Memorials of the Faithful

A Persian introduction states that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote the book in 1915, and granted permission to M. A. Kahrubáʼí to have it published. The text, which is dated 1924, bears the seal of the Haifa Bahá’í Assembly. A second title page, in English, describes the work as “An account, from the pen of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, of the lives of some of the early Bahá’í believers who passed away during His lifetime,” although the work was actually recorded from His utterances.

Here, then, almost half a century after His passing, is a new book given to the world by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

We wonder how many of us, at the close of unbelievably painful and arduous years, would devote the waning time not to our own memories but to the lives of some seventy companions, many of them long dead, to save them from oblivion. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was present at many of these scenes, yet time after time He effaces Himself to focus on some companion, often on one so humble that the passing years would surely have refused him a history. And if, to the cynical, these believers seem better than ordinary men, we should remember that the presence of the Manifestation made them so, and that they are being looked at through the eyes of the Master—Who said that the imperfect eye beholds imperfections, and that it is easier to please God than to please people.

Thus the book is still another token of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s partiality for the human race. The love He personified was not blind but observant, not impersonal but warm and tender; it was a continual attitude of unobtrusive care. Such love, from such a Being, does not end with one life span. He left the world half a century ago, and most of those who longed for Him so much that the hostile said they were not Bahá’ís, but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’ís, are now vanished from our sight. But still, His love is here, for new millions to find.