seems to have been the releasing of the individual from slavery: physical, political, religious, mental and moral: to establish the rights of the individual, to emphasize the value of the human soul. We may safely say that in the fruition of democracy and of scientific achievement this freedom has been acquired; the irresistible power of God’s Word has executed its divine purpose—but with what a sacrifice of intent, when we view modern man, responsive to the affairs of this world, but skeptical and lethargic with regard to that “Kingdom” that “is not of this world.”
Standing here on the lovely shore of Galilee, the shadow of the cross seeming to stretch before rather than behind me, I can see the multitude straining in His Footsteps, not interested in learning of Him how to put more into life, but interested, then as we are today, in how to get more out of life; begging, not for the opening of that inward eye that is a window set toward heaven; but for the opening of the merely physical eye which in beholding, no matter how fair, the objects of this world can never see beyond its limitations. To lift a man from somatic death—of what value is this? He must but die again. But here in the very presence of Him who in that day alone could confer the ineffable bounty of Unending Life, here they were taking account of a mere span of human days.
Truly it is the nature of Form to receive; but it is also the nature of Spirit to give, and in all those countless multitudes who were partakers in His mercy how few there were who gave back to Him that indispensable allegiance that was necessary to establish His Kingdom on earth.
Human conditions can only be changed by human beings. That curious conception, recrudescent from time to time in theology, that there is a force moving in the world independent of human choice and human effort, which brings to pass a certain predestined pattern that human beings are powerless to assist or to thwart, certainly has no place in the direct teachings of the Founders of any of the Sacred Religions.
This world and its destiny depend too appallingly upon human beings. The call to follow Them is a call to the most intense, vigorous, and unremitting effort. We may see but we cannot enter that Kingdom whose paths are peace, without putting aside our riches of whatever kind, material, mental, personal; without going back to that degree of naivete, faith, and enthusiasm that characterizes our childhood days. The effort of spanning a chasm or leveling a mountain is slight in comparison to allaying our prejudices, and finding our raptures in complete detachment from the experiences of this world. The “superhuman effort” to which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá summons us is this dramatic engaging of all the forces of the soul to combat our petty personalisms and subtle egotistical pretentions.
The beauty and terror of this spot! Where the corpse is, there are the eagles gathered together: then the eagles of the Roman legions; today the eagles on our dollars, a world still steeped in greed and commercialism. Not until the earthquake, the wind, and the fire of our struggles, our brutalities, and our oppressions have passed, shall we be able to hear the still, small voice of God’s changeless command, “Love one another.”
A deep ineffaceable impression comes to me here by the shores of this tiny sea. Again and again ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, “Look ye at the time of Christ,” warning us that one by one the events of that era would be repeated in this age, in which the great prophecies of Jesus are fulfilled in the coming of Bahá’u’lláh. His warning is to enable us to thwart those tendencies that swept Christianity away from its Founder and established it upon a basis alien to His teachings. The Pauline theology bears no relation, however remote, to the pure teachings of Jesus. His teachings are based upon a dynamic and fundamental change in the life of the individual. In the poignant parable of
