It is a wonderful thing that, in the very life-time of some here present, the great movement set in motion in Persia by the Báb, sanctified by His own blood and the blood of twenty thousand followers—extended and fortified by Bahá’u’lláh through forty years of captivity—and proclaimed to the Western world by the golden tongue of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—the Chrysostom of the Movement—should be universally acclaimed as expressing the chief Hope of the World. All forms of religion are essentially the same, it teaches—all prophets and teachers of truth are true—all men are brothers—women are equals with men—equal education—equal opportunity—this pure Universalism, this exemplification of clear thinking and noble living, and, I may add, holy dying, is not indeed confined to the Bahá’í Movement; it is proclaimed and followed by some I have already mentioned, and by others, including the Free Religious Movement—but it has been so expressly set forth by the sanctified sagacity of Bahá’u’lláh, proclaimed by the silver eloquence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and watered by the blood of twice ten thousand martyrs—that the Bahá’í may by all generous minds be regarded as first among many brethren.

Here is a highly devotional form of religion, offering full encouragement to the spiritual and aspirational side of human nature, but at the same time giving dis-couragement to its superstitious tendencies; a religion disclaiming supernatural sanctions, non-miraculous, ethical, pacifist, humanist, universalist, yet withal profoundly spiritual;—to such a religion the blundering blood-stained world may hopefully look for guidance and inspiration. I was particularly struck by the paragraph in the Bahá’í paper, (read to the Conference by Mr. Mountfort Mills), in which the writer referred to the Economic situation. Amid much reading of Economics, I do not remember to have seen the trouble so clearly diagnosed as in the first sentence I am about to quote or the remedy more clearly set forth than in the last:

“Now by the fear that is based on the idea of poverty either actual or prospective, the human soul is ever turned downward into nature, where the predominant law is the struggle for existence .. and becoming dominated by this law, and captive to it, the soul’s struggles only the more heavily burden its own chains. For the struggle for existence sets off the powers of one soul against the powers of another, and this mutual division of powers means mutual defeat. Thus in this day the sciences and inventions which shadow forth a universal order, and dumbly signify the existence of a reality whose law is co-operation, have become, through perversion, the greatest menace to the existence of mankind.”

“The disease which afflicts the body of humanity is lack of love and absence of altruism. In the hearts of men no real love is found, and the condition is such that unless their susceptibilities are awakened by some power so that unity, love and accord develop within them, there can be no healing, no relief among mankind.”
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá)