cannot go
> beyond that boundary.
> “There is, however, another Spirit, which may be termed the
> Divine, to which Jesus Christ refers when He declares that man
> must be born of its quickening and baptized with its living fire.
> Souls deprived of that Spirit are accounted as dead, though
> they are possessed of the human spirit. Jesus Christ … means
> that souls, though alive in the human kingdom, are
> nevertheless dead if devoid of this particular spirit of divine
> quickening. They have not partaken of the divine life of the
> higher Kingdom ….”1
> This last, the “spirit of faith”, is spirit in the fourth degree2; it is
> the light reflected back from the believing heart. And spirit in the
> fifth degree is the Holy Spirit,
> “… the luminous rays which emanate from the Manifestations
> …”3
> 
> 1    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 58.
> 2    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 144; also Persian text.
> 3    ibid., p. 108.
> 
> Spirit in the fourth degree is
> “the power which makes the earthly man heavenly, and the
> imperfect man perfect. It makes the impure to be pure, the
> silent eloquent; … it makes the ignorant wise.”1
> Without the fifth category of spirit, the Holy Spirit which is
> “… the mediator of the Holy Light from the Sun of Reality …”2,
> man would be only as he was, let us say, when formed of dust, before
> God had breathed into him the breath of life; for the spirit of faith is
> brought to mankind by the Prophets of God;
> “… it comes from the breath of the Holy Spirit, and by the
> divine power it becomes the cause of eternal life.”3
> To show what man is, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá often contrasts him with the
> animal, with that phenomenon which manifests spirit only in the first
> and second degrees.
> “Verily God has created the animal in the image and likeness of
> man, for though man outwardly is human, yet in nature he
> possesses animal tendencies.”4 “Man is like the animal in
> physical structure but otherwise immeasurably separated and
> superior.”5
> He does not disdain animals, He loves them, for Bahá’u’lláh has
> established not only the rights of man, but the rights of animals as
> well. He says that man can learn from animals, and describes such
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, pp. 144–5.
> 2   ibid., p. 145.
> 3   ibid., p. 144.
> 4   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 263.
> 5   ibid., p. 67.
> 
> animal behaviour as man could emulate:
> “Among the animals racial prejudice does not exist. Consider
> the doves; there is no distinction as to whether it is an oriental
> or an occidental dove.”1 “Throughout the kingdoms of living
> organisms there is sex differentiation in function, but no
> preference or distinction is made in favour of either male or
> female. In the animal kingdom individual sex exists, but rights
> are equal and without distinction.”2
> He points out that in some ways the animal is superior to man:
> “… the animal is often superior to man in sense perception.”3 It is
> simply that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá does not wish man to be an animal; that he
> who is free should enslave himself in the five senses, renouncing his
> own peculiar powers—like a bird walking or an orator making
> meaningless sounds.
> Abdu’l-Bahá says that
> “Manifestly the animal has been created for the life of this
> world.”4
> Animals can easily be happy here, not man:
> “Consider how difficult for man is the attainment of pleasures
> and happiness in this mortal world. How easy it is for the
> animal. … The animal is nobler, more serene and confident,
> because each hour is free from anxiety … but man, restless and
> dissatisfied, runs from morn till eve ….
> “His life is intended to be a life of spiritual enjoyment to which
> the animal can never attain.”5
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 299.
> 2   ibid., pp. 280–1.
> 3   ibid., p. 241.
> 4   ibid., p. 303.
> 5   ibid., pp. 184–5.
> 
> Never, perhaps, has material civilization reached a higher point
> and been more widespread than in the United States today, and yet
> Americans are spending annually billions of dollars for alcohol,
> psychiatrists and happiness pills to enable them to bear it.
> The Master said:
> “In cities like New York the people are submerged in the sea of
> materialism. Their sensibilities are attuned to material forces,
> their perceptions purely physical.        The animal energies
> predominate in their activities; all their thoughts are directed
> to material things; day and night they are devoted to the
> attractions of this world, without aspiration beyond the life
> that is vanishing and mortal. In schools and temples of
> learning[,] knowledge of the sciences acquired is based upon
> material observations only; there is no realization of divinity in
> their methods and conclusions—all have reference to the world
> of matter. They are not interested in attaining knowledge of
> the mysteries of God or understanding the secrets of the
> heavenly kingdom; what they acquire is based altogether upon
> visible and tangible evidences … they … are utterly out of touch
> with God ….”1
> He often laughingly said that the donkey and cow were far
> superior to the materialistic philosophers of the day:
> “All the animals are materialists. … They have no knowledge of
> the divine Prophets and Holy Books—mere captives of nature
> and the sense world. In reality
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 261–2.
> 
> they are like the great philosophers of this day who are not in
> touch with God and the Holy Spirit—deniers of the Prophets,
> ignorant of spiritual susceptibilities, deprived of the heavenly
> bounties and without belief in the supernatural power. The
> animal lives this kind of life blissfully and untroubled, whereas
> the material philosophers labour and study for ten or twenty
> years in schools and colleges, denying God, the Holy Spirit and
> divine inspirations. The animal is even a greater philosopher,
> for it attains the ability to do this without labour and study.
> For instance, the cow denies God and the Holy Spirit, knows
> nothing of divine inspirations, heavenly bounties or spiritual
> emotions and is a stranger to the world of hearts. Like the
> philosophers, the cow is a captive of nature and knows nothing
> beyond the range of the senses. The philosophers, however,
> glory in this, saying, ‘We are not captives of superstitions; we
> have implicit faith in the impressions of the senses and know
> nothing beyond the realm of nature, which contains and covers
> everything.’ But the cow, without study or proficiency in the
> sciences, modestly and quietly views life from the same
> standpoint ….
> “This is not the glory of man. The glory of man is in the
> knowledge of God, spiritual susceptibilities, attainment to
> transcendent powers and the bounties of the Holy Spirit. … Is
> the intellect of these people greater than the intellect of Christ?
> … He attached little importance to this material life, denying
> Himself rest and composure, accepting trials and voluntarily
> suffering vicissitudes because He was endowed with
> 
> spiritual susceptibilities and the power of the Holy Spirit.”1
> The Qur’án says:
> “Thou gavest them and their fathers their fill of good things, till
> they forgat the remembrance of Thee, and became a lost
> people.”2
> And again:
> “And be ye not like those who forget God, and whom He hath
> therefore caused to forget their own selves.”3
> The Master teaches that only the Manifestations of God, the
> focal centres of the Holy Spirit, can recall man to himself:
> “The holy Manifestations of God come into the world to dispel
> the darkness of the animal, or physical, nature of man, to
> purify him from his imperfections in order that his heavenly
> and spiritual nature may become quickened, his divine
> qualities awakened … and [that] all the virtues of the world of
> humanity latent within him may come to life. These holy
> Manifestations of God are the Educators and Trainers of the
> world of existence, the Teachers …. Men are ignorant; the
> Manifestations of God make them wise. They are animalistic;
> the Manifestations make them human. They are savage and
> cruel; the Manifestations lead them into kingdoms of light and
> love. They are unjust; the Manifestations cause them to
> become just. Man is selfish; They sever him from self and
> desire. Man is haughty; They make him meek, humble and
> friendly. He is earthly; They make him heavenly.
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 311–2.
> 2   Qur’án 25:18.
> 3   ibid., 59:19.
> 
> Men are material; the Manifestations transform them into
> divine semblance.       They are immature children; the
> Manifestations develop them into maturity. Man is poor; They
> endow him with wealth. Man is base, treacherous and mean;
> the Manifestations of God uplift him into dignity, nobility and
> loftiness.”1
> “… man,” further says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “is a reality which stands
> between light and darkness.”2 He has a material body and a
> “heavenly body”3 or inner reality.
> “So to speak, the reality of man is clad in the outer garment of
> the animal, the habiliments of the world of nature, the world of
> darkness, imperfections and unlimited baseness.
> “On the other hand, we find in him justice, sincerity,
> faithfulness, knowledge, wisdom, illumination, mercy and pity,
> coupled with intellect, comprehension, the power to grasp the
> realities of things ….”4
> Man attains to all good things through his “second birth”, that
> is, through the orientation of his soul toward the Manifestation of
> God, and
> “Were it not for the coming of these holy Manifestations of God,
> all mankind would be found on the plane of the animal.”5
> To conclude these few allusions to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s infinite
> teachings on man, there is this:
> “The station of man is great, very great. God has created man
> after His own image and likeness. He has endowed him with a
> mighty power which is capable of
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 465–6.
> 2   ibid., p. 465.
> 3   ibid., p. 464.
> 4   ibid., p. 465.
> 5   ibid., p. 466.
> 
> discovering the mysteries of phenomena. … As he possesses
> sense endowment in common with the animals, it is evident
> that he is distinguished above them by his conscious power of
> penetrating abstract realities. He acquires divine wisdom; he
> searches out the mysteries of creation; he witnesses the
> radiance of omnipotence; he attains the second birth—that is to
> say, he is born out of the material world just as he is born of the
> mother; he attains to everlasting life; he draws nearer to God;
> his heart is replete with the love of God. This is the foundation
> of the world of humanity; this is the image and likeness of God;
> this is the reality of man; otherwise he is an animal.”1
> And lastly,
> “The reflection of the divine perfections appears in the reality of
> man …. If man did not exist, the universe would be without
> result, for the object of existence is the appearance of the
> perfections of God.”2
> 
> How to kill prejudice
> In spite of His own immaculate perfection, the Master never
> turned away from the despised and the rejected, but rather
> transformed them with His regal touch. Florence Khánum tells in
> her book of her reaction to some of the people she saw in her travels.
> (It must be remembered that she was Boston-educated, which means
> that she took a rather conservative view of the rest of mankind). She
> writes of a little servant:
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 262–3.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 196.
> 
> “I … discovered to my amazement and shock, that the
> expression of her eyes was more wild and uncivilized than the
> eyes of our domestic animals in America! Such as the eyes of
> our horses, our dogs, our cats, which usually give back a
> reflection of our love and affection, while this young girl’s eyes
> did not!”
> She grew somewhat afraid of the local people, and then one day
> she saw a native woman coming along the roofed-over stone
> corridor, and she wanted to run away. Just then ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> approached with one of His daughters:
> “I saw the woman pause, bow, and greet the Master. He replied
> graciously, and spoke sweetly, and as He passed, pressed a coin
> into her hand. She burst forth into phrases of evident joy and
> gratitude, and went away. I lingered, to ask the Master’s
> daughter: ‘ What did she say? Who is she?’
> “‘She is the daughter of a desert chief, and she has suffered very
> much.’
> “‘Is she a Bahá’í?’
> “‘No; but she loves the Master very much. He has been kind to
> her.’
> “‘What did she say to Him?’
> “‘She said she would pray for Him.’
> “‘And what did the Master say?’
> “‘He thanked her.’
> “In my American-trained mind, at first I thought:           ‘How
> presumptuous for that dirty-
> 
> looking, half-savage-looking woman to tell the Master she would
> pray for Him!’ And then, as the sweetness and humility of His
> reply astonished me, another experience of His spiritual
> grandeur overwhelmed my soul.”
> Abdu’l-Bahá was to say:
> “… there is need of a superior power to overcome human
> prejudices; a power which nothing in the world of mankind
> can withstand and which will overshadow the effect of all other
> forces at work in human conditions. That irresistible power is
> the love of God.”1
> 
> Man, the preoccupied
> The police, as this is being written, have, according to radio
> reports, admitted that they are unable to stop the teenage gang
> killings now taking place in the vast slums of New York City, where a
> policeman’s son and an old cripple are among those murdered by
> teenagers this week, and another recent victim was a fifteen-year-old
> boy lamed by poliomyelitis. We would feel worse about this hideous
> news, typical of reports from many countries, which show how the
> social fabric is now rotting away, if we and our fellow-believers had
> not spent almost our entire lives trying to tell of the advent of the
> Manifestation; if five generations of Bahá’ís had not done so; if the
> Báb’s young body had not been smashed by seven hundred Persian
> bullets; if, to diffuse this message, 20,000 martyrs had not died; if
> Bahá’u’lláh
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 68.
> 
> had not. spent His entire adulthood and age as a Prisoner, chained,
> bastinadoed, banished; if ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had not sacrificed every
> ounce of His strength, His whole life long, to this Cause; if the first
> Guardian had not given to it all the days of his life.
> We have tried, each in his degree, and the best way we knew, to
> deliver this message for the regeneration of mankind. And every day
> we have heard from the world (when it did not attack us and drive us
> out) the same preoccupied, polite response:
> “I must go to my church (or mosque, or synagogue)—I have my
> own private religion: to do good—Sorry, no time now—Religion
> is superstition—I know better than Jesus—No one can be saved
> except in my religion—Foreigners are no good—Why are there
> so few of you?—You can’t change human nature—Your teachings
> are too good to be true.”
> “For a whole century,” the Guardian writes, “God has respited
> mankind, that it might acknowledge the Founder of such a
> Revelation, espouse His Cause, proclaim His greatness, and establish
> His Order.”1
> In the same work, The Promised Day is Come, Shoghi Effendi
> quotes Bahá’u’lláh’s dire prophecy:
> “The time for the destruction of the world and its people hath
> arrived.” “The hour is approaching when the most great
> convulsion will have appeared.”2
> “After Doom, what?” asked an American friend.
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: The Promised Day is Come, p. 6.
> 2   ibid., p. 3.
> 
> After God has inflicted His great wound, He will heal it, and
> then the restoring presence of the Master’s spirit will be felt around
> the world.
> 
> The development of love
> “Let not a man glory in this, that he can kill his fellow
> creatures;” says the Master, “nay, rather, let him glory in this, that
> he can love them.”1 His life was one long expression of love. In
> America He said:
> “I have come here to visit you. With the greatest longing I have
> wished to see you. Realizing it was only with great difficulty
> that you could come to me and that very few could make the
> trip, I decided to come to you …. Praise be to God! I am here,
> and I am looking into your faces—faces radiant with inner
> beauty, hearts attracted to the Kingdom of Abhá, spirits
> exhilarated through the glad tidings of God. Therefore, I have
> experienced the greatest possible happiness. And surely this
> happiness must be mutual, for the hearts are connected with
> each other and are filled with the same vibration. … If we
> should offer a hundred thousand thanksgivings every moment
> to the threshold of God for this love which has blended the
> Orient and Occident, we would fail to express our gratitude
> sufficiently. If all the powers of earth should seek to bring
> about this love between East and West, they would prove
> incapable. If they wished to establish this unity, it would prove
> impossible. But Bahá’u’lláh has accomplished both … and this
> bond
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 75.
> 
> of unity through love is indissoluble. It shall continue unto time
> everlasting, and day by day its power shall increase. Erelong
> it shall enchain the world, and eventually the hearts of all the
> nations of the world will be brought together by its
> constraining clasp.”1
> And later, at a Feast:
> “Behold how the power of Bahá’u’lláh has brought the East and
> West together. And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is standing, serving you.
> There is neither rod nor blow, whip nor sword; but the power
> of the love of God has accomplished this.”2
> Reading His introductory remarks to audiences, one has the
> feeling that day after day He was addressing a superior order of
> being; and yet they were just people, transformed by His own love:
> “Although I am weary after my long journey, the light of the
> spirit shining in your faces brings me rest and reward.”3
> “Tonight I am very happy for I have come here to meet my
> friends. I consider you my relatives, my companions ….”4 “… I
> ask you to accept ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as your servant.”5
> (This to the poor in New York’s Bowery.)
> “Today I have been speaking from dawn until now, yet because
> of love, fellowship and desire to be with you, I have come here to
> speak again ….”6 A meeting where Negro and white were present
> was “a beautiful bouquet of violets gathered together in varying
> colours, dark and light.”7 To a children’s meeting: “You are all my
> children, my spiritual children. Spiritual children are dearer than
> physical children, for it is possible for physical
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 37.
> 2   ibid., p. 43.
> 3   ibid., p. 4.
> 4   ibid., p. 32.
> 5   ibid., p. 34.
> 6   ibid., p. 46.
> 7   ibid., p. 49.
> 
> children to turn away from the spirit of God …”1
> “Praise be to God! It is with a deep realization of happiness
> that I am present here this evening, for I am looking upon the
> faces of those who are earnest in their search for reality and
> who sincerely long to attain knowledge of truth.”2
> One cannot help contrasting the way a current Protestant
> evangelist addresses his audiences: “God looks at you … with His
> magnifying glass and sees your faults …. You are guilty! You are
> guilty! You are guilty!”3 Or Martin Luther, as quoted by R. H.
> Bainton in Here I Stand:
> “I understand that this is the week for the church collection and
> many of you do not want to give a thing. You ungrateful people
> should be ashamed of yourselves … now that you are asked to
> give four miserable pennies you are up in arms. … I am not
> saying this for myself. I receive nothing from you. I am the
> prince’s beggar. But I am sorry I ever freed you from the tyrants
> and the papists. You ungrateful beasts, you are not worthy of
> the treasure of the gospel. If you don’t improve, I will stop
> preaching rather than cast pearls before swine.”
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s love has not left the world simply because He is
> now hidden from our eyes. Florence Khánum has this to say, of a
> long-ago moment when she was in His presence, and was thinking of
> those deprived of it not by time but by the curve of the planet: for no
> believer living in those days could think of the world without ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá:
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 92.
> 2   ibid., p. 312.
> 3   Time, 6 May 1957.
> 
> “One noon, my heart overflowing with happiness and gratitude
> for the great good fortune of such an experience in the Holy
> household, I ventured to remark to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: ‘I wish all the
> Bahá is in America could attain to ‘Akká. (In those days the
> expression for a visit to ‘Akká was this: attaining to ‘Akká).
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá paused a moment before answering and then
> replied, ‘I am ever with those who love me.’”
> 
> Love is not enough
> He teaches, however, that society must be founded on justice,
> not love or forgiveness.        Bahá’u’lláh has named our central
> administrative institutions Houses of Justice, and these bodies,
> called at present Spiritual Assemblies, relate particularly to the
> Master; perhaps one reason for this is that they are the most effective
> agency for the changing of human nature, and man’s perfectibility is
> always the Master’s leit motif. Of them He has written:
> “These Spiritual Assemblies are aided by the Spirit of God.
> Their defender is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’. Over them He spreadeth His
> wings.”1
> From the Bahá’ís, functioning in these Assemblies according to
> methods taught by the Master, the whole world will learn how to
> discover, through unity, prayer and consultation, what is justice in
> any given situation, and how to apply it.
> “In this Cause,”
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 80.
> 
> He said, “consultation is of vital importance, but spiritual
> conference and not the mere voicing of personal views is
> intended.”1
> Then He tells of a visit which He made to the Legislature of a
> Western power:
> “… the experience was not impressive.           Parliamentary
> procedure should have for its object the attainment of the light
> of truth upon questions presented and not furnish a battle
> ground for opposition and self-opinion. Antagonism and
> contradiction are unfortunate and always destructive to truth.
> In the parliamentary meeting mentioned, altercation and
> useless quibbling were frequent; … even in one instance a
> physical encounter took place between two members. It was
> not consultation but comedy.”2
> He has never, notwithstanding this statement, taught that
> people during consultation must agree with one another; on the
> contrary, He says, “The shining spark of truth cometh forth only
> after the clash of differing opinions.”3 The word only is important in
> this context. Agreement takes place following consultation, and the
> decision will preferably be unanimous, but in any case the voice of
> the majority must be wholeheartedly accepted. The Master always
> stands for order, not anarchy. He says:
> “The essence of the Bahá’í spirit is that, in order to establish a
> better social order and economic condition,
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 72.
> 2   ibid.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 87.
> 
> there must be allegiance to the laws and principles of
> government.”1
> Criminals, He says, must not go unpunished; society must be
> protected from them; personal vengeance is forbidden to Bahá’ís, but
> “… the community has the right of defence and of self-protection; …
> the community has no hatred nor animosity …”2 for the given
> criminal. He says that if unresisted, Attila “would not have left a
> single living man”3 and that “the continuance of mankind depends
> upon justice and not upon forgiveness.”4 In explaining Christ’s
> words about turning the other cheek (Luke 6:29) He says “it was for
> the purpose of teaching men not to take personal revenge.”5
> and continued,
> “… what Christ meant by forgiveness and pardon is not that,
> when nations attack you, burn your homes, plunder your
> goods, assault your wives, children, and relatives, and violate
> your honour, you should be submissive …. No, the words of
> Christ refer to the conduct of two individuals towards each
> other …. But the communities must protect the rights of man.
> So if someone assaults, injures, oppresses, and wounds me, I
> will offer no resistance, and I will forgive him. But a person
> wishes to assault Siyyid Manshádí6 certainly I will prevent
> him.”7
> We read that when, in 1922, 5,000 Mennonites went down to
> Mexico from Canada in order to continue living according to their
> own interpretation of the Bible, and had purchased for their colony
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 238.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 269.
> 3   ibid., p. 270.
> 4   ibid.
> 5   ibid.
> 6   A Bahá’í sitting at the table with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
> 7   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 270–1.
> 
> 200,00o acres from a vast ranch in Chihuahua, a revolutionary
> named Pancho Villa held sway there, “and the surrounding hills
> swarmed with his fierce Villistas, who learned soon that the
> Mennonite men would not raise their fists in anger. Time after time
> the Villistas forayed down from the hills to rape the blonde
> Mennonite women while their men stood by and prayed in helpless
> anguish.”1
> Florence Khánum was taught by the early believers that each
> action of the Master’s, each word, “has not only a literal meaning but
> in it are wrapped up untold spiritual, future meanings.” He lived not
> only in the moment but for all time. “His acts, His words, are as
> when one throws a stone into the water, and the rings of water
> continue on and on …. So do the Master’s deeds and words eternally
> reveal their inner bounties throughout the life here, and hereafter!”
> One day, she relates, “before we rose from the table, I saw the Master
> look at some object on the floor. I followed His gaze, and saw a
> strange black insect swiftly approaching my chair. The Master arose,
> and putting His foot down firmly on it, killed the creature. ‘This
> kind,’ He said, as He resumed His chair, ‘is poisonous.’”
> 
> The trap of imitation
> The great weapon of every vested interest on earth is man’s
> faculty of mindless imitation of his forebears. What he is taught in
> his early years
> 
> 1   Time, 8 April 1957.
> 
> operates throughout his life in the same way as post-hypnotic
> suggestion; many an action of his, many an opinion, was put into his
> mind beforehand, and as he carries it out, he offers an apparently
> rational explanation of his behaviour. Certain religionists say, “Give
> us the child in his first five years and we will keep him always.” This
> blind imitation is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s main target; He spearheads His
> attack against it; after all, the Faith He teaches can bear adult
> investigation.
> “Verily mind is the supreme gift of God”,1
> the Master says, and again,
> “… that the precious, priceless bestowal of God—the human
> mind ….”2
> He tells us,
> “The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is
> the rational soul, and these two names—the human spirit and
> the rational soul—designate one thing.
> “… the mind is the power of the human spirit. … Spirit is the
> tree, and the mind is the fruit.”3 “How can man believe that
> which he knows to be opposed to reason? Is this possible? Can
> the heart accept that which reason denies? Reason is the first
> faculty of man, and the religion of God is in harmony with it.”4
> Because of blind imitation, the Jews crucified Jesus.
> “Notwithstanding the fulfilment of all the prophetic signs in
> Christ, the Jews denied Him and entered the period of their
> deprivation because of their
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 361.
> 2   ibid., p. 28.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 208.
> 4   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 231.
> 
> allegiance to imitations and ancestral forms.
> “… In reality His Holiness Christ proclaimed and completed the
> law of Moses. He was the very helper and assister of Moses.
> He spread the Book of Moses throughout the world …. The
> Jews did not comprehend this, and the cause of their ignorance
> was blind and tenacious adherence to imitations of ancient
> forms and teachings; therefore they finally sentenced Christ to
> death.”1
> “… the people of religion,”
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaches,
> “are of two kinds: Some worship the sun, and some adore the
> dawning points from which the sun rises. … When that Sun of
> Reality with its divine bestowal, its heavenly glow and
> effulgence transferred to the Messianic point of rising, the Jews
> denied its appearance in Jesus, for they were not worshipers of
> the Sun itself but adored its rising in Moses. …
> “What was the reason of this deprivation? It was simply
> because they were imitating fathers and ancestors in forms of
> belief instead of turning towards the Sun of Divinity.”2
> He refutes such Christian beliefs as original sin on the grounds
> of their being unreasonable:
> “Even if we should see a governor, an earthly ruler punishing a
> son for the wrong-doing of his father, we would look upon that
> ruler as an unjust man. … If the father of a thousand
> generations [back] committed a sin, is it just to demand that
> the present generation should suffer the consequences
> thereof?”3
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 292.
> 2   ibid., p. 273.
> 3   ibid., p. 449.
> 
> The Catholic Church teaches that since Adam’s Fall, the soul is
> born deprived of sanctifying grace, in a state of sin, which has to be
> remitted by baptism; for this reason, when labour proves difficult, a
> priest will baptize the infant in utero (see Philip Wylie, Generation of
> Vipers), since unbaptized children are, the Church teaches, excluded
> from heaven; in the case of a head presentation, baptism is
> administered on the head, otherwise on the part presented. (For
> such details the writer has consulted authorized Catholic sources as
> found in all well-equipped public libraries). An aborted foetus must
> also be baptized.
> The Master says of children who die, after or before the
> appointed time of birth:
> “These infants are under the shadow of the favour of God; and
> as they have not committed any sin and are not soiled with the
> impurities of the world of nature, they are the centres of the
> manifestation of bounty, and the Eye of Compassion will be
> turned upon them.”1
> Satan, who plays such an important role in various religions,
> does not exist, the Master says:
> “… Satan or whatever is interpreted as evil, refers to the lower
> nature in man. … God has never created an evil spirit; all such
> ideas and nomenclature are symbols expressing the mere
> human or earthly nature of man. It is an essential condition of
> the soil of earth that thorns, weeds and fruitless trees may
> grow from it. Relatively speaking, this is evil; it is simply the
> lower state and baser product of nature.”2
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 240.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 294–5.
> 
> In explaining one meaning of the Adam and Eve story—and the
> Master says there are many—He tells us that “Adam signifies the
> spirit of Adam, and Eve His human soul”;1 the tree is this world, and
> the serpent is “attachment to the human world.”2 “This attachment
> of the soul and spirit to the human world, which is sin, was
> inherited by the descendants of Adam, and is the serpent which is
> always in the midst of, and at enmity with, the spirits of the
> descendants of Adam.”3 Jesus died “to attain this object, the
> remission of sins (that is, the detachment of spirits from the human
> world, and their attraction to the divine world) ….”4
> The Master does not mean that we should abandon our daily life
> and the business of living; He says only that
> “… the energies of the heart must not be attached to these
> things; the soul must not be completely occupied with them.”5
> Explaining Jesus’ statement “I am the bread which came down
> from heaven”, the Master says:
> “It was not the body of Christ which came from heaven. His
> body came from the womb of Mary …. The Spirit of Christ and
> not the body descended from heaven. The body of Christ was
> but human. … Consequently, by saying He was the bread
> which came from heaven He meant that the perfections which
> He showed forth were divine perfections … He said, ‘If any
> 
> 1   A closer translation of the original (nafs) as used here would be “self”.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 123.
> 3   ibid., p. 124.
> 4   ibid., p. 125.
> 5   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 187.
> 
> man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.’ That is to say,
> whosoever assimilates these divine perfections which are
> within me will never die; whosoever has a share and partakes
> of these heavenly bounties I embody will find eternal life ….”1
> Unless people investigating the Bahá’í Faith will oblige
> themselves to become as neutral as a scientist making a laboratory
> test; unless they will look at their own selves, their heredity and their
> environment (for three factors are involved, the Master says, not
> two—since the soul has individuality, personality),2 and deliberately
> assess these influences on their judgement, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s words on
> blind imitation can never be meaningful to them.                To form
> mechanical words and gestures and thoughts, to keep on going
> through the motions, to hold uninvestigated opinions, is to be what
> the Prophets of God call dead.
> He calls the Prophets “the first teachers”, “universal educators”,3
> and continues:
> “Forms and imitations which creep in afterward … are clouds
> which obscure the Sun of Reality. If you reflect upon the
> essential teachings of Jesus, you will realize that they are the
> light of the world. Nobody can question their truth. … The
> forms and superstitions which appeared and obscured the light
> did not affect the reality of Christ. … Jesus Christ said, ‘Put up
> thy sword into the sheath.’ The meaning is that warfare is
> forbidden and abrogated; but consider the Christian
> 
> 1    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 450–1.
> 2    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 240.
> 3    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 86.
> 
> wars which took place afterward. Christian hostility and
> inquisition spared not even the learned; he who proclaimed the
> revolution of the earth was imprisoned; he who announced the
> new astronomical system was persecuted as a heretic; scholars
> and scientists became objects of fanatical hatred, and many
> were killed and tortured. How do these actions conform with
> the teachings of Jesus Christ, and what relation do they bear to
> His own example? …           How can hatred, hostility and
> persecution be reconciled with Christ and His teachings?”1
> He wished every religionist to study the basic teachings of the
> Prophets:
> “The fundamental principles of the Prophets are correct and
> true. The imitations and superstitions which have crept in are
> at wide variance with the original precepts and commands.”2
> This study will unify all religions, since “the religions are
> essentially one and the same.”3 It is only the second division of
> religion the “social laws and regulations”4 which change from one
> dispensation to another; the food laws have changed; the marriage
> laws; the law regarding interest on money; the Sabbath, and many
> more; in the law of Moses, if a man stole his hand was cut off; if a
> man cursed his father, he was put to death (Exodus 21:17); if a man
> broke the law of the Sabbath he was put to death (Exodus 35:2); such
> laws are for their time, not for all time; the following dispensation
> changes or retains them, according
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 86.
> 2   ibid.
> 3   ibid., p. 365.
> 4   ibid.
> 
> to the world’s needs as determined by the Manifestation of God.1.
> The Bahá’í Faith is the first in history to insist on the
> independent investigation of truth; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaches that
> “Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear
> through another’s ears nor comprehend with another’s brain.”2
> Man “must not be an imitator or blind follower of any soul. He
> must not rely implicitly upon the opinion of any man without
> investigation; nay, each soul must seek intelligently and
> independently … ignorance based upon blind imitation.”3
> causes wars, hatreds, untold suffering. This does not mean that
> having found truth in any given direction a man should keep on
> seeking it; his act of seeking it would prove that he had not found it;
> for example, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that
> “… the outward is the expression of the inward; the earth is the
> mirror of the Kingdom; the material world corresponds to the
> spiritual world.”4
> and that the sun is the symbol of the Manifestation of God:
> “This Sun of Reality, this Centre of effulgences, is the Prophet or
> Manifestation of God. Just as the phenomenal sun shines upon
> the material world producing life and growth, likewise, the
> spiritual or prophetic Sun confers illumination upon the human
> world of thought and intelligence, and unless it rose
> 
> 1   See ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 393ff.
> 2   ibid., p. 293.
> 3   ibid., p. 291.
> 4   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 283.
> 
> upon the horizon of human existence, the kingdom of man
> would become dark and extinguished.”1
> Now, if a soul becomes convinced through his own
> investigations that Bahá’u’lláh is the Manifestation of God for our
> day, he should believe the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and not go looking
> for another Manifestation before “the expiration of a full thousand
> years”.2 He should believe the “central authoritative Personage”3
> appointed by Bahá’u’lláh to protect His Faith from schism, and obey
> him in the way a man, volunteering for the army, obeys an
> authorized superior officer. If some people do not understand the
> hidden secret of one of His commands and actions, they ought not to
> oppose it, for the universal Manifestation does what He wishes.4 It is
> only reasonable that if a soul believes these teachings, he should obey
> them; before believing in them, he is asked to investigate them to his
> heart’s content.
> Christians are disturbed when they read in the Bahá’í writings
> that Muhammad is a true Prophet of God. The Jews were deeply
> troubled when, in the United States, the Master told them to
> acknowledge Jesus Christ; any effort to go against the current of
> imitation is painful. Among the things He said to them were these:
> Christ did not invalidate the Torah, He spread it; Christians and
> Muslims accept Moses;
> “What harm could result to the Jewish people, then,
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 94.
> 2   Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Section CLXVI,
> p. 345.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 382.
> 4   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 174.
> 
> if they in return should accept Christ acknowledge the validity
> of the Prophethood of Muhammad?”1
> To the Jews at Temple Emmanuel in San Francisco:
> “Why do you not say that Christ was the Word of God? Why do
> you not speak these few words that will do away with all this
> difficulty? Then there will be no more hatred and fanaticism,
> no more warfare and bloodshed in the Land of Promise.”2
> He then solemnly declared His own belief in Moses as a most
> noteworthy Prophet and Revealer of the Law of God, a Founder of
> civilization, and asked, “Have I lost anything by saying this to you
> and believing it as a Bahá’í? On the contrary, it benefits me ….”3)
> Every nation is proud of its great men; “What harm, then, could
> come from your declaration that Jesus of Nazareth was a great
> man of Israelitish birth and, therefore, we love Him?”4 And He
> warned, “The time may come when in Europe itself they will arise
> against the Jews.”5 The Master Himself describes some of the
> reaction to His addresses to the Jews: “The address delivered last
> evening in the Jewish synagogue [Washington] evidently disturbed
> some of the people, including the revered rabbi who called upon me
> this afternoon. Together we went over the ground again ….”6 He
> tells how, at the end of their meeting, the rabbi said, “‘I believe that
> what you have said is perfectly true, but I must ask one thing of you.
> Will you not tell the Christians to love us a little more?’”7 The
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 368.
> 2   ibid.
> 3   ibid.
> 4   ibid., p. 414.
> 5   ibid. Talk dated 9 November 1912.
> 6   ibid., p. 411.
> 7   ibid., p. 415.
> 
> Master replied, “We have advised them and will continue to do so.”1
> The year was 1912 ; some twenty years more, and the Jewish people
> were to see the massacre, in Europe, of an estimated five million
> souls, perhaps one–third of their race.
> 
> Mankind is one people
> The New Testament says that God “hath made of one blood all
> nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth”,2 but it is
> obvious that Christians do not believe this. If they did, they would
> not practice racial segregation, crowd the people of this or that race
> into separate parts of town or else banish them entirely, tell them
> they are under a curse, or repudiate social intercourse and
> intermarriage with them. This cruel and indeed suicidal behaviour,
> perpetuated by imitation, is based on just one factor: ignorance. For
> the oneness of mankind, the pivotal principle of Bahá’u’lláh, is not a
> counsel of perfection but a laboratory fact; one does not have to beg
> anybody to believe it.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaches of the atom’s journeyings throughout
> creation. He says the elemental atoms are in “the progressive and
> perpetual motion … throughout the various degrees of phenomena
> and the kingdoms of existence.”3 He traces the atoms’ journeyings
> from mineral to vegetable to animal to man, and back to mineral
> again, each atom sequentially “imbued with the powers and virtues
> of the kingdoms it traverses … also reflects the attributes and
> qualities
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 415.
> 2   Acts 17:26
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 284.
> 
> of the forms and organisms of those kingdoms.”1 “…all things
> are involved in all things”, the Master quotes from the Arabian
> philosophers. “It is evident that each material organism is an
> aggregate expression of single and simple elements, and a given
> cellular element or atom has its coursings or journeyings through …
> myriad stages of life.”2 At death, the elements which composed the
> body are dispersed, and although reincarnation cannot take place
> since no identity occurs more than once in the world (in all the
> world’s granaries no two grains of wheat are alike). “The sign of
> singleness is visible and apparent in all things.”3 It can come about
> “that one of the particles of the former individual has entered into
> the composition of the succeeding individual ….”4 One asks oneself
> how the racist is going to stop this perpetual journeying of the atoms,
> and how he is going to shut the atoms out.
> 
> Show forth true economics
> Of the Bahá’í Temple the Master teaches, “Its gates will be flung
> wide open to mankind ….”5 This is how His own door was. People
> always crowded around Him, unable to stay away. He said,
> “The supreme need of humanity is co-operation and
> reciprocity. … A tree can live solitary and alone, but this is
> impossible for man without retrogression. Therefore, every cooperative attitude and activity of human life is praiseworthy
> ….”6
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 285.
> 2   ibid., p. 349.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 283.
> 4   ibid., p. 284.
> 5   Dr J. E. Esslemont: Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, Ch. 11, p. 188.
> 6   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 338.
> 
> At the time of Florence Khánum’s pilgrimage in 1906, He was
> still a prisoner. She saw with indignation the heavy bars at the
> window, the sentry pacing outside; and she watched, gratified and
> exultant, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s kingly reception of a steady stream of people
> of all ranks, from notables to the desperately poor—those poor who
> always had first claim on Him and who, as He told them in the
> Bowery, were His friends and family, and resembled Jesus more than
> the rich.1 His extensive teachings on economics are summed up in
> these words:
> “Manifest true economics to the people. Show what love is,
> what kindness is, what true severance is and generosity. … Act
> in accordance with the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. All His Books
> will be translated. … Let your deeds be the real translation of
> their meaning.”2
> He has entrusted the have-nots to the haves; in future the rich
> will “most willingly extend assistance to the poor and take steps to
> establish these economic adjustments permanently”,3 unable to rest
> while they know of anyone in want. Eleanor Roosevelt has described
> how, as the President’s wife, she could not induce her powerful
> friends to get out of their automobiles and accompany her into the
> slum-dwellings of the poor. Bahá’u’lláh writes:
> “If ye meet the abased or the down-trodden, turn not away
> disdainfully from them, for the King of Glory ever watcheth
> over them and surroundeth them with
> 
> 1   See ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 32–3.
> 2   ibid., p. 239.
> 3   ibid.
> 
> such tenderness as none can fathom …. O ye rich ones of the
> earth! Flee not from the face of the poor that lieth in the dust,
> nay rather befriend him and suffer him to recount the tale of
> the woes with which God’s inscrutable Decree hath caused him
> to be afflicted. By the righteousness of God! Whilst ye consort
> with him, the Concourse on high will be looking upon you, will
> be interceding for you, will be extolling your names and
> glorifying your action.”1
> The Master teaches that the rich must go and look at poverty
> face to face; and this was His way, all the days of His life.
> 
> The assassin’s prisoner
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was the prisoner of ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd. This Sultan, a
> man pale under his rouge, emaciated, hollow-checked, hookednosed, with a badly-dyed reddish-brown beard, rickety legs, a thin
> hand mechanically caressing the heavy, dyed moustache that hid the
> mouth with its cruel, thin, upper lip, its sensual lower one—with a
> bulging forehead under his enormous red fez, and heavy-lidded eyes
> now vacant, now angry or terrified, had schemed his way to the
> throne.2
> “He is a skilful layer of traps, and capable of all kinds of
> abjectness toward his enemies when he fears them and of the
> greatest cruelty when he has them in his power, and he enjoys his
> vengeance all the more for having patiently nourished it in secret.
> 
> 1   Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Section CXLV,
> pp. 314–5.
> 2   See George Dorys: The Private Life of the Sultan of Turkey, 1901.
> 
> “Not only is the life of a man who is troublesome to him nothing to
> him, but spilled blood seems to calm and soothe his shattered nerves,
> always stretched to the snapping point. ‘At night, before going to
> sleep,’ says one of his chamberlains, ‘he has someone read to him.
> His favourite books are those giving detailed accounts of
> assassinations and executions. The stories of crimes excite him and
> prevent him from sleeping, but as soon as his reader reaches a
> passage where blood flows, the Sultan immediately becomes calm
> and falls asleep.’”1 ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd could never get warm, even
> though he reportedly wore a suit of mail under his clothes. He
> washed himself every few minutes at washstands placed in every
> corner. In his kitchen, a small barred cell like a “huge safe”, his chef
> worked always under the eye of a court official; when ready, the
> dishes were brought to him covered with a black cloth, its ends sealed
> with this official’s seal; even so, the Sultan would often make the
> official taste the food first, or would try it out on a cat or dog. His
> main pursuit in life was reading the reports of his spies—papers that
> had to be passed through a disinfecting oven before he would touch
> them. His main dread (an apt one: Gladstone called him “The Great
> Assassin”) was of being murdered.2 His clothes were a web of secret
> pockets to hold his spies’ reports, and his three revolvers. Above all,
> he feared any sudden gesture in his direction, or rapid step. When
> such happened, he
> 
> 1   Op. cit., 77.
> 2   ibid., 158, 163, 184.
> 
> had been known to shoot and kill.
> It was this man who had ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life in his cold hands. It
> was to him that, as the Master records in His Will and Testament,
> the breakers of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant, under the Arch-Breaker, the
> Master’s half-brother, sent in their calumnies:. that He had hoisted
> the flag of revolt, built a fortress and vast ammunition depot on
> Mount Carmel, raised an army of 30,000 men, and conspired with
> English and American supporters, who were flocking to Him in large
> numbers and in disguise, to take over the surrounding provinces and
> ultimately to usurp the power of the Sultan himself.1
> Five years before Florence Khánum’s pilgrimage, ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd
> had stringently reimposed the Master’s imprisonment, whose
> restrictions had been gradually relaxed. Secret agents travelled back
> and forth between ‘Akká and Constantinople, and spies watched
> everywhere, while ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “alone and unaided”, was subjected
> to prolonged interrogation by judges and officials. He refuted every
> one of the charges, as absurd as they were infamous, and expressed
> to the court His ardent wish to be put to death for the Faith, so that
> He could share the sufferings of the beloved Báb.2
> A year following her pilgrimage, another, notorious Commission
> sailed into ‘Akká by order of the Sultan, took over the Telegraph and
> Postal services, dismissed officials considered friendly to
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 266.
> 2   ibid.
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and established themselves in the city. The Covenantbreakers were jubilant; the townspeople stood by to watch when the
> Master should be carried away on the ship, and at this time even
> some of the poor forsook Him.1 Then the Commission sailed down to
> Haifa to inspect the Báb’s sepulchre which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was
> constructing on Mount Carmel, and one day about sunset the ship
> was seen heading up the coast again towards ‘Akká. As His family
> and the believers wept, the Master walked, alone in the dusk, up and
> down, up and down in the courtyard of His house. Suddenly the
> lights of the ship swung round, and she changed her course and
> sailed away in the direction of Constantinople.
> Later on when the Commission’s report was submitted to
> ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd, it aroused little response: a bomb had just been
> exploded in his path, on his way home from his Friday prayers at the
> mosque. In 1908, the following year, the “Young Turk” Revolution
> closed the case forever. Of his royal jailer, the Master says only this:
> “[Bahá’u’lláh] was under the dominion of ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd. I,
> too, was in the prison of ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd until the Committee of
> Union and Progress hoisted the standard of liberty and my
> fetters were removed.”2 “They lifted the chains from my neck
> and threw them around the neck of Abdu’l-Hamíd. That which
> he did to me was inflicted upon him. Now the position is
> precisely reversed. His days are spent in
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 270.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 36.
> 
> prison just as I passed the days in prison at ‘Akká, with this
> difference: that I was happy in imprisonment. … I was not a
> criminal. They had imprisoned me in the path of God. … I was
> happy that … I was a prisoner in the Cause of God, that my life
> was not wasted …. Nobody who saw me imagined that I was
> in prison.”1
> 
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s birthday
> Florence Khánum was in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s presence on two of His
> birthdays, in 1906 and 1912. On the latter occasion He spoke at the
> Cambridge2 home of her parents, Mr and Mrs Francis W. Breed.3
> Writing of the 1906 birthday she says:
> “Remembering birthday festivities in America, and how the one
> for whom festivities were given, though host or hostess, was the
> central figure, and guest of honour, I queried, ‘How will ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá act on His birthday? Will He, for once, lie in bed, late in
> the morning, while His family and the house guests file by to …
> offer any gift, and to wish Him the happy returns of the day? …
> Won’t it seem strange to see ‘Abdu’l-Bahá graciously accepting
> our homage? The great Exemplar of Servitude … being served?
> I could not envisage the picture; yet I hoped that the One Who
> always served from earliest morning to late at night would rest
> and enjoy leisure and let His loving friends and followers offer
> Him their feeble services.
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 225.
> 2   Massachusetts.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 138.
> 
> “I saw a group of eight lambs or so, newly arrived in the
> courtyard, and was told they would be sacrificed for the Feast of
> the morrow, and that quite a large company or men and, women
> Bahá’ís would assemble for the celebration. The following
> morning I awoke late. … For once I had not been called as
> usual, to the early morning prayers. … Soon after, Khán
> appeared, and said, ‘Since early dawn, the Master has been busy.
> … Over two hundred guests are expected for the Feast, and the
> Master has been at work, since dawn.’ I exclaimed, ‘The Master
> working on His birthday?’ ‘Oh! You should have seen Him! …
> They tell me He has been kneading, with His own hands, dough
> for the ovens. He has been in gay spirits, inspiring, uplifting,
> cheering all His helpers.’ The picture I had envisioned, of
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá reclining … all the morning, while we paid Him
> homage, vanished in my astonishment! Later, Khán returned
> radiant and enthusiastic to our room. He said that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
> assisted in passing the platters … the rice … the lamb … the
> fruits of the region (of such large size, such colour, and such
> fragrance as only the sunshine of the East produces and paints).
> Moving among His two hundred guests, He spoke to them as He
> served them, such Divine words of love and spiritual import.
> Khán particularly recalled His words to this effect:
> “‘If one of you has been wounded in heart by the
> 
> words or deeds of another, during the past year, forgive him
> now; that in purity of heart and loving pardon, you may feast
> in happiness, and arise, renewed in spirit.’
> “For Abdu’l-Bahá teaches that in whatever mood we sit down to
> eat, that mood is actually strengthened within us by the physical
> food of which we partake. He has said that is one reason why
> the Bahá’í Feasts make us all so happy. United in love and
> loving kindness, love is strengthened within us when Bahá’ís eat
> together.”
> She makes this special point as to the two birthdays:
> “He said not a word about His own birthday! He spoke only of
> the Báb, His mission and message.” (He was born during the
> night of the Báb’s Declaration, 22 May 1844).
> Florence speaks often of the Master’s bountiful table, and of the
> food served her in ‘Akká. She was given such things as coffee scented
> with rose water, and a peahen’s egg.
> “One noon I apologized (Khán translating) to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for
> eating so much. He replied, ‘Qurratu’l-’Ayn always ate a great
> deal. She had little dishes of candy, or fruits and nuts beside
> her, of which she continually partook.’ He then heaped up her
> plate, saying that as a nursing mother she needed plenty of food,
> and adding: ‘Rice is good. It makes more milk.’”
> 
> The gift of health
> The Master continually healed the sick. He often instructed
> physicians. Ramona Allen Brown tells how, in California, He
> instructed and carried on medical conversations with her father, a
> well-known Bay Area physician. He often spoke of what is now called
> psychosomatic medicine (and indeed He describes in Some
> Answered Questions four types of healing by spiritual means). To a
> physician he wrote:
> “The powers of the sympathetic nerve are neither entirely
> physical nor spiritual, but are between the two.1 The nerve is
> connected with both. Its phenomena shall be perfect when its
> spiritual and physical relations are normal.
> “When the material world and the divine world are well corelated, when the hearts become heavenly and the aspirations
> grow pure and divine, perfect connection shall take place.”2
> In Memorials of the Faithful He tells how a believer maintained
> his health and peace through contentment:
> “He spent his days in utter bliss. Here, too, he carried on a
> small business, which occupied him from morning till noon. In
> the afternoons he would take his samovar, wrap it in a darkcoloured pouch made from a saddlebag, and go off somewhere
> to a garden or meadow, or out in a field, and have his tea.
> Sometimes he would be found at the farm of Mazra’ih, or again
> in the Rid.ván Garden; or, at the Mansion, he would have the
> honour of attending upon Bahá’u’lláh.
> “[He] … would carefully consider every blessing that came his
> way. ‘How delicious my tea is today,’ he
> 
> 1   Answer to question of a physician regarding the sympathetic nervous
> system of the human organism.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, vol. II, p. 309.
> 
> would comment. ‘What perfume, what colour! How lovely this
> meadow is, and the flowers so bright!’ He used to say that
> everything, even air and water, had its own special fragrance.
> For him the days passed in indescribable delight. Even kings
> were not so happy as this old man, the people said.”1
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá believes in healing through pleasant foods, by the
> use of simple medicines and of hot or cold water. He says that “in
> man both health and sickness are contagious”, but the contagion of
> health “is extremely weak and slow.”2 He also teaches that a great
> gain in health will be made by obedience to the Bahá’í law, which
> discourages tobacco, and forbids alcohol. (Interestingly enough, if a
> Catholic priest is unable to drink wine, this is called a “bodily defect”
> comparable to blindness or maimedness or any other factor which
> would interfere with saying Mass, and can only be forgiven by the
> Holy See. Fortunately, the defect is very rare.)
> Unity, prayer, kindness, and service are definite health factors in
> any society. Jealousy and anger are to be fled, Bahá’u’lláh says, as
> one would run from a lion.3 He tells us to avoid hatred deliberately:
> “In the garden of thy heart plant naught but the rose of love …”4
> and the Master says:
> “Know ye the value of these passing days and vanishing nights.
> Strive to attain a station of absolute
> 
> 1    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Memorials of the Faithful, p. 25.
> 2    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 254.
> 3    Dr J. E. Esslemont: Bahá’u’lláh and the new era, Ch. 7.
> 4    Bahá’u’lláh: The Hidden Words, Persian No. 3.
> 
> love one toward another. By the absence of love, enmity
> increases. By the exercise of love, love strengthens and
> enmities dwindle away.”1 “Love is the source of all the
> bestowals of God. Until love takes possession of the heart, no
> other Divine bounty can be revealed in it.”2 “Never become
> angry with one another. Let your eyes be directed toward the
> kingdom of truth and not toward the world of creation. Love the
> creatures for the sake of God and not for themselves. You will
> never become angry or impatient if you love them for the sake of
> God. Humanity is not perfect. There are imperfections in every
> human being, and you will always become unhappy if you look
> toward the people themselves. But if you look toward God, you
> will love them and be kind to them, for the world of God is the
> world of perfection and complete mercy. Therefore, do not look
> at the shortcomings of anybody; see with the sight of
> forgiveness. The imperfect eye beholds imperfections. … You
> must love and be kind to everybody, care for the poor, protect
> the weak, heal the sick, teach and educate the ignorant.”3
> Continence, monogamy, moderation, discipline, hard work, are
> other health factors, as is the annual nineteen-day daytime fast,
> which tend to promote the vigour and longevity of Bahá’ís. ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá’s teachings on healing with foods and other simple means are
> sometimes misinterpreted as endorsements of various health fads;
> on the contrary, Bahá’u’lláh, says that when ill, Bahá’ís should
> consult the “most skilled” (h.ádhiq) physician; these “simple”
> methods are based on depths of know-
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 9.
> 2   ibid., p. 15.
> 3   ibid., p. 93.
> 
> ledge and intuition which will characterize the highly-trained, great
> doctors of the future. In this connection it is interesting to note how
> the growing complexity of our modern healing agencies never
> outdistances modern illness; nor our ever-increasing criminology,
> the always-gaining rate of crime.
> Of that personal purity and cleanliness, which is still so rare in
> many parts of the world, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was the prime example, and it
> too is obviously conducive to health. Florence Khánum writes that
> He was
> “dazzlingly, spotlessly … shining, from snowy turban-cloth, to
> white, snowy hair falling upon His shoulders, to white snowy
> beard and long snowy garment. … Although it was high noon, in
> summer … His attire was crisp and fresh-looking, as though He
> had not been visiting the sick, and in prison, and toiling for
> mankind since early morning. Often a deliciously fresh rose was
> tucked in His belt.”
> In the days before he became Guardian, when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was
> still on earth, he who was to become the beloved Guardian visited
> Paris. While there he gave to Florence Khánum and ‘Ali-Kuli Khán a
> soft grey coat of the Master’s, which he said the Master had often
> worn. One night it hung in the present writer’s room, when it was to
> be brushed and refolded in the Persian raw silk cloth that Shoghi
> Effendi had wrapped it in when he brought it. (This coat, in the same
> raw silk wrapping, is now
> 
> in the Bahá’í Temple at Wilmette.) All night I was conscious of its
> fragrance, even after the many long years since the Master had worn
> it. The smell of Jacob’s raiment is mentioned in the Bible; it was “as
> the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.”1 In Western
> languages, we speak of the “odour of sanctity”, and the phrase is not
> idle.
> 
> Death, the welcome messenger
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s most vital teaching about health is perhaps what
> He tells us about death, since innumerable ailments are caused or
> aggravated by fear of it: The soul is not in the body, it
> “… is only connected with the body as the sun is with the
> mirror.”2 “… the inner and essential reality of man is not
> composed of elements and, therefore, cannot be decomposed.”3
> “If the spirit of man belonged to the elemental existence, the eye
> could see it, the ear hear it, the hand touch [it].”4 “Through his
> ignorance man fears death; but the death he shrinks from is
> imaginary ….”5 “The spirit or human soul, is the rider, and the
> body is only the steed.”6 “This human body is purely animal in
> type and, like the animal, it is subject only to the grosser
> sensibilities. It is utterly bereft of ideation or intellection,
> utterly incapable of the processes of reason. The animal
> perceives what its eye sees and judges what the ear hears.”7
> “The spirit can conduct its affairs without the body. In
> 
> 1    Gen. 27:27.
> 2    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 287.
> 3    ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 415.
> 4    ibid., p. 308.
> 5    ibid., p. 88.
> 6`   ibid., p. 416.
> 7    ibid., p. 417.
> 
> the world of dreams it is precisely as this light without the
> chimney glass. It can shine without the glass.”1
> The Master makes many references to dreams, those mysterious
> phenomena so little understood by current science and not at all by
> the average modern man. For Bahá’u’lláh has written in the Seven
> Valleys that God has deposited this sign in man so that philosophers
> shall not deny the life beyond or disdain what has been promised
> them. One day in New York the Master said:
> “I have made you wait awhile, but as I was tired, I slept. While
> I was sleeping, I was conversing with you as though speaking
> at the top of my voice. Then through the effect of my own voice
> I awoke. As I awoke, one word was upon my lips—the word
> ‘imtíyáz’ (“distinction”). So I will speak to you upon that
> subject this morning.”2
> He then proceeded to give His famous talk on distinction:
> “I desire distinction for you. The Bahá’ís must be distinguished
> from others of humanity.”3
> He explained that He did not mean financial distinction, nor
> scientific, nor commercial, nor industrial distinction.
> “For you I desire spiritual distinction—that is, you must become
> eminent and distinguished in morals. In the love of God you
> must become distinguished from
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 416.
> 2   ibid., p. 189.
> 3   ibid., p. 190.
> 
> all else. You must become distinguished for loving humanity,
> for unity and accord, for love and justice. In brief, you must
> become distinguished in all the virtues of the human world—for
> faithfulness and sincerity, … for firmness and steadfastness, for
> philanthropic deeds and service to the human world, for love
> toward every human being, … for removing prejudices and
> promoting international peace. Finally, you must become
> distinguished for heavenly illumination and for acquiring the
> bestowals of God. I desire this distinction for you.”1
> This dangerous journey of the soul which we call life, is
> necessary.
> “The personality of the rational soul is from its beginning; it is
> not due to the instrumentality of the body, but the state and the
> personality of the rational soul may be strengthened in this
> world; it will make progress, and will attain to the degrees of
> perfection, or it will remain in the lowest abyss of ignorance,
> veiled and deprived from beholding the signs of God.”2 “The
> wisdom of the appearance of the spirit in the body is this: the
> human spirit is a Divine Trust, and it must traverse all
> conditions, for its passage and movement through the
> conditions of existence will be the means of its acquiring
> perfections. So when a man travels and passes through
> different regions … with system and method, it is certainly a
> means of his acquiring perfection ….
> “[Also] … if the perfections of the spirit did not appear in this
> world, this world would be unenlightened and
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 190.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 239.
> 
> absolutely brutal.”1
> Man must know that he will always be:
> “The conception of annihilation is a factor in human
> degradation …”2 “… and existence can never become nonexistence. This would be equivalent to saying that light can
> become darkness …”3 “… it behoves man to abandon thoughts
> of non-existence and death, which are absolutely imaginary,
> and see himself ever-living … If he dwells upon the thought of
> non-existence, he will become utterly incompetent; with
> weakened willpower his ambition for progress will be lessened
> and the acquisition of human virtues will cease.”4 “At first it is
> very difficult to welcome death, but after attaining its new
> condition the soul is grateful, for it has been released from the
> bondage of the limited, to enjoy the liberties of the unlimited.”5
> 
> Science a pathway to God
> The permanence of science, the fact that it belongs to the next
> world, not this, gives intellectual activities the highest rank; indeed,
> Bahá’u’lláh makes teachers one of the seven classes of heirs to whom
> Bahá’ís are recommended to leave their property.
> “The virtues of humanity are many, but science is the most
> noble of them all. … It is a bestowal of God; it is not material;
> it is divine. Science is an effulgence of the Sun of Reality, the
> power of investigating and discovering the verities of the
> universe, the means by which man finds a pathway to God. All
> the powers and attributes of man are human and hereditary in
> ori-
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, pp. 200–201.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 89.
> 3   ibid., p. 87.
> 4   ibid., p. 89.
> 5   ibid., p. 47.
> 
> gin—outcomes of nature’s processes—except the intellect, which
> is supernatural. …
> “… God has … deposited this love of reality in man. The
> development and progress of a nation is according to the
> measure and degree of that nation’s scientific attainments.
> Through this means its greatness is continually increased, and
> day by day the welfare and prosperity of its people are
> assured.
> “… this power of intellectual investigation and research … is an
> eternal gift producing fruits of unending delight. … All other
> blessings are temporary; this is an everlasting possession. … it
> is an eternal blessing and divine bestowal, the supreme gift of
> God to man. Therefore, you should put forward your most
> earnest efforts toward the acquisition of science and arts. …
> The man of science is perceiving and endowed with vision,
> whereas he who is ignorant and neglectful of this development
> is blind. The investigating mind is attentive, alive; the callous
> and indifferent mind is deaf and dead. A scientific man is a
> true index and representative of humanity, for through
> processes of inductive reasoning and research he is informed of
> all that appertains to humanity, its status, conditions and
> happenings. He studies the human body politic, understands
> social problems and weaves the web and texture of civilization.
> …
> “… science or the attribute of scientific penetration is
> supernatural and that all other blessings of God are within the
> boundary of nature. What is the proof of this? All created
> things except man are captives of nature. …
> “How shall we utilize these gifts and expend these bounties? By
> 
> directing our efforts toward the unification of the human
> race.”1
> Addressing Stanford, one of the great universities of the West,
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said:
> “The dominion of kings has an ending … but the sovereignty of
> science is everlasting and without end. … The Greek and
> Roman kingdoms with all their grandeur passed away; the
> ancient sovereignties of the Orient are but memories, whereas
> the power and influence of Plato and Aristotle still continue.”2
> 
> Men and women are equal
> In Judaism, Christianity, Islam, sex equality does not exist. The
> Old Testament says (of the man, to the woman): “He shall rule over
> thee.”3 And the New Testament: “let the woman learn in silence
> with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp
> authority over the man, but to be in silence.”4 “Wives, submit
> yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.”5 Of men and
> women the Qur’án, which however gives women a higher place than
> did previous Faiths, says: “Men are a degree above them.”6
> Obviously, men would like this state of affairs to continue, since
> it is greatly to their advantage. Today, for example, many an
> American man, terrified of the growing power of the American
> woman, has turned to Japan for a wife, because Japanese women are
> traditionally reared with the object of waiting on
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 49–51.
> 2   ibid., p. 348.
> 3   Genesis 3:16.
> 4   I Timothy 2:11–12.
> 5   Ephesians 5:22.
> 6   Qur’án 2:228.
> 
> their men. Thanks to male opinion and the human propensity for
> blind imitation, women’s role in most parts of the world is still
> limited to “church, kitchen, and children”, but social evolution is
> catching up, and man today is the ex-lord of creation.
> The Master says,
> “God does not inquire, ‘Art thou woman or art thou man?’ He
> judges human actions.”1 “Science is praiseworthy—whether
> investigated by the intellect of man or woman.”2 “… the
> education of woman is more necessary and important than
> that of man, for woman is the trainer of the child from its
> infancy. If she be defective and imperfect herself, the child will
> necessarily be deficient; therefore, imperfection of woman
> implies a condition of imperfection in all mankind ….”3
> He affirms that many a woman has proved superior to men:
> “Victoria, Queen of England, was really superior to all the
> kings of Europe in ability, justness and equitable
> administration. During her long and brilliant reign the British
> Empire was immensely extended and enriched, due to her
> political sagacity, skill and foresight.”4
> Although T.áhirih had unveiled and had died for it, becoming
> “the first woman suffrage martyr”,5 the actual public emancipation of
> Persia’s women from the veil was slow. Eighty–seven years went by
> between the Conference at
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 133.
> 2   ibid., p. 281.
> 3   ibid., p. 133.
> 4   ibid., p. 282.
> 5   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 75.
> 
> Badasht (1848) where T.áhirih had proclaimed woman’s equality with
> man, and the Government’s decree that the women of Írán should
> put aside their veils. Emancipated as to their Bahá’í activities, the
> Bahá’í women or Persia purposely did not, as a group, unveil in the
> streets of Persia until it became law to do so; their unveiling would
> have delayed the event, since one of the reaction’s strongest weapons
> was to emphasize that freedom for women was a Bahá’í idea.
> The veil was not a piece of cloth, it was an entire social system.
> The Bahá’í way replaced the Muslim at an early stage, and Florence
> Khánum’s being invited by the Master (in 1906) to sit at table with
> His Eastern men guests, although she was a Persian’s wife, was one
> symbol of this. It was however His wish that at that time, in the Holy
> Land and Persia, she should veil. Her book shows clearly that hostile
> Muslims were by no means her only enemies; another group was
> opposed to her for coming out of the West and living as a Persian
> among Persians; these were the Christian missionaries; partly
> because they looked down on Persians; and partly, Florence Khánum
> says, “because of their own lack of success.”
> The Persian street-veil or chádur, usually of black satin or silk or
> cotton, enveloped a woman completely, like a tent; the word means
> tent. The face was covered by a separate, adjustable square of
> horsehair or (in Turkey) black, silken material, and
> 
> the veil itself was clutched under the chin in one concealed hand.
> The garment was not unattractive when worn by Easterners, but was
> so alien to Western psychology that no Westerner looked right in
> one. She writes:
> “I was given a chádur, and taught how to wear it. … For a young,
> athletic American woman to so dress … was, naturally, a
> hardship. I never wore this dress gracefully, and always felt
> clumsy in it and usually exasperated as well. However, it was an
> adventure, and naturally I accepted the ordeal in good grace …
> at all events, it was not too much a price to pay, for the
> pleasurable hours with Eastern women it enabled me to enjoy …
> once it was the cause of happiness. … The time at ‘Akká when I
> was glad to be in chádur and veiled, occurred one afternoon, as I
> was hurrying across the large, open prison-courtyard to join the
> ladies outside, for a drive to Bahjí. Khán had taken Rah.ím
> outside, and was waiting near the Master’s beach wagon, to give
> Rah.ím to me for the drive. Suddenly I heard the Master’s voice
> ring out commandingly, ‘Khán!’ Peering through my black veil,
> I glanced all around, but saw not a soul at the windows above,
> nor in the empty courtyard. ‘Oh dear!’ said I to myself, ‘the
> Master wants Khán and Khán is not here. Whatever shall I do?’
> I thought, ‘The only thing to do is to hurry faster, and to send
> Khán back to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.’ So, clumsily (as usual) I
> 
> clutched a handful of chádur and with veil still down (I had been
> instructed not to raise the veil if men were about) I hurried on.
> Again came the Master’s loud command in a ringing voice,
> ‘Khán!’ ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, ‘the Master must need Khán
> immediately!’     And peering again around most carefully,
> through the obscuring veil, still I saw no sign of life anywhere! I
> hurried forward. For the third time, the Master’s voice rang out
> commandingly, ‘Khán!’ In desperation, I stopped—and this
> time raising my veil, I saw the Master standing at the head of the
> long flight of stone steps leading to His quarters. … ‘Khán?’ I
> queried, and struggling for a few words in Persian, I replied:
> ‘Khán … míyáyand! Khán is coming.’ The Master saw it was I
> and replied, ‘Oh, Khánum, Bifarmá’íd!’ (proceed, continue). I
> then almost ran outside to Khán and breathlessly told him to go
> at once to the Master, Who was calling him.
> “In the evening when we returned from the beautiful drive,
> Khán came to listen to the story of the afternoon’s experiences.
> ‘I must tell you,’ he said, smiling, ‘that I found the Master,
> standing at the head of the steps and leaning against the wall,
> laughing heartily.’ ‘Why, what was it?’ I asked. Khán answered,
> ‘The Master wanted me to come to Him, and seeing, He said,
> apparently a woman of the household hurrying across the
> courtyard, He called for me. He said He called
> 
> several times, wondering why the woman did not answer.
> Finally, He said, ‘The woman stopped, and turning, raised her
> veil. I saw it was Khánum. …’ Khán said he had hardly ever
> heard the Master laugh so long, and so heartily. ‘Khánum,’
> continued the Master, ‘wearing the chádur and veil, like an old
> man with a beard too long for him, and not knowing what to do
> with it.’”
> My father then told her to be happy, that there was a saying
> among the Persians that whoever brings laughter to one of the Holy
> Ones is greatly blessed.
> 
> The struggle for the tomb
> Among woman’s great functions will be the abolition of war.
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:
> “War and its ravages have blighted the world; the education of
> woman will be a mighty step toward its abolition … for she will
> use her whole influence against war. … She will refuse to give
> her sons for sacrifice upon the field of battle. In truth, she will
> be the greatest factor in establishing universal peace and
> international arbitration. Assuredly, woman will abolish
> warfare among mankind.”1
> Of war He said,
> “If a man steals one dollar, he is called a thief and put into
> prison; if he rapes and pillages an innocent country by military
> invasion, he is crowned a hero. How ignorant is humankind!
> Ferocity does not belong to the kingdom of man. It is the
> province of man to
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 108.
> 
> confer life, not death.”1
> “We are all human … and all come from Mr Adam’s family.
> Why, then, all these fallacious national and racial distinctions?
> These boundary lines and artificial barriers have been created
> by despots and conquerors who sought to attain dominion over
> mankind, thereby engendering patriotic feeling and rousing
> selfish devotion to merely local standards of government. As a
> rule they themselves enjoyed luxuries in palaces, surrounded
> by conditions of ease and affluence, while armies of soldiers,
> civilians and tillers of the soil fought and died at their
> command … shedding their innocent blood for a delusion such
> as “we are Germans,” “our enemies are French,” etc., when, in
> reality, all are humankind, all belong to the one family and
> posterity of Adam, the original father. …
> “God created one earth and one mankind to people it. Man has
> no other habitation, but man himself has come forth and
> proclaimed imaginary boundary lines and territorial
> restrictions ….”2
> And He asks this:
> “We live upon this earth for a few days and then rest beneath it
> forever. … Shall man fight for the tomb which devours him, for
> his eternal sepulchre? What ignorance could be greater than
> this? To fight over his grave, to kill another for his grave!”3
> He particularly called upon the United States of America to lead
> the way to world peace, and He warned, on 12 May 1912: “Just now
> Europe is a battlefield of ammunition ready for a spark; and one
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 103.
> 2   ibid., pp. 354–5.
> 3   ibid., p. 355.
> 
> spark will set aflame the whole world.”1          “Before these …
> cataclysmic events happen, take the step to prevent it.”2
> The Master continually stressed the need of a world auxiliary
> language in the building of peace. He says,
> “… the function of language is to portray the mysteries and
> secrets of human hearts. The heart is like a box, and language
> is the key.”3
> He emphasizes that Bahá’u’lláh has not named the universal
> language, saying that it will be either an existing language or a new
> one. He himself wrote, however,
> “The Persian language shall become noteworthy in this cycle;
> nay, rather, the people shall study it in all the world.”4
> And again:
> “… regarding the universal language: Ere long significant and
> scientific discussions concerning this matter will arise among
> the people of discernment and insight and it will produce the
> desired result.”5
> 
> God the Unknowable
> Man was created by the conscious will of God. The proof that
> God is not a blind force is that man is not a blind force. “Man the
> creature, has volition …”6 and his Creator is not less than he. The
> universe has always existed, because God has always existed; “this
> endless universe—has no beginning”;7 God’s name or attribute
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 122.
> 2   ibid.
> 3   ibid., p. 60.
> 4   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas, Vol. II, p. 306.
> 5   ibid., Vol. III, p. 596.
> 6   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 82.
> 7   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 180.
> 
> the Creator presupposes creation. “… the existence of phenomena
> implies composition ….”1 That composition of elements which
> constitutes life is demonstrably “neither accidental nor
> involuntary”2—if it were accidental, it would be an effect without a
> cause; if it were involuntary, and the elements came together because
> it was their nature to do so, “then it would be impossible for a
> composite being … to be decomposed ….”3 The only remaining
> possibility is that the process is voluntary, “which means that
> composition is effected through a superior will … through the
> eternal Will, the Will of the Living, Eternal, and Self-Subsistent ….”4
> “Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth
> therein, He, through the direct operation of His unconstrained
> and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique
> distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him—a
> capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating
> impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of
> creation.…”5 “And since there can be no tie of direct intercourse
> to bind the one true God with His creation, and no resemblance
> whatever can exist between the transient and the Eternal, the
> contingent and the Absolute, He hath ordained that in every
> age and dispensation a pure and stainless Soul be made
> manifest in the kingdoms of earth and heaven.”6
> The Manifestation of God is qualitatively different from man,
> even such a man as Plato or Leonardo da Vinci: man possesses only
> two stations or conditions,
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 423.
> 2   ibid., p. 424.
> 3   ibid.
> 4   ibid.
> 5   Bahá’u’lláh: Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, Section XXVII,
> p. 65.
> 6   ibid., p. 66.
> 
> body and soul; the Manifestation possesses three: body, soul, and
> the Holy Spirit.1
> ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaches that
> “The worlds of God are in perfect harmony and
> correspondence one with another. Each world in this limitless
> universe, is as it were, a mirror reflecting the history and
> nature of all the rest. The physical universe is, likewise, in
> perfect correspondence with the spiritual or divine realm. The
> world of matter is an outer expression or facsimile of the inner
> Kingdom of spirit.”2 “… the earth is the mirror of the Kingdom;
> the material world corresponds to the spiritual world.”3
> Evidently, then, we tend to see things upside down, and what we
> think is the reality is really the symbol: eyes are the symbol—insight
> the reality; a lamp is the symbol, and guidance the reality. The sun in
> the sky is often used by the Master as a symbol of the Manifestation
> of God, the Sun of Truth. The Manifestation is like the sun, “which
> by its essential nature produces light”. He is “luminous in Himself”,
> while all other souls must borrow light from Him.4 He is a mirror,
> blazing with the light of the sun.5
> “In the inner world … the Sun of Reality is the Trainer ….”6
> “When the phenomenal sun appears from the vernal point of
> dawning in the zodiac, a wondrous and vibrant commotion is
> set up in the body of the earthly world. The withered trees are
> quickened
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 153.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 270.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 283.
> 4   ibid., p. 154.
> 5   See, ibid., pp. 113–4 and 2o6–7.
> 6   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 270–1.
> 
> with animation, the black soil becomes verdant with new
> growth, fresh and fragrant flowers bloom, the world of dust is
> refreshed, renewed life forces surge through the veins of every
> animate being, and a new springtime carpets the meadows,
> plains, mountains and valleys with wondrous forms of life.
> That which was dead and desolate is revived and resuscitated;
> that which was withered, faded and stricken is transformed by
> the spirit of a new creation. In the same way the Sun of
> Reality, when it illumines the horizon of the inner world,
> animates, vivifies and quickens with a divine and wonderful
> power.”1
> The Master writes again:
> “The station of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation, on the other hand, is
> represented by the sign Leo, the sun’s mid-summer and highest
> station. By this is meant that this holy Dispensation is illumined
> with the light of the Sun of Truth shining from its most exalted
> station, and in the plenitude of its resplendency, its heat and
> glory.”2
> 
> The coming of the Glory
> It was only for one purpose that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá travelled to the
> West, to herald the rise of the Sun of Truth:
> “Indifferent to the sights and curiosities which habitually invite
> the attention of travellers and which the members of His
> entourage often wished Him to visit; careless alike of His
> comfort and His health; expending every ounce of His energy
> day
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 271.
> 2   Shoghi Effendi: The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 127.
> 
> after day from dawn till late at night; consistently refusing any
> gifts or contributions towards the expenses of His travels;
> unfailing in His solicitude for the sick, the sorrowful and the
> down-trodden; uncompromising in His championship of the
> underprivileged races and classes; bountiful as the rain in His
> generosity to the poor; contemptuous of the attacks launched
> against Him by vigilant and fanatical exponents of orthodoxy
> and sectarianism; marvellous in His frankness while
> demonstrating, from platform and pulpit, the prophetic Mission
> of Jesus Christ to the Jews, of the Divine origin of Islam in
> churches and synagogues, or the truth of Divine Revelation and
> the necessity of religion to materialists, atheists or agnostics;
> unequivocal in His glorification of Bahá’u’lláh at all times and
> within the sanctuaries of divers sects and denominations;
> adamant in His refusal, on several occasions, to curry the favour
> of people of title and wealth both in England and in the United
> States; and last but not least incomparable in the spontaneity,
> the genuineness and warmth of His sympathy and lovingkindness shown to friend and stranger alike, believer and
> unbeliever, rich and poor, high and low, whom He met, either
> intimately or casually, whether on board ship, or whilst pacing
> the streets, in parks or public squares, at receptions or banquets,
> in slums or mansions, in the gatherings of His followers or the
> assemblage of the learned, He, the incarnation
> 
> of every Bahá’í virtue and the embodiment of every Bahá’í ideal,
> continued for three crowded years to trumpet to a world sunk in
> materialism and already in the shadow of war, the healing, the
> God-given truths enshrined in His Father’s Revelation.”1
> “I belong to him that loveth Me, that holdeth fast My
> commandments …” Bahá’u’lláh has written.2 Above all, He belonged
> to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Lingeringly, the Master would tell of His Father:
> “… all the contemporaneous religious sects and systems rose
> against Him. His enemies were kings. … These kings
> represented some fifty million people, all of whom under their
> influence and domination were opposed to Bahá’u’lláh.
> Therefore, in effect Bahá’u’lláh, singly and alone, virtually
> withstood fifty million enemies. …        Although they were
> determined upon extinguishing the light in that most brilliant
> lantern, … day by day His splendour became more radiant. …
> Surrounded by enemies who were seeking His life, He never
> sought to conceal Himself, did nothing to protect Himself; on
> the contrary, in His spiritual might and power He was at all
> times visible before the faces of men, easy of access, serenely
> withstanding the multitudes who were opposing Him.”3
> “While addressing these powerful kings and rulers He was a
> prisoner in a Turkish dungeon. Consider how marvellous it
> was for a prisoner under the eye and control of the Turks to
> arraign so boldly and severely the very king who was
> 
> 1   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, pp. 282–3.
> 2   Bahá’u’lláh: Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 25.
> 3   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, pp. 431–2.
> 
> responsible for His imprisonment. What power this is! What
> greatness! … and so constant and firm was He that He caused
> their banners to come down and His own standard to be
> upraised. … Consider what a mighty power this is!”1
> Again, the Master told how even Bahá’u’lláh’s enemies praised
> Him; He was, they said, “truly great; his influence was mighty and
> wonderful. This personage was glorious; his power was tremendous,
> his speech most eloquent …” Then they would add: What a pity that
> He was a “misleader of the people.”2 Some wrote satiric poems about
> Him, since in any case, having encountered Him, they could not let
> Him alone: they had to do something about Him. And even these
> poems turned out to be praise. One wrote:
> “Beware! lest ye approach this person, for he is possessed of
> such power and of such an eloquent tongue that he is a sorcerer.
> He charms men, He drugs them; He is a hypnotizer. Beware!
> Beware! lest you read his book[,] follow his example and
> associate with his companions because they are possessors of
> tremendous power and they are misleaders.”3
> These warnings influenced many in His favour.
> “The more His enemies wrote against Him, the more the people
> were attracted and the greater the number who came to
> inquire about the truth. They would say ‘This is remarkable.
> This is a great man, and we must investigate. We must look
> into this
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 432.
> 2   ibid., p. 436.
> 3   ibid.
> 
> cause to find out what it all means, to discover its purpose,
> examine its proofs ….’ … In Persia the mullás went so far as to
> proclaim from the pulpits against the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh
> casting their turbans upon the ground—a sign of great
> agitation—and crying out, “O people! This Bahá’u’lláh is a
> sorcerer …”1
> The Master said of His Father’s forty years’ imprisonment,
> “Observe how rarely human souls sacrifice their pleasure or
> comfort for others … Yet all the divine Manifestations suffered,
> offered Their lives and blood, sacrificed Their … comfort and
> all They possessed for the sake of mankind. Therefore, consider
> how much They love.”2
> The struggle between good and evil will always go on, because it
> is inherent in the human situation: man is a reality standing between
> darkness and light.3 But it will now be conducted on a far higher
> level, with millions of human beings consciously, deliberately
> working for good. Up to now many a person has tried to reform
> other people (the usual method was to go and live with the underprivileged—in that way, one had a head start); from now on many a
> person will try to reform himself; not in a cave or desert but in his
> relationships with other people. He had little hope of doing this in a
> material world, since, under materialism, “good and evil advance
> together and maintain the same pace.”4 Now the good is aided by a
> mighty spiritual plus.
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 436.
> 2   ibid., p. 257.
> 3   ibid., p. 465.
> 4   ibid., p. 109.
> 
> Man is perfectible, but not perfection; only God is perfection.1
> The human perfectibility which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá teaches is not a vision
> but a simple truth; the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh is not a utopia;
> most human lives are ineffective today and the world is inevitably
> going to be co-ordinated so that they can become effective; so that
> each human being can “become expressive … of all the bounties of
> life to mankind.”2 People who think this is a utopia would be amazed
> to find how methodically it is being established in the world. ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá has “categorically asserted that the ‘banner of the unity of’
> mankind would be hoisted, that the tabernacle of universal peace
> would be raised and the world become another world.’”3
> He Himself was the most methodical of beings. He said:
> “In this world we judge a cause or movement by its progress
> and development. Some movements appear, manifest a brief
> period of activity, then discontinue. Others show forth a
> greater measure of growth and strength, but before attaining
> mature development, weaken, disintegrate and are lost in
> oblivion. …
> “There is still another kind of movement or cause which from a
> very small, inconspicuous beginning goes forward with sure
> and steady progress, gradually broadening and widening until
> it has assumed universal dimensions. The Bahá’í Movement is
> of this nature. For instance, when Bahá’u’lláh was exiled from
> Persia with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the rest of His family,
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 113.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 16.
> 3   Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, p. 282.
> 
> they travelled the long road from T.ihrán to Baghdád, passing
> through many towns and villages. During the whole of that
> journey and distance they did not meet a single believer in the
> Cause for which they had been banished. At that time very
> little was known about it in any part of the world. Even in
> Baghdad there was but one believer who had been taught by
> Bahá’u’lláh Himself in Persia. Later on, two or three others
> appeared. You will see, therefore, that at the beginning the
> Cause of Bahá’u’lláh was almost unknown, but on account of
> being a divine Movement it grew and developed with
> irresistible spiritual power …”1
> Today,
> “The number of territories included within the pale of the Faith,
> embracing all the sovereign states and chief dependencies of the
> planet, has … in consequence of this prodigious effort [the global
> Crusade] been raised to two hundred and fifty–one …”2
> One day in the United States He told this story:
> “Many years ago in Baghdád I saw a certain officer sitting
> upon the ground. Before him a large paper was placed into
> which he was sticking needles tipped with small red and white
> flags.  First he would stick them into the paper, then
> thoughtfully pull them out and change their position. I
> watched him with curious interest for a long time, then asked,
> ‘What are you doing?’ He replied, ‘I have in mind something
> which
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 43–4.
> 2   Shoghi Effendi: Messages to the Bahá’í World — 1950–1957, p. 105.
> 
> is historically related of Napoleon I during his war against
> Austria. One day, it is said, his secretary found him sitting
> upon the ground as I am now doing, sticking needles into a
> paper before him. His secretary inquired what it meant.
> Napoleon answered, “I am on the battlefield figuring out my
> next victory. You see, Italy and Austria are defeated, and
> France is triumphant.” In the great campaign which followed,
> everything came out just as he said. His army carried his
> plans to a complete success. Now, I am doing the same as
> Napoleon, figuring out a great campaign of military conquest.’
> I said, ‘Where is your army? Napoleon had an army already
> equipped when he figured out his victory. You have no army.
> Your forces exist only on paper. You have no power to conquer
> countries. First get ready your army, then sit upon the ground
> with your needles.’”1
> People ask: Why, if He was so wonderful, did He have so many
> enemies? The answer is, because He was so wonderful. Florence
> Khánum relates that one day she and ‘Alí-Kuli Khán were alone with
> the Master and He was conversing with them. Suddenly, powerfully,
> with His two clenched fists, the Master beat upon His breast. And
> then with great vigour and emphasis: “‘Abdu’l-Bahá’ has many
> enemies!” He exclaimed. “Let there be more! ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is equal
> to all of them!”
> Articles against the Faith He called “the harmless twittering of
> sparrows.” “Rest ye in the assurance of firmness.”2 “They will spread
> the Message”3
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 250.
> 2   ibid., p. 428.
> 3   ibid., p. 430.
> 
> “All who stand up in the cause of God will be persecuted and
> misunderstood. It hath ever been so, and will ever be. Let
> neither enemy nor friend disturb your composure, destroy
> your happiness, deter your accomplishment. Rely wholly upon
> God. …
> “… Let nothing defeat you. God is your helper. … Be firm in
> the Heavenly Covenant. Pray for strength. It will be given to
> you, no matter how difficult the conditions.”1
> “When he [‘Abdu’l-Bahá] arrived in ‘Akká they placed chains
> upon his limbs and circlets of steel were locked around his
> ankles and knees. While the guards were doing this ‘Abdu’l-
> Bahá laughed and sang. They were astonished and said, ‘How
> is this? … When prisoners are ironed in this way, they usually
> cry out, weep and lament.’ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá replied, ‘I rejoice
> because you are doing me a great kindness …. For a long time
> I have wished to know the feelings of a prisoner in irons, to
> experience what other men have been subjected to. I have
> heard of this; now you have taught me what it is. You have
> given me this opportunity. Therefore I sing and am very
> happy. I am very thankful to you.’ After a time the men who
> had been appointed to keep guard over me became as loving
> brothers and companions.         They strove to lighten my
> imprisonment by acts of kindness. They said, ‘In order that
> you may not be subjected to the jeers of the people when you
> walk upon the streets we will arrange your clothing so these
> chains are not visible.’ They took the chains which were upon
> my limbs, gathered the ends together and wrapped them as a
> girdle
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá quoted in The Compilation of Compilations, Vol. I (Crisis
> and victory), p. 155–6. This is a revised translation of Star of the West,
> Vol. 4:5 (5 June 1913), p. 88 - revised translation.
> 
> around my waist, then arranged my clothing so no chains were
> visible. One day I wished to go to the hamman (public bath).
> The guards said, ‘It will not be possible for you to go to the bath
> unless these chains are removed; and furthermore it will
> attract notice from the people in the streets.’ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said,
> ‘I will go.’
> “The guards then carefully gathered the hanging chains
> around my waist, covered them with my clothing and we went
> forth. As we passed through the streets, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá took the
> chains from his waist, flung their loose, dangling ends over his
> shoulders in full view and walked to the hamman, followed by
> a great crowd of hooting, jeering people. The guards were
> most unhappy, but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was in supreme joy because of
> this opportunity to walk in the freedom of the Pathway of
> God.”1
> Because the Master is inseparable from His teachings, we have
> tried in the foregoing to indicate some of the main lines of the vast
> body of His work. We have tried to hint at His teaching methods,
> since He is above all the great Teacher, making reality come alive,
> instead of lying in the death of the abstraction. Often He taught by
> indicating some person sitting near Him, or some object that was
> there. For example, explaining the animal spirit, which is the second
> category of the five into which spirit is divided, He said: “It may be
> likened to this lamp: when the oil, wick and fire are combined, it is
> lighted ….”2 And you think of the lamplight falling across the table;
> you wonder why that
> 
> 1   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Star of the West, Vol. 4:5 (5 June 1913), p. 88.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Some Answered Questions, p. 208.
> 
> particular lamp was given immortality. You remember being told in
> the Master’s household that He was very particular that guests
> should always be honoured (He even placed this injunction in one of
> the most solemn and tender of all Bahá’í prayers, the prayer revealed
> by Him for the dead); and that once when there were guests and the
> lamp chimney was not highly-enough polished, He sent for it to be
> replaced. And you think of the lamplight falling across the table; you
> see His face in the lamplight and inevitably you remember what
> everything on earth makes you remember: that no lamp will ever
> light up His face any more. You feel, for the thousandth time, that
> pang of loss that inherent every day in every sunset, and you
> understand what the Báb meant in telling of the death of a Prophet
> when He said, “All sorrow is only the shadow of that sorrow.”1
> If we had to choose one short sentence summing up His wishes
> for man, it might be this:
> “Array yourselves in the perfection of divine virtues.”2
> One day in ‘Akká, writes Juliet Thompson in her diary, a
> pilgrim, looking at a magnificent rose, said: “I wish I might be like
> this rose and exhale such fragrances.” And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Who often
> immortally returned some casual remark, answered:
> “One could be much more beautiful than this rose. For the rose
> perishes. Its fragrance is just for a time. But no winter has
> any effect upon such a Rose as Man.”3
> 
> 1   Le Bayan Persan, translated by A. L. M. Nicolas, Vol. II, p. 118.
> 2   ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 7.
> 3   The diary of Juliet Thompson, p. 33.
>
> — *The Sheltering Branch (Used by permission of the curator)*