Like a Drop Beside the Ocean

Another one of the qualities that you found in Shoghi Effendi, and which rather astonished me, was humility. I had studied a lot in the writings about humility. I had read a lot in the religious teachings about being humble, and I thought I knew a little bit about what it meant. But you knew nothing about humility until you saw Shoghi Effendi. Shoghi Effendi never spoke of himself, and one of the things that interested me very much when he was talking about the Cause and its development, he would speak about the conditions in the days of the Báb, and he would speak about the conditions and activities of the Faith in the days of Bahá’u’lláh, and he would speak about the conditions and activities of the Faith in the days of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and then he would speak about the Faith in the days after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He never said in the days of the Guardian, or in my period of administration, but he always referred to the days after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

One time we were talking, and I made some comment to the Guardian about some of the activities of the Cause, I don’t remember what it was, and I mentioned his name in the same sentence and almost in the same vein as that of the Master. And he stopped me and said, “Don’t ever do that. Don’t ever mention my name in the same breath as you mention the Master. The Master was like the ocean; I am like a drop. The Master was like the sun; and I am like an atom. So don’t ever, ever mention my name in the same theme or same trend of thought as that of the Master. There is a vast gulf between ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and all the rest of creation, and the between the Guardian.”

Source: Leroy Ioas, In the Days of the Guardian, a talk given in Johannesburg, South Africa, 31 October 1958 (published on cassette by the US Bahá’í Publishing Trust; transcript at bahai.works).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: humility).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/humility