The Passing of Howard MacNutt

In its issue dated the closing months of 1926 the Star of the West carried the obituary notice of Howard MacNutt, the New York Bahá'í who had died at his home in Brooklyn on the twenty-sixth of November, aged sixty-seven.

MacNutt had been a businessman, a longtime member of the New York Bahá'í community, and one of the small group of believers who had received 'Abdu'l-Bahá into his own home in Brooklyn during the Master's American sojourn in 1912. The Master had visited the MacNutt home repeatedly. He had given a number of extended talks there. He had addressed Mrs. MacNutt by an affectionate name. He had charged Howard, before the departure for Europe in December 1912, with a particular task: to gather the stenographic records of the talks given across the United States during the journey, to verify them against the Persian originals where these existed, and to produce from them a single edited collection that the friends might read and study in years to come.

The task had taken MacNutt the next thirteen years. He had collected the records from many cities. He had cross-checked them with the diaries kept by the Master's translators. He had worked with editorial committees of the American National Spiritual Assembly. He had submitted the manuscripts to the Guardian for review. The eventual publication, in 1925, of The Promulgation of Universal Peace — the two-volume collection of the American talks of 1912 — was largely the fruit of his patient labour.

His work on these talks will be his lasting service to the Cause.

The phrase, taken by the Star's obituarist from a recent message of the Guardian, named the proper measure of MacNutt's contribution. The book he had assembled would become, within a decade, the principal record of the Master's teaching during the American journey. It would shape the speech and thought of generations of American believers. It would be translated into many languages and quoted in many other Bahá'í books and talks. The man who had patiently checked the stenographic records against the diaries and the originals had given his generation, and the generations after it, a permanent foundation.

The obituary did not dwell on MacNutt's later years, which had included a difficult period of disagreement with the emerging administrative order of the Faith and a temporary absence from the active community. The Guardian, in his message on the death, set those years to one side and named only the labour over the talks. His work on these talks will be his lasting service to the Cause. It is the measure on which the Faith continues to remember him.

Source: Star of the West, Volume 17, late 1926 obituary notice for Howard MacNutt. Public domain text from bahai-library.com.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1926). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai-library.com/star_of_the_west_volume_17