The Ark of Salvation: The Master Explains the Covenant
Julia M. Grundy, Ten Days in the Light of Akka, (1907), Bahai Publishing Society · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
'Akká (today: Acre, Israel)
A retelling based on Ten Days in the Light of Akka by Julia M. Grundy, a record of a 1905 pilgrimage to 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the prison-city of 'Akká. The words in quotation marks are the Master's own, as the pilgrim wrote them down at the time.
On the Day of the Covenant we remember 'Abdu'l-Bahá as the Centre of the Covenant. It is worth remembering, too, that the Master Himself taught the believers what the Covenant was — and that some of His clearest words on the subject were spoken not from a platform, but at close quarters, to a few pilgrims who had crossed the world to sit at His table.
In 1905 a small party of American believers made the long journey to 'Akká. One of them, Julia Grundy, kept careful notes of what she heard, and published them afterward under the title Ten Days in the Light of Akka. Among the subjects the Master spoke of in those days was the one closest to the heart of this Holy Day: obedience to the Covenant of God.
The pilgrims had come from a young community, far from the centre of the Faith, and the Master knew the dangers that lay ahead of them — the pull of pride, the temptation each soul feels to set up his own opinion as a standard, the slow drift by which a community can come apart. Against all of that He set the Covenant, and He chose images a fisherman or a sailor could understand.
"The Covenant of God in this Day of Manifestation," He told them, "is a Lifeboat, an Ark of Salvation." Picture the scene the image conjures: a vast and stormy sea, and a single vessel riding it safely. To be within the Covenant is to be aboard that ark; to abandon it is to be left to the waves. The Covenant is not a chain that binds; it is a boat that saves.
He gave them a second picture, gentler still. "The Covenant is like the sea," He said, "and the believers are as the fishes in the sea." A fish out of water gasps and dies; in the water it is at home, alive, swift, at ease. So the soul of the believer, the Master was teaching, is made to live within the Covenant of God. Outside it the spirit cannot breathe. Within it the spirit thrives.
And He told them where the Covenant came from, and why it could be trusted absolutely. "The Blessed Perfection," He said — Bahá'u'lláh — "wrote a Testament or Covenant with His Own Pen so that no one who obeys it will deny or disobey God." Here was the very point that the Day of the Covenant exists to mark: the appointment was not rumour or tradition or the claim of some later party. It was set down by the hand of the Manifestation Himself, in His own writing, precisely so that no honest soul need ever be in doubt or be led astray.
Then the Master asked the pilgrims a question that still searches the heart. "What cause of union could be greater," He said, "than the Covenant God has revealed through His Manifestation Bahá'u'lláh?" The world had tried a hundred schemes for unity and watched them fail. Empires, alliances, councils, creeds — all of them had splintered in the end. But here was a unity grounded not in human agreement but in the explicit, written Word of God, gathering every believer around one appointed centre. Nothing devised by men could match it.
The Master who spoke these words was Himself that centre. Yet notice how He spoke — not of His own greatness, but of an ark, a sea, a Pen, a cause of union. He turned the pilgrims' attention away from His person and toward the structure of divine protection that Bahá'u'lláh had built. That, in the end, is what the Centre of the Covenant always did: He pointed past Himself, to the Covenant that held the whole community safe.
The pilgrims sailed home from 'Akká carrying these images with them. They are worth carrying still. On this day the friends are asked to do nothing dramatic — only to remember, quietly, that they are aboard an ark, that they are fishes in a living sea, and that the hand which wrote their safekeeping was the hand of Bahá'u'lláh Himself.
This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Ten Days in the Light of Akka by Julia M. Grundy.
Cite this story
Grundy, J. M.. (1907). *Ten Days in the Light of Akka*. Bahai Publishing Society. https://bahai-library.com/grundy_ten_days_akka
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