Bahá’í Administration
Introduction
Introduction
The passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on November 28, 1921, created a problem of religious administration unparalled in the history of the world. Since the declarartion of the Báb in 1844 there had come into being a community of faith containing representatives of every rece, creed and class—hundreds of thousands of believers—united successively in devotion to the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and now suddenly bereft of that spiritual leadership and inspiration which so long had served as the foundation of their unity, the unbreakable bond welding them into a new faith.
This Bahá’í community, in fact, presented so complex a variety of types, conditions, races, nationalities, languages, classes and religious traditions that it might have been taken as a true cross section of humanity. The problem of maintaining these souls in unity of action as well as unity of belief—of continuing their spiritual community unimpaired through the obvious dangers of moral and physical disruption surrounding it on every side—exemplified, though on a comparitively small scale, the problem of uniting humanity itself.
It is significant of the completeness of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh that the text of His book provided for this as for every other emergency confronting human souls in this age. The supreme test of the Bahá’í Faith had in fact already been successfully met during the the days which followed the ascension of Bahá’u’lláh in 1892. By the appointment of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the Center of His Covenant, Bahá’u’lláh prolonged His own ministry for well-nigh thirty years, a period coinciding with an entire generation and therefore sufficient to withstand the onslaughts of those ambitious persons who arose to overthrow or pervert the Faith from within and without its ranks. For the words of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, according to the text of this appoint-
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