Never indeed have there been such widespread and basic upheavals, whether
in the social, economic or political spheres of human activity as those
now going on in different parts of the world. Never have there been so
many and varied sources of danger as those that now threaten the structure
of society. The following words of Baha'u'llah are indeed significant as
we pause to reflect upon the present state of a strangely disordered
world: "How long will humanity persist in its waywardness? How long will
injustice continue? How long is chaos and confusion to reign amongst men?
How long will discord agitate the face of society? The winds of despair
are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and
afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending
convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing
order appears to be lamentably defective."
The disquieting influence of over thirty million souls living under
minority conditions throughout the continent of Europe; the vast and
ever-swelling army of the unemployed with its crushing burden and
demoralizing influence on governments and peoples; the wicked, unbridled
race of armaments swallowing an ever-increasing share of the substance of
already impoverished nations; the utter demoralization from which the
international financial markets are now increasingly suffering; the
onslaught of secularism invading what has hitherto been regarded as the
impregnable strongholds of Christian and Muslim orthodoxy--these stand out
as the gravest symptoms that bode ill for the future stability of the
structure of modern civilization. Little wonder if one of Europe's
preeminent thinkers, honored for his wisdom and restraint, should have
been forced to make so bold an assertion: "The world is passing through
the gravest crisis in the history of civilization." "We stand," writes
another, "before either a world catastrophe, or perhaps before the dawn of
a greater era of truth and wisdom." "It is in such times," he adds, "that
religions have perished and are born."
Might we not already discern, as we scan the political horizon, the
alignment of those forces that are dividing afresh the continent of Europe
into camps of potential combatants, determined upon a contest that may
mark, unlike the last war, the end of an epoch, a vast epoch, in the
history of human evolution? Are we, the privileged custodians of a
priceless Faith, called upon to witness a cataclysmical change,
politically as fundamental and spiritually as beneficent as that which
precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the West? Might it not
happen--every vigilant adherent of the Faith of Baha'u'llah might well
pause to reflect--that out of this world eruption there may stream forces
of such spiritual energy as shall recall, nay eclipse, the splendor of
those signs and wonders that accompanied the establishment of the Faith of
Jesus Christ? Might there not emerge out of the agony of a shaken world a
religious revival of such scope and power as to even transcend the potency
of those world-directing forces with which the Religions of the Past have,
at fixed intervals and according to an inscrutable Wisdom, revived the
fortunes of declining ages and peoples? Might not the bankruptcy of this
present, this highly-vaunted materialistic civilization, in itself clear
away the choking weeds that now hinder the unfoldment and future
efflorescence of God's struggling Faith?
Let Baha'u'llah Himself shed the illumination of His words upon our path
as we steer our course amid the pitfalls and miseries of this troubled
age. More than fifty years ago, in a world far removed from the ills and
trials that now torment it, there flowed from His Pen these prophetic
words: "The world is in travail and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its
face is turned towards waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight
that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will
long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly
appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then and only
then will the Divine Standard be unfurled and the Nightingale of Paradise
warble its melody."