The Greatest Sovereign Is Love

A retelling based on Portals to Freedom by Howard Colby Ives (George Ronald, 1937). The narrative is retold in our own words; the line in quotation marks is verbatim from the book. Read the full text for Ives's own telling.

It was the 17th of July, 1912, and there was a wedding.

Harlan Ober and Grace Robarts were to be married, and the room that held them was long and lovely and full of friends — and not only local ones. The believers had gathered from across the world to be there: souls from Paris and Berlin and London, from Tehran and Bombay, from Haifa and the cities of America, drawn together under one roof for the joining of two hearts. It was, in miniature, the very thing the Faith had come to bring about — the peoples of the East and the West in one room, rejoicing together.

And 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself had come to bless the union. He was dressed in robes of cream, a white fez upon His head, and Howard Colby Ives — who helped with the legal portion of the ceremony — watched Him with the attentiveness of a man who knew he was witnessing something he would want to remember.

The ceremony was simple. When the bride and groom were seated, 'Abdu'l-Bahá rose. He lifted His hands, and closed His eyes, and began to chant a prayer in Persian over the two united souls. Ives did not understand the words — but he did not need to. The melody itself, rising and falling in that hushed and joyful room, carried its blessing straight past the barrier of language and into every heart present.

Of love, the Master taught that day, there is nothing greater in all the world:

The greatest king and sovereign is love.

It was a fitting word for a wedding, but He did not mean it only for the two who married that afternoon. He meant it for the whole gathered company, for the friends from a dozen distant cities, for the East and the West sitting side by side — and for us, reading of it now. The same power that joins two lives in marriage, He was saying, is the power meant to gather the entire human family into one: love, the gentlest force there is, and the one before which every other authority must finally bow.

This account is retold for the Bahai Story Library; it is a paraphrase, not the original text. The quoted line is verbatim from Portals to Freedom (Howard Colby Ives, George Ronald, 1937). See the source for Ives's complete telling.

Ives, H. C.. (1937). *Portals to Freedom*. George Ronald. https://bahai-library.com/ives_portals_freedom