|
The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh
|
Pages 45-47
|
|
The Fire of Ordeal
| |
1 |
Great and far-reaching as have been those changes in the past,
they cannot appear, when viewed in their proper perspective, except
as subsidiary adjustments preluding that transformation of unparalleled
majesty and scope which humanity is in this age bound to
undergo. That the forces of a world catastrophe can alone precipitate
such a new phase of human thought is, alas, becoming increasingly
apparent. That nothing short of the fire of a severe ordeal, unparalleled
in its intensity, can fuse and weld the discordant entities that
constitute the elements of present-day civilization, into the integral
components of the world commonwealth of the future, is a truth
which future events will increasingly demonstrate.
| |
2 |
The prophetic voice of Bahá'u'lláh warning, in the concluding
passages of the Hidden Words, "the peoples of the world" that "an
unforeseen calamity is following them and that grievous retribution
awaiteth them" throws indeed a lurid light upon the immediate
fortunes of sorrowing humanity. Nothing but a fiery ordeal, out of
which humanity will emerge, chastened and prepared, can succeed in
implanting that sense of responsibility which the leaders of a new-born
age must arise to shoulder.
| |
3 |
I would again direct your attention to those ominous words of
Bahá'u'lláh which I have already quoted: "And when the appointed
hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the
limbs of mankind to quake."
| |
4 |
Has not `Abdu'l-Bahá Himself asserted in unequivocal language
that "another war, fiercer than the last, will assuredly break out"?
| |
5 |
Upon the consummation of this colossal, this unspeakably glorious
enterprise--an enterprise that baffled the resources of Roman
statesmanship and which Napoleon's desperate efforts failed to
achieve--will depend the ultimate realization of that millennium of
which poets of all ages have sung and seers have long dreamed.
Upon it will depend the fulfillment of the prophecies uttered by the
Prophets of old when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and
the lion and the lamb lie down together. It alone can usher in the
Kingdom of the Heavenly Father as anticipated by the Faith of
Jesus Christ. It alone can lay the foundation for the New World
Order visualized by Bahá'u'lláh--a World Order that shall reflect,
however dimly, upon this earthly plane, the ineffable splendors of the
Abhá Kingdom.
| |
6 |
One word more in conclusion. The proclamation of the Oneness
of Mankind--the head corner-stone of Bahá'u'lláh's all-embracing
dominion--can under no circumstances be compared with such expressions
of pious hope as have been uttered in the past. His is not
merely a call which He raised, alone and unaided, in the face of the
relentless and combined opposition of two of the most powerful
Oriental potentates of His day--while Himself an exile and prisoner
in their hands. It implies at once a warning and a promise--a warning
that in it lies the sole means for the salvation of a greatly
suffering world, a promise that its realization is at hand.
| |
7 |
Uttered at a time when its possibility had not yet been seriously
envisaged in any part of the world, it has, by virtue of that celestial
potency which the Spirit of Bahá'u'lláh has breathed into it,
come at last to be regarded, by an increasing number of thoughtful
men, not only as an approaching possibility, but as the necessary outcome
of the forces now operating in the world.
| |
|
|