Not only must irreligion and its monstrous offspring, the triple curse
that oppresses the soul of mankind in this day, be held responsible for
the ills which are so tragically besetting it, but other evils and vices,
which are, for the most part, the direct consequences of the "weakening of
the pillars of religion," must also be regarded as contributory factors to
the manifold guilt of which individuals and nations stand convicted. The
signs of moral downfall, consequent to the dethronement of religion and
the enthronement of these usurping idols, are too numerous and too patent
for even a superficial observer of the state of present-day society to
fail to notice. The spread of lawlessness, of drunkenness, of gambling,
and of crime; the inordinate love of pleasure, of riches, and other
earthly vanities; the laxity in morals, revealing itself in the
irresponsible attitude towards marriage, in the weakening of parental
control, in the rising tide of divorce, in the deterioration in the
standard of literature and of the press, and in the advocacy of theories
that are the very negation of purity, of morality and chastity--these
evidences of moral decadence, invading both the East and the West,
permeating every stratum of society, and instilling their poison in its
members of both sexes, young and old alike, blacken still further the
scroll upon which are inscribed the manifold transgressions of an
unrepentant humanity.
Small wonder that Baha'u'llah, the Divine Physician, should have declared:
"In this day the tastes of men have changed, and their power of perception
hath altered. The contrary winds of the world, and its colors, have
provoked a cold, and deprived men's nostrils of the sweet savors of
Revelation."
Brimful and bitter indeed is the cup of humanity that has failed to
respond to the summons of God as voiced by His Supreme Messenger, that has
dimmed the lamp of its faith in its Creator, that has transferred, in so
great a measure, the allegiance owed Him to the gods of its own invention,
and polluted itself with the evils and vices which such a transference
must necessarily engender.
Dear friends! It is in this light that we, the followers of Baha'u'llah,
should regard this visitation of God which, in the concluding years of the
first century of the Baha'i era, afflicts the generality, and has thrown
into such a bewildering confusion the affairs, of mankind. It is because
of this dual guilt, the things it has done and the things it has left
undone, its misdeeds as well as its dismal and signal failure to
accomplish its clear and unmistakable duty towards God, His Messenger, and
His Faith, that this grievous ordeal, whatever its immediate political and
economic causes, has laid its adamantine grip upon it.
God, however, as has been pointed out in the very beginning of these
pages, does not only punish the wrongdoings of His children. He chastises
because He is just, and He chastens because He loves. Having chastened
them, He cannot, in His great mercy, leave them to their fate. Indeed, by
the very act of chastening them He prepares them for the mission for which
He has created them. "My calamity is My providence," He, by the mouth of
Baha'u'llah, has assured them, "outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but
inwardly it is light and mercy."
The flames which His Divine justice have kindled cleanse an unregenerate
humanity, and fuse its discordant, its warring elements as no other agency
can cleanse or fuse them. It is not only a retributory and destructive
fire, but a disciplinary and creative process, whose aim is the salvation,
through unification, of the entire planet. Mysteriously, slowly, and
resistlessly God accomplishes His design, though the sight that meets our
eyes in this day be the spectacle of a world hopelessly entangled in its
own meshes, utterly careless of the Voice which, for a century, has been
calling it to God, and miserably subservient to the siren voices which are
attempting to lure it into the vast abyss.