Dearly-beloved friends: Though the Revelation of Baha'u'llah has been
delivered, the World Order which such a Revelation must needs beget is as
yet unborn. Though the Heroic Age of His Faith is passed, the creative
energies which that Age has released have not as yet crystallized into
that world society which, in the fullness of time, is to mirror forth the
brightness of His glory. Though the framework of His Administrative Order
has been erected, and the Formative Period of the Baha'i Era has begun,
yet the promised Kingdom into which the seed of His institutions must
ripen remains as yet uninaugurated. Though His Voice has been raised, and
the ensigns of His Faith have been lifted up in no less than forty
countries of both the East and the West, yet the wholeness of the human
race is as yet unrecognized, its unity unproclaimed, and the standard of
its Most Great Peace unhoisted.
"The heights," Baha'u'llah Himself testifies, "which, through the most
gracious favor of God, mortal man can attain in this Day are as yet
unrevealed to his sight. The world of being hath never had, nor doth it
yet possess, the capacity for such a revelation. The day, however, is
approaching when the potentialities of so great a favor will, by virtue of
His behest, be manifested unto men."
For the revelation of so great a favor a period of intense turmoil and
wide-spread suffering would seem to be indispensable. Resplendent as has
been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the Mission with which
Baha'u'llah has been entrusted, the interval which must elapse ere that
Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is becoming increasingly apparent,
be overshadowed by such moral and social gloom as can alone prepare an
unrepentant humanity for the prize she is destined to inherit.
Into such a period we are now steadily and irresistibly moving. Amidst the
shadows which are increasingly gathering about us we can faintly discern
the glimmerings of Baha'u'llah's unearthly sovereignty appearing fitfully
on the horizon of history. To us, the "generation of the half-light,"
living at a time which may be designated as the period of the incubation
of the World Commonwealth envisaged by Baha'u'llah, has been assigned a
task whose high privilege we can never sufficiently appreciate, and the
arduousness of which we can as yet but dimly recognize. We may well
believe, we who are called upon to experience the operation of the dark
forces destined to unloose a flood of agonizing afflictions, that the
darkest hour that must precede the dawn of the Golden Age of our Faith has
not yet struck. Deep as is the gloom that already encircles the world, the
afflictive ordeals which that world is to suffer are still in preparation,
nor can their blackness be as yet imagined. We stand on the threshold of
an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the death-pangs of the old order
and the birth-pangs of the new. Through the generating influence of the
Faith announced by Baha'u'llah this New World Order may be said to have
been conceived. We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in
the womb of a travailing age--an age waiting for the appointed hour at
which it can cast its burden and yield its fairest fruit.
"The whole earth," writes Baha'u'llah, "is now in a state of pregnancy.
The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when
from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting
blossoms, the most heavenly blessings. Immeasurably exalted is the breeze
that wafteth from the garment of thy Lord, the Glorified! For lo, it hath
breathed its fragrance and made all things new! Well is it with them that
comprehend." "The onrushing winds of the grace of God," He, in the
Suratu'l-Haykal, proclaims, "have passed over all things. Every creature
hath been endowed with all the potentialities it can carry. And yet the
peoples of the world have denied this grace! Every tree hath been endowed
with the choicest fruits, every ocean enriched with the most luminous
gems. Man, himself, hath been invested with the gifts of understanding and
knowledge. The whole creation hath been made the recipient of the
revelation of the All-Merciful, and the earth the repository of things
inscrutable to all except God, the Truth, the Knower of things unseen. The
time is approaching when every created thing will have cast its burden.
Glorified be God Who hath vouchsafed this grace that encompasseth all
things, whether seen or unseen!"
"The Call of God," 'Abdu'l-Baha has written, "when raised, breathed a new
life into the body of mankind, and infused a new spirit into the whole
creation. It is for this reason that the world hath been moved to its
depths, and the hearts and consciences of men been quickened. Erelong the
evidences of this regeneration will be revealed, and the fast asleep will
be awakened."