A Soul Aflame: Louis Gregory in London, 1911

In Issue 5 of Volume 2 of the *Star of the West,* dated the fifth of June, 1911, the editors in Chicago printed a short item under the heading *News of the Cause in London.* It mentioned Mrs. Buckton's recent return to England from her own pilgrimage to 'Akká, and it noted the visit then under way of Louis G. Gregory.

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The phrase the London Bahá'ís used to describe their American visitor was carried back across the Atlantic by the *Star of the West* and printed in the news column for the American friends to read.

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> A great soul, aflame with God's Word.

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Gregory had completed his own pilgrimage in April of that same year. He had, in Alexandria, met the Master for the first time — the kiss on the head, the long quiet conversation about his health, the parting instruction to keep his face turned toward the Kingdom. He was now on the slow road home to America. London was a stop on the way.

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He stayed several weeks. He spoke in homes and small rooms and larger gatherings. The English Bahá'ís — many of them women who had themselves only recently come into the Faith — heard in him something they had not yet often heard in their own city: a Black American believer recounting, in plain speech, what he had seen in 'Akká and what the Master had laid upon him.

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The phrase the London friends used to summarize him — *a great soul, aflame with God's Word* — was their tribute. The *Star of the West* printed the phrase without comment. It needed none.

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Gregory continued his journey home. He returned to Washington in July 1911. The work the Master had set for him — the building of race unity inside and outside the Bahá'í community — would occupy him for the next forty-one years, until his death in 1951. But the foundation of that work had been laid, in part, in those few weeks in London in May and June of 1911, when the small English Bahá'í community had recognized in their visitor a soul aflame and had sent the news, by way of Chicago, into the wider stream of the Cause.

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