O friends! Black clouds have shrouded all this earth, and
the darkness of hatred and malice, of cruelty and aggression and defilement is
spreading far and wide. The people, one and all, live out their lives in a
heedless stupor and the chief virtues of man are held to be his rapacity and
his thirst for blood. Out of all the mass of humankind God hath chosen the
friends, and He hath favoured them with His guidance and boundless grace. His
purpose is this, that we, all of us, should strive with our whole hearts to
offer ourselves up, guide others to His path, and train the souls of men—until
these frenzied beasts change to gazelles in the meadows of oneness, and these
wolves to lambs of God, and these brutish creatures to angelic hosts; till the
fires of hatred are quenched, and the flame coming out of the sheltered vale of
the Holy Shrine doth shed its splendours; till the foul odour of the tyrant’s
dunghill is blown away, and yieldeth to the pure, sweet scents that stream from
the rosebeds of faith and trust. On that day will the weak of intellect draw on
the bounty of the divine, Universal Mind, and they whose life is but
abomination will seek out these cleansing, holy breaths.
But there needs must be souls who will manifest such
bestowals, there needs must be husbandmen to till these fields, gardeners for
these gardens, there needs must be fish to swim in this sea, stars to gleam in
these heavens. These ailing ones must be tended by spiritual physicians, these
who are the lost need gentle guides—so that from such souls the bereft may
receive their portion, and the deprived obtain their share, and the poor
discover in such as they unmeasured wealth, and the seekers hear from them
unanswerable proofs.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Slections from the Writings of
‘Abdu’l-Baha’)
