Behold what eleven disciples of Christ have accomplished,
how they sacrificed themselves! I exhort you to walk in their footsteps. When a
person is detached, he is capable of revolutionizing the whole world. The
disciples of Christ met together in consultation on top of a mountain. They
pledged themselves to undergo all manner of hardships, to accept every
affliction as a bounty and to consider all difficulties easy to overcome. `He
who is tied to a family, let him arrange to leave it; he who is not should
remain single. He should forgo his comfort and his life.' Consulting thus, they
descended from the mountain and each one went a different way and never
returned. It is for this reason that they were able to leave behind such
achievements. After Christ, the disciples truly forgot themselves, and not
merely in word.
(‘Abdu’l-Baha’s remarks to a group of believers when visiting
some churches, August 31, 1912, Montreal, Canada)
