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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
8 stories on this theme.
On a winter afternoon by a great ship, 'Abdu'l-Bahá said goodbye to His friends and left them with one beautiful idea to carry forever.
On the evening before 'Abdu'l-Bahá sailed away from America, a man named Howard sat close to Him and heard the most important thing he would ever try to remember.
On December 5, 1912, Mahmúd's Diary records, the SS *Celtic* lay at her berth in New York harbor as 'Abdu'l-Bahá addressed the small band of friends who had come to see Him sail. He left them with one sentence that summarised the eight months of His American teaching: the whole earth is one globe, and all nations one family.
In the weeks before His passing, 'Abdu'l-Bahá told His family of two dreams. In one He stood in a great mosque and raised the call to prayer before a vast multitude; in the other Bahá'u'lláh came to Him and said, "Destroy this room." Only after His ascension did those around Him understand what the dreams had foretold.
On Friday the 25th of November 1921, 'Abdu'l-Bahá attended the noon prayer, gave alms to the poor, and that afternoon received the notables of Haifa. Two nights later, surrounded by His family, He spoke His last quiet words and passed peacefully in the small hours of the 28th of November.
Six days before His ascension in 1892, Bahá'u'lláh — already weakened by fever — summoned the entire company of believers and pilgrims gathered at the Mansion of Bahjí into His presence one last time. Leaning against one of His sons, He thanked them for their services, urged them to remain united, and gave them His final blessing.
In one of the closing chapters of *Portals to Freedom,* Howard Colby Ives describes the gathering on December 2, 1912, in the days before 'Abdu'l-Bahá sailed from America. The Master's parting counsel — to manifest complete love and to count no soul beneath one's own — fell on Ives, he writes, like a *stream of spiritual energy* he could almost not bear.
On December 5, 1912, on the deck of the steamship Celtic in New York harbor, 'Abdu'l-Bahá gave His final talk before sailing for Europe. After nine months in the West, He left the believers with the standard against which their whole tour was to be measured: the earth is one native land, and all mankind one family.