Century of Light | Page 9

the words of Shoghi Effendi:
He Who, in His own words, had entered prison as a youth and left it an
old man, Who never in His life had faced a public audience, had
attended no school, had never moved in Western circles, and was
unfamiliar with Western customs and language, had arisen not only to
proclaim from pulpit and platform, in some of the chief capitals of
Europe and in the leading cities of the North American continent, the
distinctive verities enshrined in His Father's Faith, but to demonstrate
as well the Divine origin of the Prophets gone before Him, and to
disclose the nature of the tie binding them to that Faith.(22)
* * * * *

No more brilliant a stage for the opening act of this great drama could
have been desired than London, capital city of the largest and most
cosmopolitan empire the world has ever known. In the eyes of the little
groups of believers who had made the practical arrangements and who
longed for the sight of His face, the trip was a triumph far surpassing
their brightest hopes. Public officials, scholars, writers, editors,
industrialists, leaders of reform movements, members of the British
aristocracy, and influential clergymen of many denominations eagerly
sought Him out, invited Him to their platforms, classrooms, homes and
pulpits, and showered appreciation on the views He expounded. On
Sunday, 10 September 1911, the Master spoke for the first time to a
public audience anywhere, from the pulpit of the City Temple. His
words evoked for His hearers the vision of a new age in the evolution
of civilization:
This is a new cycle of human power. All the horizons of the world are
luminous, and the world will become indeed as a garden and a
paradise.... You are loosed from ancient superstitions which have kept
men ignorant, destroying the foundation of true humanity.
The gift of God to this enlightened age is the knowledge of the oneness
of mankind and of the fundamental oneness of religion. War shall cease
between nations, and by the will of God the Most Great Peace shall
come; the world will be seen as a new world, and all men will live as
brothers.(23)
After an additional two months' stay in Paris and a return to Alexandria
for a winter sojourn and the recuperation of His health, 'Abdu'l-Bahá
sailed on 25 March 1912 to New York City, arriving on 11 April of that
year. At even the simplest physical level, a programme packed with
hundreds of public addresses, conferences and private talks in over
forty cities across North America and an additional nineteen in Europe,
some of them visited more than once, was a feat that may well have no
parallel in modern history. On both continents, but especially in North
America, 'Abdu'l-Bahá received a highly appreciative welcome from
distinguished audiences devoted to such concerns as peace, women's
rights, racial equality, social reform and moral development. On an

almost daily basis, His talks and interviews received wide coverage in
mass-circulation newspapers. He Himself was later to write that He had
"observed all the doors open ... and the ideal power of the Kingdom of
God removing every obstacle and obstruction."(24)
The openness with which He was met permitted 'Abdu'l-Bahá to
proclaim unambiguously the social principles of the new Revelation.
Shoghi Effendi has summed up the truths thus presented:
The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or
tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and
fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of all religions; the
condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class
or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and science;
the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of
human kind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education;
the adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the
extremes of wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for
the adjudication of disputes between nations; the exaltation of work,
performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the
glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of
religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and
the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme
goal of all mankind--these stand out as the essential elements of that
Divine polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as well
as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys.(25)
At the heart of the Master's message was the announcement that the
long-promised Day for the unification of humanity and the
establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God had come. That
Kingdom, as unveiled in 'Abdu'l-Bahá's letters and talks, owed