|
"..East and West have joined to worship stars of faded splendour, and have turned in prayer unto darkened horizons. Both have utterly neglected the broad foundation of God's sacred laws, and have grown unmindful of the merits and virtues of His religion. They have regarded certain customs and conventions as the basis of the Divine faith, and have firmly established themselves therein. They have imagined themselves as having attained a glorious pinnacle of achievement and prosperity, when in reality they have touched the innermost depths of heedlessness and deprived themselves wholly of God's bounteous gifts." ('Abdul-Baha) (88:2) It would have been easy and natural for 'Abdul-Baha in the circumstances to have challenged the Western fallacy, exposed its error, developed an argument brilliant and overpowering to emphasize the agreement of His teaching with that of the Bible, and the hollowness of the Western expectation of a man-made kingdom and of materialistic hegemony of one race over others. But 'Abdul-Baha did nothing of the kind. The great ideal which He held before His audiences was at all times and places one and the same: Unity Through Love. His Paris Talks are full throughout of a spiritual wisdom, a spontaneous warmth of heart and sweetness and winning tenderness that would be hard to match in the world's revealed religious literature. His first public address was delivered in a Christian Church in London. He said, (92:2) This truth of a new dawning of power in the world became the master thought of all His speeches throughout His work in the West. In America, however, He addressed the Americans particularly as Christians and made an appeal to them not to be listeners only but to become the reapers whom Christ had prophesied would arise in His harvest day. He sought not only to instruct and illumine the minds of His audience but to awaken in them the power of spirituality and enthusiasm which would overcome the materialism that infected mankind and would develop in them a new loving spirituality which would enable His message to get home to their hearts. (93:2) He presented a new picture of Christ in contrast to the Christ of orthodoxy, of sect and schism and dogma; one which showed that Christ's real purpose was to unite human hearts with the power of Divine love; such a Christ as none had really conceived, eager, vigorous, bringing together people of all sorts and kinds and races and nations and overwhelming the prejudices and traditions which separated them. The natural force of His own warm, buoyant, loving nature gave power and reality to His presentation so that He was able to reveal a new Christ such as the people had never realized.
(93:3)
|