Messages to America Part 8

THE ANGER OF G.o.d AND HIS CORRECTION

The internecine struggle, now engulfing the generality of mankind, is increasingly a.s.suming, in its range and ferocity, the proportions of the t.i.tanic upheaval foreshadowed as far back as seventy years ago by Baha'u'llah. It can be viewed in no other light except as a direct interposition by Him Who is the Ordainer of the Universe, the Judge of all men and the Deliverer of the nations. It is the rod of both the anger of G.o.d and of His correction. The fierceness of its devastating power chastens the children of men for their refusal to acclaim the century-old Message of their promised, their Heaven-sent Redeemer. The fury of its flames, on the other hand, purges away the dross, and welds the limbs of humanity into one single organism, indivisible, purified, G.o.d-conscious and divinely directed.

Its immediate cause can be traced to the forces engendered by the last war of which it may be truly regarded as the direct continuation. Its first sparks were kindled on the eastern sh.o.r.es of the Asiatic continent, enveloping two sister races of the world in a conflagration which no force seems able to either quench or circ.u.mscribe. This cataclysmic process was accelerated by the outbreak of a fierce conflict in the heart of Europe, fanning into flame age-long animosities and unchaining a series of calamities as swift as they were appalling. As the turmoil gathered momentum, it swept remorselessly into its vortex the most powerful nations of the European continent-the chief protagonists of that highly-vaunted yet lamentably defective civilization. The mounting tide of its havoc and devastation soon overspread the northernmost regions of that afflicted continent, subsequently ravaged the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, and invaded the African continent as far as Ethiopia and the surrounding territories. The Balkan countries, as predicted by 'Abdu'l-Baha, were soon to sustain the impact of this tragic ordeal, communicating in their turn the commotions to which they had been subjected to both the Near and Middle East, wherein are enshrined the heart of the Faith itself, its Cradle, its chief center of Pilgrimage, and its most sacred and historic sites.

Its menace is overleaping the limits of the Old World and is plunging into consternation the Great Republic of the West, as well as the peoples of Central and South America. The New World as well as the Old is experiencing the terrific impact of this disruptive force. Even the peoples of the Antipodes are trembling before the approaching tempest that threatens to burst on their heads.

The races of the world, Nordic, Slavonic, Mongolian, Arab and African, are alike subjected to its consuming violence. The world's religious systems are no less affected by the universal paralysis which is creeping over the minds and souls of men. The persecution of world Jewry, the rapid deterioration of Christian inst.i.tutions, the intestine division and disorders of Islam, are but manifestations of the fear and trembling that has seized humanity in its hour of unprecedented turmoil and peril. On the high seas, in the air, on land, in the forefront of battle, in the palaces of kings and the cottages of peasants, in the most hallowed sanctuaries, whether secular or religious, the evidences of G.o.d's retributive act and mysterious discipline are manifest. Its heavy toll is steadily mounting-a holocaust sparing neither prince nor peasant, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old.

The Faith of Baha'u'llah-that priceless gem of Divine Revelation enshrining the Spirit of G.o.d and incarnating His Purpose for mankind in this age-can neither aspire nor expect to escape unhurt amid the hurricane of human disasters that blows around it. By most men unnoticed, scorned and ridiculed by some, feared and challenged by others, this world redemptive Faith, for whose precious sake the world is undergoing such agonies, finds its virgin strength a.s.sailed, and its infant inst.i.tutions hemmed in, by the dark forces which a G.o.dless civilization has unloosed over the face of the planet. In the Old World, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, it is being buffeted about, ostracized, arraigned and repressed.

In certain countries its community life is being extinguished, in others a ban is severely imposed on its propagation, in still others its members are denied all intercourse with its World Center. Dangers, grave and unsuspected, confront its cradle and surround its very heart.

Not so, however, with the countries of the Western Hemisphere. The call of Baha'u'llah summons, at this challenging hour, the peoples of the New World, and its leaders to redress the balance of the old. "O Rulers of America," He thus addresses the Chief Magistrates of that continent, "and the Presidents of the Republics therein.... Adorn the temple of your dominion with the ornament of Justice and of the fear of G.o.d, and its head with the crown of the remembrance of your Lord, the Maker of the heavens."

The Great Republic of the West, an object of special solicitude throughout the ministry of the Center of the Covenant, whose soil has been hallowed by His footsteps, and the foundation of whose edifice-the Mother Temple of the West-has been consecrated by His hand, has been singled out through the operation of His Will, and been invested by His Pen with an unique, an inescapable, a weighty and most sacred responsibility. The Mission entrusted to the community of the North American believers in the darkest days of the last war, is, after a period of incubation of well nigh twenty years, and through the instrumentality of the administrative agencies erected after 'Abdu'l-Baha's pa.s.sing, efflorescing under our very eyes.

Already, since the inception of the Seven Year Plan, this community can well claim to have attained, through its deeds, a stature that dwarfs its sister communities, and can glory in a parentage that embraces every Republic of Latin America. The first Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the West, its beauteous and n.o.ble handiwork, is virtually completed. A nucleus for a future flouris.h.i.+ng local community is already formed in every state and province in North America. The administrative structure, following the pattern of its prototype in the U.S.A. is, through the agency of that same Plan, raising its triumphant head in the Central and South American Republics. The Plan itself, propelled by the agencies released by those immortal Tablets which const.i.tute its charter, bids fair, in the fifth year of its operation, to exceed the highest expectations of those who have so courageously launched it. Its consummation, coinciding with the termination of the first century of the Baha'i Era, will mark the opening of yet another phase in a series of crusades which must carry, in the course of the succeeding century, the privileged recipients of those epoch-making Tablets beyond the Western Hemisphere to the uttermost ends of the earth, to implant the banner, and lay an una.s.sailable basis for the administrative structure of the Faith of Baha'u'llah.

The quality and magnitude of the work already achieved by these stalwart champions of G.o.d's New World Order are inexpressibly exhilarating and infinitely meritorious. The immensity of the task still to be performed staggers our fancy and inflames our imagination. The potentialities with which these tasks are endowed elude our shrewdest calculations. The promise they enshrine is too dazzling to contemplate. What else can we do but bow our heads in thanksgiving and reverence, steel our hearts in preparation for the strenuous days ahead, and intensify a hundredfold our resolution to carry on the task to which our hands are set at present.

May 25, 1941

FATE-LADEN WORLD ORDEAL

The fate-laden world ordeal is moving in steady, pre-ordained crescendo.

The blaze of a seemingly uncontrollable fire is leaping, ravaging last remaining great Power on European continent. Shadows of G.o.d's retributive act are fast gathering. As the arena of world convulsing contest broadens; as wounds it inflicts deepen; as issues it raises aggravate and multiply, so will the operation of the spiritual forces, destined to cast the burden of a travailing age, be accelerated. As the old world sinks beneath the weight of a crumbling old order, so must new world exponents of Baha'u'llah's nascent, integrating World Order climb loftier summits of their sublime calling. I urgently, insistently plead that all American believers, particularly the National Teaching and Inter-America Committees, above all the National elected representatives, arm their souls, labor more resolutely, cooperate more closely, scatter more widely, sacrifice more abundantly, to insure, during remaining years of Seven Year Plan, the brilliant discharge of the one remaining obligation of their dual task, whose consummation must signalize the termination and seal the triumph of First Baha'i Century.

Cablegram July 4, 1941

ELIZABETH GREENLEAF

Share deep grief of bereaved community at pa.s.sing of Elizabeth Greenleaf, beloved handmaid of Baha'u'llah. Her radiant spirit, staunch loyalty, n.o.ble character, effective teaching method were distinguis.h.i.+ng features of her consecrated life. Praying abundant blessings in life beyond.

Cablegram August 7, 1941

UNCONQUERABLE POWER

As I survey the activities and accomplishments of the American believers in recent months, and recall their reaction to the urgent call for service, embodied in the Seven Year Plan, I feel overwhelmed by a three-fold sense of grat.i.tude and admiration which I feel prompted to place on record, but which I cannot adequately express. Future generations can alone appraise correctly the value of their present services, and the Beloved, whose mandate they are so valiantly obeying, can alone befittingly reward them for the manner in which they are discharging their duties.

The virtual completion of a thirty year old enterprise, which was initiated in His days and blessed by His Hand, is the first and foremost accomplishment that must shed imperishable l.u.s.ter not only on the administrative annals of the Formative Age of the Faith, but on the entire record of the signal achievements performed in the course of the First Century of the Baha'i Era. The steady expansion and consolidation of the world mission, entrusted by that same Master, to their hands and set in operation after His pa.s.sing, const.i.tutes the second object of my undying grat.i.tude to a community that has abundantly demonstrated its worthiness to shoulder the superhuman tasks with which it has been entrusted. The spirit with which that same community has faced and resisted the onslaught of the enemies of the Faith who, for various reasons and with ever-increasing subtlety and malice, have persistently striven to disrupt the administrative machinery of an Order, foreshadowed by the Bab, enunciated by Baha'u'llah, and established by 'Abdu'l-Baha, is yet another testimony to the unrivalled merits and the eminent position attained by its privileged members since the ascension of the Center of the Covenant.

The extinction of the influence precariously exerted by some of these enemies, the decline that has set in in the fortunes of others, the sincere repentance expressed by still others, and their subsequent reinstatement and effectual partic.i.p.ation in the teaching and administrative activities of the Faith, const.i.tute in themselves sufficient evidence of the unconquerable power and invincible spirit which animates those who stand identified with and loyally carry out the provisions and injunctions of the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha.

And now more particularly concerning the prime mover of this latest agitation, which, whatever its immediate consequences, will sooner or later come to be regarded as merely one more of those ugly and abortive attempts designed to undermine the foundation, and obscure the purpose, of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. Obscure in his origin, ambitious of leaders.h.i.+p, untaught by the lesson of such as have erred before him, odious in the hopes he nurses, contemptible in the methods he pursues, shameless in his deliberate distortions of truths he has long since ceased to believe in, ludicrous in his present isolation and helplessness, wounded and exasperated by the downfall which his own folly has precipitated, he, the latest protagonist of a spurious cause, cannot but in the end be subjected, as remorselessly as his infamous predecessors, to the fate which they invariably have suffered.

Generated by the propelling and purifying forces of a mysterious Faith, born of delusion or malice, winning a fleeting notoriety derived from the precarious advantages of wealth, fame or fortune, these movements sponsored by deluded, self-seeking adventurers find themselves, sooner or later, enmeshed in the machinations of their authors, are buried in shame, and sink eventually into complete oblivion.

The schism which their foolish leaders had contrived so sedulously to produce within the Faith, will soon, to their utter amazement, come to be regarded as a process of purification, a cleansing agency, which, far from decimating the ranks of its followers, reinforces its indestructible unity, and proclaims anew to a world, skeptical or indifferent, the cohesive strength of the inst.i.tutions of that Faith, the incorruptibility of its purposes and principles, and the recuperative powers inherent in its community life.

Were anyone to imagine or expect that a Cause, comprising within its...o...b..t so vast a portion of the globe, so turbulent in its history, so challenging in its claims, so diversified in the elements it has a.s.similated into its administrative structure, should, at all times, be immune to any divergence of opinion, or any defection on the part of its mult.i.tudinous followers, it would be sheer delusion, wholly unreasonable and unwarranted, even in the face of the unprecedented evidence of the miraculous power which its rise and progress have so powerfully exhibited.

That such a secession, however, whether effected by those who apostatize their faith or preach heretical doctrines, should have failed, after the lapse of a century, to split in twain the entire body of the adherents of the Faith, or to create a grave, a permanent and irremediable breach in its organic structure, is a fact too eloquent for even a casual observer of the internal processes of its administrative order to either deny or ignore.

Therein, every loyal and intelligent upholder of Baha'u'llah's incomparable Covenant-a Covenant designed by Him as the sole refuge against schism, disruption and anarchy-will readily recognize the hall-mark of His Faith, and will acclaim it as the supreme gift conferred by Him Who is the Lord of Revelation upon the present and future generations who are destined, in this greatest of all Dispensations, to flock, from every creed and religion, to the banner, and espouse the Cause, of His Most Great Name.

Dear friends! Manifold, various, and at times extremely perilous, have been the tragic crises which the blind hatred, the unfounded presumption, the incredible folly, the abject perfidy, the vaulting ambition, of the enemy have intermittently engendered within the pale of the Faith. From some of its most powerful and renowned votaries, at the hands of its once trusted and ablest propagators, champions, and administrators, from the ranks of its most revered and highly-placed trustees whether as companions, amanuenses or appointed lieutenants of the Herald of the Faith, of its Author, and of the Center of His Covenant, from even those who were numbered among the kindred of the Manifestation, not excluding the brother, the sons and daughters of Baha'u'llah, and the nominee of the Bab Himself, a Faith, of such tender age, and enshrining so priceless a promise, has sustained blows as dire and treacherous as any recorded in the world's religious history.

From the record of its tumultuous history, almost every page of which portrays a fresh crisis, is laden with the description of a new calamity, recounts the tale of a base betrayal, and is stained with the account of unspeakable atrocities, there emerges, clear and incontrovertible, the supreme truth that with every fresh outbreak of hostility to the Faith, whether from within or from without, a corresponding measure of outpouring grace, sustaining its defenders and confounding its adversaries, has been providentially released, communicating a fresh impulse to the onward march of the Faith, while this impetus, in its turn, would through its manifestations, provoke fresh hostility in quarters heretofore unaware of its challenging implications-this increased hostility being accompanied by a still more arresting revelation of Divine Power and a more abundant effusion of celestial grace, which, by enabling the upholders of that Faith to register still more brilliant victories, would thereby generate issues of still more vital import and raise up still more formidable enemies against a Cause that cannot but, in the end, resolve those issues and crush the resistance of those enemies, through a still more glorious unfoldment of its inherent power.

The resistless march of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, viewed in this light, and propelled by the stimulating influences which the unwisdom of its enemies and the force latent within itself, both engender, resolves itself into a series of rhythmic pulsations, precipitated, on the one hand, through the explosive outbursts of its foes, and the vibrations of Divine Power, on the other, which speed it, with ever-increasing momentum, along that predestined course traced for it by the Hand of the Almighty.

As opposition to the Faith, from whatever source it may spring, whatever form it may a.s.sume, however violent its outbursts, is admittedly the motive-power that galvanizes on the one hand, the souls of its valiant defenders, and taps for them, on the other, fresh springs of that Divine and inexhaustible Energy, we who are called upon to represent, defend and promote its interests, should, far from regarding any manifestation of hostility as an evidence of the weakening of the pillars of the Faith, acclaim it as both a G.o.d-sent gift and a G.o.d-sent opportunity which, if we remain undaunted, we can utilize for the furtherance of His Faith and the routing and complete elimination of its adversaries.

The Heroic Age of the Faith, born in anguish, nursed in adversity, and terminating in trials as woeful as those that greeted its birth, has been succeeded by that Formative Period which is to witness the gradual crystallization of those creative energies which the Faith has released, and the consequent emergence of that World Order for which those forces were made to operate.

Fierce and relentless will be the opposition which this crystallization and emergence must provoke. The alarm it must and will awaken, the envy it will certainly arouse, the misrepresentations to which it will remorselessly be subjected, the setbacks it must, sooner or later, sustain, the commotions to which it must eventually give rise, the fruits it must in the end garner, the blessings it must inevitably bestow and the glorious, the Golden Age, it must irresistibly usher in, are just beginning to be faintly perceived, and will, as the old order crumbles beneath the weight of so stupendous a Revelation, become increasingly apparent and arresting.

Not ours, dear friends, to attempt to survey the distant scene; ours rather the duty to face the trials of the present hour, to ponder its meaning, to discharge its obligations, to meet its challenge and utilize the opportunity it offers to the fullest extent of our ability and power.

August 12, 1941

THE PROCESS OF INTEGRATION AND DISINTEGRATION

Heart thrilled with pride at message announcing the approaching completion of the ornamentation of seven faces of Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, proclaiming an intensification of North American teaching campaign, and revealing the adamantine resolution of the Temple builders and stalwart crusaders, in face of the perfidy, ingrat.i.tude and opposition of the enemies both within and without the Holy Faith. As the fury and destructiveness of the tremendous world ordeal attains its most intensive pitch, so the Mission conferred twenty years ago by 'Abdu'l-Baha's sacred Will on the worldwide, indivisible and incorruptible body of His followers unfolds its fullest potentialities. Securely abiding and confidently battling within the impregnable structure which that Will has divinely established, the dwellers in the ark of the divine Covenant the world over watch with awe, pride and delight the evidences of the mounting momentum of the eternal process of integration and disintegration hurrying the Faith along its predestined course. The royal adversary, personally responsible for the recrudescence of persecution closing all Baha'i schools in Baha'u'llah's native land, has been humbled to the dust. The sufferings endured by the builders of the first Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar are being avenged. The cornerstone of the National Administrative Headquarters of the Egyptian Baha'i community has been ceremoniously laid. The first officially recognized Baha'i cemetery is ready to receive the precious remains of the ill.u.s.trious Abu'l-Fadl and the immortal Lua. The Haziratu'l-Quds in Ba_gh_dad has been extended and is nearing completion. The property dedicated as first Administrative Center of the Syrian Baha'is has been purchased. A group of families of Persian believers, Muslim, Jewish, Zoroastrian in origin, afire with the example set by American pioneers, are settling the adjoining territories of ?ijaz, Yemen, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Bahrein Island. The spiritual compet.i.tion galvanizing the organized followers of Baha'u'llah in East and West waxes keener as first Baha'i century speeds to its close. With bowed head, exultant spirit and thankful heart I acclaim these recurrent, increasingly compelling manifestations of the solidarity, loyalty and unquenchable spirit animating, throughout five continents, the community of the followers of the Most Great Name.

Cablegram November 22, 1941