Century of Light | Page 5

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 followers and by 'Abdu'l-Bahá's assumption of the leadership this Covenant invested uniquely in Him.
Throughout these years Persian political life was in almost constant turmoil. While Násiri'd-Dín Sháh's immediate successor, Muzaffari'd-Dín Sháh, was induced to approve a constitution in 1906, his successor, Muhammad-'Alí Sháh, recklessly dissolved the first two parliaments--in one case attacking with cannon fire the building where