Who else can be the blissful if not the community of the Most Great Name,
whose world-embracing, continually consolidating activities constitute the
one integrating process in a world whose institutions, secular as well as
religious, are for the most part dissolving? They indeed are "the people
of the right," whose "noble habitation" is fixed on the foundations of the
World Order of Baha'u'llah--the Ark of everlasting salvation in this most
grievous Day. Of all the kindreds of the earth they alone can recognize,
amidst the welter of a tempestuous age, the Hand of the Divine Redeemer
that traces its course and controls its destinies. They alone are aware of
the silent growth of that orderly world polity whose fabric they
themselves are weaving.
Conscious of their high calling, confident in the society-building power
which their Faith possesses, they press forward, undeterred and
undismayed, in their efforts to fashion and perfect the necessary
instruments wherein the embryonic World Order of Baha'u'llah can mature
and develop. It is this building process, slow and unobtrusive, to which
the life of the world-wide Baha'i Community is wholly consecrated, that
constitutes the one hope of a stricken society. For this process is
actuated by the generating influence of God's changeless Purpose, and is
evolving within the framework of the Administrative Order of His Faith.
In a world the structure of whose political and social institutions is
impaired, whose vision is befogged, whose conscience is bewildered, whose
religious systems have become anemic and lost their virtue, this healing
Agency, this leavening Power, this cementing Force, intensely alive and
all-pervasive, has been taking shape, is crystallizing into institutions,
is mobilizing its forces, and is preparing for the spiritual conquest and
the complete redemption of mankind. Though the society which incarnates
its ideals be small, and its direct and tangible benefits as yet
inconsiderable, yet the potentialities with which it has been endowed, and
through which it is destined to regenerate the individual and rebuild a
broken world, are incalculable.
For well nigh a century it has, amid the noise and tumult of a distracted
age, and despite the incessant persecutions to which its leaders,
institutions, and followers have been subjected, succeeded in preserving
its identity, in reinforcing its stability and strength, in maintaining
its organic unity, in preserving the integrity of its laws and its
principles, in erecting its defenses, and in extending and consolidating
its institutions. Numerous and powerful have been the forces that have
schemed, both from within and from without, in lands both far and near, to
quench its light and abolish its holy name. Some have apostatized from its
principles, and betrayed ignominiously its cause. Others have hurled
against it the fiercest anathemas which the embittered leaders of any
ecclesiastical institution are able to pronounce. Still others have heaped
upon it the afflictions and humiliations which sovereign authority can
alone, in the plenitude of its power, inflict.
The utmost its avowed and secret enemies could hope to achieve was to
retard its growth and obscure momentarily its purpose. What they actually
accomplished was to purge and purify its life, to stir it to still greater
depths, to galvanize its soul, to prune its institutions, and cement its
unity. A schism, a permanent cleavage in the vast body of its adherents,
they could never create.
They who betrayed its cause, its lukewarm and faint-hearted supporters,
withered away and dropped as dead leaves, powerless to cloud its radiance
or to imperil its structure. Its most implacable adversaries, they who
assailed it from without, were hurled from power, and, in the most
astonishing fashion, met their doom. Persia had been the first to repress
and oppose it. Its monarchs had miserably fallen, their dynasty had
collapsed, their name was execrated, the hierarchy that had been their
ally and had propped their declining state, had been utterly discredited.
Turkey, which had thrice banished its Founder and inflicted on Him cruel
and life-long imprisonment, had passed through one of the severest ordeals
and far-reaching revolutions that its history has recorded, had shrunk
from one of the most powerful empires to a tiny Asiatic republic, its
Sultanate obliterated, its dynasty overthrown, its Caliphate, the
mightiest institution of Islam, abolished.
Meanwhile the Faith that had been the object of such monstrous betrayals,
and the target for such woeful assaults, was going from strength to
strength, was forging ahead, undaunted and undivided by the injuries it
had received. In the midst of trials it had inspired its loyal followers
with a resolution that no obstacle, however formidable, could undermine.
It had lighted in their hearts a faith that no misfortune, however black,
could quench. It had infused into their hearts a hope that no force,
however determined, could shatter.