Know all mankind of all nations, sects and tribes as your
kith and kin. Consider not their deeds, but only God. Seek your reward from Him
and not from them. Know the aged of all nations as your fathers, the juveniles
as your brothers and the children as your own. No matter what lack of courtesy
or what severe persecution or stern expressions of hate and unfathomable enmity
you receive, you must have no excuse like the following: "So and so has
spoken unkindly about me," "So and so has not done me justice,"
-- nay, rather you must have no excuse but live according to the Divine
Teachings, whether humanity prove agreeable or disagreeable, whether humanity
prove hateful or loving, whether it receives you or casts you out, so that
perchance you may be assisted in hoisting the standard of peace and pitching
the Tabernacle of Oneness and solidarity of the world of humanity -- so that
this temporal life may ultimate in the Life Everlasting, and this darkness of
ignorance which has pervaded the whole world may be converted into the
illumination of guidance. So that material man may become celestial, and the
earthly souls become the heavenly souls; that the blind may become perceptive,
the deaf attentive, the ignorant wise, the dead arise, so that, in fact, the
Kingdom of God in the world of humanity may pitch its Canopy and its Tabernacle
in the utmost glory.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a Tablet, Star of the West, vol. 5. No. 9,
August 20, 1914)
