Here from the hilltop is the first sight of the lapis waters of this gem-like lake. The whir and drift of pinions press nearer; the haunting sense of having passed this way before—not in any gross human fashion but in the lift of the soul to a new level of reverence—and of pain; that never-ending pain due to the realization that even those who know their Lord in His Day so frequently increase His burdens and multiply His Cares. Not so much pain because of Judas, as pain because of Peter, because of those who brought their frailties, their wrangles, their littlenesses into His very presence. Three short years in which to renew again God's Covenant with man, in which to proclaim His imperishable evangel of eternal salvation to a brutal world; three short years in which to outflank the hosts of tyranny, greed and materialism—and not one precious moment to waste in anything personal or less than total dedication to His ends and purposes.

A world to be saved and nobody to save it but frail, selfish, willful, cowardly human beings!

The life of Shoghi Effendi* gives me the real example of what it actually means to devote one’s life to the service of others. “Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be yet lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in.” (Psalm 24:7.) It is solely through such “gates” and “doors” as the Guardian that the spiritual life of humanity can truly emerge. "The King of Glory" can only come into the world through the release of those qualities, the performance of those personal obligations, the assumption of those attributes that lead us from the beast to the angel.

One of the supreme proofs of the Prophet of God, when He appears in the world, is His unique ability to transform hearts and revolutionize lives. To hear, as we far too frequently hear, that we should not look at the followers of a Great Prophet but look at His teachings, is very much like saying that we should not test the flying power of an airplane but look at its outline. Of what possible advantage is the coming of the Manifestation of God from age to age if His presence is only to amass a certain bulk of literature to be read in leisure moments; to outline a remote Utopian scheme inaccessible to human performance?

The thing to which our gaze is directed in scrutinizing the claim of the Prophet is no more what He teaches than the effect that His teachings produce in human lives.

I often wonder if my estimate of history has been clouded by too intense an expectation; too impracticable a perfectionism as regards myself and my fellows; for as I look back over the contours of history and attempt to heft those strange objects we call institutions, comities, epochs and cycles, they strain my mental muscles as a falling weight rather than dazzle my eyes as an effulgent light. Always the same story: God calling to His impregnable standard the souls of men; always promising that the import of His command shall come to pass, and we, meagre mites, in the mighty sweep of His exhortation proving again and again unequal to the spiritual task that He spreads before us. The spirits of men proving unequal to their high calling, the very stones, the stones of hard hearts and narrow human interests take up the stupendous labor of lifting the inert substance of selfishness into the divine dimension of love and unity.