G.G. Paul - first translator of Baha'i Writings into Maori

(The Baha'i World 1932-1934)

19th century: Some examples of European interests in the Cause of the Báb

“Many persons from all parts of the world,” is ‘Abdu’l Bahá’s written assertion, “set out for Persia and began to investigate wholeheartedly the matter.” The Czar of Russia, a contemporary chronicler has written, had even, shortly before the Báb’s martyrdom, instructed the Russian Consul in Tabríz to fully inquire into, and report the circumstances of so startling a Movement, a commission that could not be carried out in view of the Báb’s execution. In countries as remote as those of Western Europe an interest no less profound was kindled, and spread with great rapidity to literary, artistic, diplomatic and intellectual circles. “All Europe,” attests the above-mentioned French publicist, “was stirred to pity and indignation … Among the littérateurs of my generation, in the Paris of 1890, the martyrdom of the Báb was still as fresh a topic as had been the first news of His death. We wrote poems about Him. Sarah Bernhardt entreated Catulle Mendès for a play on the theme of this historic tragedy.” A Russian poetess, member of the Philosophic, Oriental and Bibliological Societies of St. Petersburg, published in 1903 a drama entitled “The Báb,” which a year later was played in one of the principal theatres of that city, was subsequently given publicity in London, was translated into French in Paris, and into German by the poet Fiedler, was presented again, soon after the Russian Revolution, in the Folk Theatre in Leningrad, and succeeded in arousing the genuine sympathy and interest of the renowned Tolstoy, whose eulogy of the poem was later published in the Russian press. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Acquiring land for the Shrine of the Báb

The beloved Guardian told the pilgrims that, upon hearing of Baha'u'llah's instructions to 'Abdu'l-Baha to acquire the site on Mount Carmel for the resting place of the Báb, the Covenant-breakers attempted to win the glory. Mirza Badi'u'llah started negotiations and worked hard to buy that land. He had intended to acquire the land and report the good news to Baha'u'llah. But he did not succeed. Baha'u'llah told him, "This is none of your business, it is for Aqá (the Master) to accomplish." 

(Related by Hand of the Cause Zikrullah Khadem in ‘Carmel: The Mountain of God and the Tablet of Carmel’ published in ‘Zikrullah Khadem, The Itinerant Hand of the Cause of God’, by Javidukht Khadem)

Mid-July 1920: Shoghi Effendi arrived in the United Kingdom

Shoghi Effendi arrived in the United Kingdom in mid-July 1920 and was welcomed by a community of devoted believers and admirers of the Faith who had been nurtured by their loving Master. Prominent among the believers and admirers of the Master were Lady Blomfield, Major Tudor-Pole and Lord Lamington.

Lady Blomfield, one of the pillars of the Cause in England, had been among the first to recognize the new revelation. She was a woman whose considerable influence traced back to her father-in-law, Dr Charles James Blomfield (1786-1857), the Bishop of London and the tutor of Queen Victoria. Lady Blomfield and her daughter Mary had been introduced to the Faith at a reception in Paris in 1907. Their teacher was Miss Bertha Herbert. Both had embraced the Faith upon their return to England and were nurtured by a Baha'i community comprising two people: an American believer living in London, Mrs. Thornburgh-Cropper, and Miss. Ethel Rosenberg, the first British woman to accept the new Earth of God.

How to become a true servant

Someone in the audience asked, `What shall I do to become a true servant?' ‘Abdu’l-Baha replied:

“Act in accordance with the teachings of Bahá'u'lláh. Do not only read His teachings but put into practice in your lives the Hidden Words and the other holy writings. Whatever I say is not even a drop from the ocean of the Supreme Pen and the treasure-filled sea of the bounty and favor of the Abhá Beauty.” 

- 'Abdu'l-Baha (Words of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, 24 September 1912, Denver, USA, recorded by Mahmud Zarqani, His secretary and chronicler during His travels in the West; ‘Mahmud’s Diary’)

Humanity’s maturation process and the gradual manifestation of the power latent in the Word of God in each dispensation

In one of the most characteristic passages He [Bahá’u’lláh] Himself has revealed, He testifies in a language that none can mistake to the truth of this distinguishing principle of Bahá’í belief: “It hath been decreed by Us that the Word of God and all the potentialities thereof shall be manifested unto men in strict conformity with such conditions as have been foreordained by Him Who is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise… Should the Word be allowed to release suddenly all the energies latent within it, no man could sustain the weight of so mighty a revelation… 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Unfoldment of World Civilization’, included in ‘The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh)

“For all her days she was denied a moment of tranquillity.”

The Greatest Holy Leaf was the eldest daughter of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Baha’i Faith. Born in Persia in 1846 she, in her long life which ended in 1932, spanned, with the exception of two years, the entire Heroic Age of this new world religion.

At the age of six when her Father was cast into the subterranean dungeon in Tihrán known as the ‘Black Hole’, her home was immediately looted and despoiled. In a day the wealthy and noble family was beggared and hid in fear of their lives as Bahá’u’lláh lay in heavy chains—the most prominent, the most blameless victim of the turmoil which His Forerunner’s liberal teachings had provoked in a land of bitter Muslim Shí'ah fanaticism.

Navváb, the refined, frail, saintly mother of the little girl fled to a humble dwelling near the dungeon where she could be near her illustrious and much-loved Spouse; ‘Abdu'l-Bahá, her eight-year-old Brother, accompanied His mother when daily she went to the home of friends to ascertain whether Bahá'u'lláh was still alive or had been executed that day— for every day some of His co-religionists were martyred, often being handed over to various guilds, the butchers, the bakers, the shoemakers, the blacksmiths, who exercised their ingenuity on new ways of torturing them to death. Through long days of constant terror the little girl stayed at home with her four-year-old brother Mihdí; often, she recalled, she could hear the shrieks of the mob as they carried off their victims.

The very first letter from the West that reached the Guardian after his temporary absence and return to the Holy Land

I have during the last few days been waiting eagerly for the first written messages of my Western friends, sent to me since they have learned of my return to the Holy Land. How great was the joy when dear Miss Rosenberg's letter -- the very first that reached me from the West -- was handed to me this evening, bearing the joyful news of the safety, the unity and the happiness of my British friends across the seas! I read it and re-read it with particular pleasure and felt a thrill of delight at the welcome news of the harmonious and efficient functioning of your Spiritual Assembly.

I very sincerely hope that now that I have fully re-entered upon my task, I may be enabled to offer my humble share of assistance and advice in the all-important work which is now before you. I fervently pray to God that the field of your activities may go on expanding, that your zeal and efforts may never diminish, and that new souls, active, able and sincere, may soon join with you in bearing aloft the Glorious Standard of the Cause in that land.... 

- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated 23, December, 1922 to the Baha’is of Britain; ‘Unfolding Destiny’)

“Consultation is no easy skill to learn”

Consultation is no easy skill to learn, requiring as it does the subjugation of all egotism and unruly passions, the cultivation of frankness and freedom of thought as well as courtesy, openness of mind, and wholehearted acquiescence in a majority decision. 

- The Universal House of Justice (From a message dated 10 June 1966 to the ‘Bahá'í youth in every land’; ‘Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963 to 1986’) 

Prayer for Employment?

O God! O God! Cause me to drink from the cup of Thy bestowal. Illumine my face with the light of guidance. Make me firm in faithfulness and steadfastness in Thine Ancient Covenant. Suffer me to become one of Thy sincere servants. Open before my face the doors of prosperity. Prepare for me the means of livelihood. Give me my bread through channels over which I have no control, Thy heavenly treasures. Grant me the power to turn my face toward Thy merciful Countenance, to be faithful to Thy Cause.

O Thou Clement and Compassionate One! Verily, Thou art gracious to those who are firm and steadfast in Thy strong and impregnable Covenant. Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds!

- 'Abdu'l-Baha (Star of the West, vol. 14, no. 6, Sept. 1923)

“adversity is the oil that feedeth the flame of this Lamp”: - “the Lamp which the Hand of Divine power hath lit”

Behold how in this Dispensation the worthless and foolish have fondly imagined that by such instruments as massacre, plunder and banishment they can extinguish the Lamp which the Hand of Divine power hath lit, or eclipse the Day Star of everlasting splendor. How utterly unaware they seem to be of the truth that such adversity is the oil that feedeth the flame of this Lamp! Such is God's transforming power. He changeth whatsoever He willeth; He verily hath power over all things.... 

- Baha’u’llah (‘Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh’; The Compilation of Compilations, Vol. II, Opposition)

1909: The Baha’is of Baltimore

Baha’i Magazines in circulation in 1923

In America: “Star of the West” and the “Magazine of the Children of the Kingdom”;

India: the “Bahá’í News” of India;

Turkestan: the “Sun of the East” (Khurshid-i Khavar);

Japan: the “Star of the East”; and in

Germany: the “Sun of Truth”.

- Shoghi Effendi (Letter dated 12 March, 1923, to the beloved of the Lord and the handmaids of the Merciful throughout America, Great Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Japan and Australasia; ‘Baha’i Administration’)

The designation of Qiblih (“Point of Adoration”)

O people of the Bayán! Fear ye the Most Merciful and consider what He hath revealed in another passage. He said: “The Qiblih is indeed He Whom God will make manifest; whenever He moveth, it moveth, until He shall come to rest.” Thus was it set down by the Supreme Ordainer when He desired to make mention of this Most Great Beauty. Meditate on this, O people, and be not of them that wander distraught in the wilderness of error. If ye reject Him at the bidding of your idle fancies, where then is the Qiblih to which ye will turn, O assemblage of the heedless? Ponder ye this verse, and judge equitably before God, that haply ye may glean the pearls of mysteries from the ocean that surgeth in My Name, the All-Glorious, the Most High. 

- Baha’u’llah (‘The Kitab-i-Aqdas’)

1925: Baha'i earthquake orphanage in Tokyo, Japan

circa 1938, Baha’i community in Iran: “authority refuses to grant to…Faith “…the necessary legal right to enforce its laws, to administer its affairs, to conduct its schools, to celebrate its festivals, to circulate its literature, to solemnize its rites, to erect its edifices, and to safeguard its endowments."

In the land of its birth, wherein reside the immense majority of its followers—a country whose capital has been hailed by Bahá’u’lláh as the “mother of the world” and the “dayspring of the joy of mankind”—a civil authority, as yet undivorced officially from the paralyzing influences of an antiquated, a fanatical, and outrageously corrupt clergy, pursues relentlessly its campaign of repression against the adherents of a Faith which it has for well-nigh a century striven unsuccessfully to suppress. Indifferent to the truth that the members of this innocent and proscribed community can justly claim to rank as among the most disinterested, the most competent, and the most ardent lovers of their native land, contemptuous of their high sense of world citizenship which the advocates of an excessive and narrow nationalism can never hope to appreciate, such an authority refuses to grant to a Faith which extends its spiritual jurisdiction over well-nigh six hundred local communities, and which numerically outnumbers the adherents of either the Christian, the Jewish, or the Zoroastrian Faiths in that land, the necessary legal right to enforce its laws, to administer its affairs, to conduct its schools, to celebrate its festivals, to circulate its literature, to solemnize its rites, to erect its edifices, and to safeguard its endowments. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Advent of Divine Justice’)

“no one should exalt himself over the other”

O Children of Men! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory. 

- Baha’u’llah (‘The Hidden Words’; The Compilation of Compilations, vol. II, Women)

The “hand of the oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their power to abolish” the “name and extirpate” the “system” associated with the Báb

The blows so heavily dealt the followers of so precious, so glorious, so potent a Faith failed, however, to assuage the animosity that inflamed its persecutors. Nor did the deliberate and mischievous misrepresentations of its fundamental teachings, its aims and purposes, its hopes and aspirations, its institutions and activities, suffice to stay the hand of the oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their power to abolish its name and extirpate its system. The hand which had struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest blows. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘The Promised Day Is Come’)

1906: One of Tehran's City Gates

The uniqueness of the Baha’i Faith compared to other religions

Question: What is the distinctiveness of the Baha’i Faith? what is its special contribution to world religion?

‘Abdu’l-Baha: “The proclamation of the unity of mankind, and consequently, peace between all nations and also the renovation of the teachings of the prophets whom God has sent to the world, and its presentation in a form suitable to our time.

"When Baha'u'llah appeared in the East proclaiming the unity of mankind all the powers of Persia were directed against Him but in spite of all opposition He spread His message. For fifty years He endured, often in chains, the greatest suffering; four times He was exiled from country to country but His voice could not be silenced, His influence could not be stopped. As a result of His life and teaching the different sects of Persia are becoming one family of God; the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians who have accepted Baha’u’llah are now in the greatest unity and harmony… They have learned to love one another, and are becoming one.

"The cause of unity is the cause of life itself, it is divine; that which leads to division or hatred is satanic. Religion should make for unity. The prophets did not come to bring about distrust and separation. Ignorance is the cause of division and hatred. Religion is like medicine; it is meant to cure, but in the hands of unskilled or bad physicians what should effect a cure may create disease, what should give life may cause death. Therefore we must strive with all our strength, with all our heart, to promote only that which leads to unity and life.” 

- 'Abdu'l-Baha (Adapted from an interview of ‘Abdu’l-Baha by Rev. R. J. Campbell, M.A., London, England, 1911; originally published in ‘The Christian Commonwealth’, London, Eng., issue of Sept. 13, 1911; Star of the West, vol. 2, no. 11, 27 September 1911)