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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."
27 stories on this theme.
After three fruitless years teaching the Faith in Jamestown, New York, Doris and Willard McKay were urged by Dorothy Baker to say the invocation “Yá Alláh El-Mustagáth”; Doris later saw in those prayers the beginnings of the Jamestown Assembly.
O phoenix of that immortal flame kindled in the sacred Tree!
TO THE ASSEMBLIES AND MEETINGS OF THE BELIEVERS OF GOD AND THE MAID-SERVANTS OF THE MERCIFUL IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: Upon them be Bahá’u’lláh El-Abhá!
Muḥammad Labíb survived the 1903 persecution in Yazd, founded a children's savings company that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá blessed, helped Effie Baker photograph the Faith's historic sites in Iran, and later pioneered to Japan and Rhodes.
Won to the Faith by Jamal Effendi, Siyyid Mustafa Rumi spent his life teaching in India and Burma. He was killed at Daidanaw during the Second World War, and in 1945 Shoghi Effendi named him a Hand of the Cause of God.
Led to the Faith by childhood dreams of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the broadcaster William Sears gave up his career to pioneer to South Africa, met the Guardian on pilgrimage in 1954 and was appointed a Hand of the Cause in 1957.
I was very glad to know of your meeting with the Chinese students, and I am sure your effect and influence shall be great upon them because their fresh and receptive minds are ready to grasp the importance of this Manifestation …
Moved by the Tablets ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sent to America in 1919, Mr. and Mrs. Hyde Dunn left California for Australia with barely fifteen dollars. Martha Root later found Bahá'í centers wherever they had lived, and was struck by their humility and faith.
Honest Bahá'í pioneers in Egypt build a thriving store and send Bahá'u'lláh a money belt full of gold. When riots leave the store in ashes, the belt comes back to them by post, untouched.
As a small Mohawk boy in Ontario, Jim Loft was waved to by 'Abdu'l-Bahá from a passing train. Years later, as a Bahá'í, he returned to his reserve at the Guardian's request to teach the Faith.
Pioneering to South America, Elizabeth Cheney met illness, failed funds and broken travel plans. When her river boat sank at night, she clung to a floating log and gave the Message to the woman who shared it.
Longing to answer the Guardian’s call for pioneers to South America, the convalescent Grace Ober fell and ended up in a wheelchair, where she met guests from Chile, Argentina, Peru and Brazil and gave them the Message.
When war broke out, Shoghi Effendi advised Marion Jack, a pioneer in Sofia, to return to Canada. She begged to stay at her post, and he changed his instructions and wired: "Advise remain Sofia love."
On a summer rest-cure, and again in London in the last days of his life, Shoghi Effendi worked for hours on his own maps of the Ten Year Crusade, filling in their details by hand.
In March 1916 Agnes Alexander wrote from Tokyo of new people at her Friday meeting, students at her door, a blind Russian friend hearing Some Answered Questions, and Bahá'í books placed in a library, one of which a stranger had already found.
Leroy Ioas recalls how Shoghi Effendi embraced and kissed Charles Dunning, the plainly dressed Knight of Bahá'u'lláh for the Orkney Islands, and seated him beside himself at dinner.
With only an hour ashore in Manila, Loulie Mathews tucked Bahá'í pamphlets onto library shelves. Months later the man who found them wrote asking for more, and a Bahá'í community grew there that regathered after the war.
May Maxwell died only weeks after arriving in South America as a pioneer. The Guardian wrote that she laid down her life in a spirit that merited the crown of martyrdom.
Shoghi Effendi sent the American believer Keith Ransom-Kehler to Persia to plead for the freedom of the persecuted Bahá'ís there. The Sháh never received her, but she stirred the Persian community, and when she died in Iṣfáhán in 1933 the Guardian called her the first American martyr.
In 1920 Hyde Dunn, then in his sixties, and his wife Clara answered 'Abdu'l-Bahá's call and settled in Australia. Working as a travelling salesman, he carried the Bahá'í message to hundreds of towns, and the couple became known as "Father" and "Mother" Dunn.
Before travelling to the West of America, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wished first to visit Montreal, where May Maxwell, founder of the first Bahá’í community in France, had established the first permanent Bahá’í community in Canada.
In 1916 the Star of the West printed the Tablet in which 'Abdu'l-Bahá urged Agnes Alexander to go directly to Japan, and her letter from Tokyo about the weekly Friday meetings and Fukuta San, the first Japanese Bahá'í in Japan.
O God! O thou Attracted of the hearts of the favored ones toward the Manifest Horizon!
Leroy Ioas recalls the evening Shoghi Effendi shared news that a discouraged pioneer on a Pacific island, whom he had urged again and again to stay, now had two spiritual assemblies.
Arriving to find that a revolution had scattered the men she carried letters to, Elizabeth Cheney prayed as she walked the streets until she stopped at a garden fence, where a gardener led her to one of them in hiding.
Keith Ransom-Kehler, sent by Shoghi Effendi to Persia, pleaded the cause of its persecuted Bahá'ís before the authorities and died in Iṣfáhán in 1933. The Guardian called her the American believers' first and distinguished martyr.
In a 1934 letter to Doris McKay, Howard Colby Ives explained how he and his wife accepted a life without a settled home, trusting that God provides a heavenly home for those who accept His Will.