Century of Light | Page 5

purview of His
gracious utterance, and hath enjoined upon us to show forth love and
affection, wisdom and compassion, faithfulness and unity towards all,
without any discrimination.(9)
Here, the call of the Master is not only to a new level of understanding,
but implies the need for commitment and action. In the urgency and
confidence of the language it employs can be felt the power that would
produce the great achievements of the Persian believers in the decades
since then--both in the world-wide promotion of the Cause and in the
acquisition of capacities that advance civilization:

O ye beloved of the Lord! With the utmost joy and gladness, serve ye
the human world, and love ye the human race. Turn your eyes away
from limitations, and free yourselves from restrictions, for ... freedom
therefrom brings about divine blessings and bestowals.
Wherefore, rest ye not, be it for an instant; seek ye not a minute's
respite nor a moment's repose. Surge ye even as the billows of a mighty
sea, and roar like unto the leviathan of the ocean of eternity.
Therefore, so long as there be a trace of life in one's veins, one must
strive and labour, and seek to lay a foundation that the passing of
centuries and cycles may not undermine, and rear an edifice which the
rolling of ages and aeons cannot overthrow--an edifice that shall prove
eternal and everlasting, so that the sovereignty of heart and soul may be
established and secure in both worlds.(10)
Social historians of the future, with a perspective far more
dispassionate and universal than is presently possible, and benefiting
from unimpeded access to all of the primary documentation, will study
minutely the transformation that the Master achieved in these early
years. Day after day, month after month, from a distant exile where He
was endlessly harried by the host of enemies surrounding Him,
'Abdu'l-Bahá was able not only to stimulate the expansion of the
Persian Bahá'í community, but to shape its consciousness and collective
life. The result was the emergence of a culture, however localized, that
was unlike anything humanity had ever known. Our century, with all its
upheavals and its grandiloquent claims to create a new order, has no
comparable example of the systematic application of the powers of a
single Mind to the building of a distinctive and successful community
that saw its ultimate sphere of work as the globe itself.
Although suffering intermittent atrocities at the hands of the Muslim
clergy and their supporters--without protection from a succession of
indolent Qájár monarchs--the Persian Bahá'í community found a new
lease on life. The number of believers multiplied in all regions of the
country, persons prominent in the life of society were enrolled,
including several influential members of the clergy, and the forerunners
of administrative institutions emerged in the form of rudimentary

consultative bodies. The importance of the latter development alone
would be impossible to exaggerate. In a land and among a people
accustomed for centuries to a patriarchal system that concentrated all
decision-making authority in the hands of an absolute monarch or Shí'ih
mujtáhids, a community representing a cross section of that society had
broken with the past, taking into its own hands the responsibility for
deciding its collective affairs through consultative action.
In the society and culture the Master was developing, spiritual energies
expressed themselves in the practical affairs of day-to-day life. The
emphasis in the teachings on education provided the impulse for the
establishment of Bahá'í schools--including the Tarbíyat school for
girls,(11) which gained national renown--in the capital, as well as in
provincial centres. With the assistance of American and European
Bahá'í helpers, clinics and other medical facilities followed. As early as
1925, communities in a number of cities had instituted classes in
Esperanto, in response to their awareness of the Bahá'í teaching that
some form of auxiliary international language must be adopted. A
network of couriers, reaching across the land, provided the struggling
Bahá'í community with the rudiments of the postal service that the rest
of the country so conspicuously lacked. The changes under way
touched the homeliest circumstances of day-to-day life. In obedience to
the laws of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, for example, Persian Bahá'ís abandoned
the use of the filthy public baths, prolific in their spread of infection
and disease, and began to rely on showers that used fresh water.
All of these advances, whether social, organizational or practical, owed
their driving force to the moral transformation taking place among the
believers, a transformation that was steadily distinguishing
Bahá'ís--even in the eyes of those hostile to the Faith--as candidates for
positions of trust. That such far-reaching changes could so quickly set
one segment of the Persian population apart from the largely
antagonistic majority around it was a demonstration of the powers
released by Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant with His