perseverance

With regard to the innate character, although the divine creation is purely good, yet the varieties of natural qualities in man come from the difference of degree; all are excellent, but they are more or less so, according to the…

Praise be to God! that ye are gathered in one assembly like unto the stars of the Pleiades, are illumined with the light of the knowledge of God and through the outpouring of the cloud of the love of God, ye are the fresh flowers of the…

‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent His early years in an environment of privilege, wealth, and love. ** ‘Abdu’l-Bahá…

Not long after Shoghi Effendi assumed his stewardship as Guardian, it was possible for him, through the munificent assistance of a dedicated 'Iraqi Baha'i, Haji Mahmud Qassabchi, to carry out the arduous task, already referred to, of…

Bahá'í Chronicles records that in the late 1870s, Bahá'u'lláh dispatched Sulaymán Khán-i-Tunúkábání — known as Jamál Effendi — from 'Akká to India, with the charge to establish the Faith on the subcontinent. With Sayyid Muṣṭafá Rúmí, who would later carry the work into Burma, he founded the first Bahá'í communities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.

Gregory was instrumental in arranging for two major speaking engagements for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Washington DC to an audience of more than a thousand in Rankin Chapel at Howard University, and that evening to a large gathering of the Bethel…

Bahá'í Chronicles preserves the biographical record of Martha Root — the small, quiet Pennsylvania newspaperwoman who, in the years between 1919 and her death in 1939, travelled four times around the world as a Bahá'í teacher, met queens and presidents, and was named by Shoghi Effendi *the foremost Hand of the Cause* of the Western world in his time.

Bahá'í Chronicles preserves the biographical record of May Bolles Maxwell — one of the first pilgrims to 'Akká, the woman who established the Bahá'í community of Paris and of Montreal, the mother of Rúḥíyyih Khánum, and the travel-teacher whom Shoghi Effendi would name a martyr of the Faith after her death in Buenos Aires in 1940.

43 I deeply appreciate your sympathy. My loss is tremendous and my sorrow so profound. I will pray that you, who have felt the power of her spirit at so advanced an age may be enabled to mirror forth its splendour and reveal its beauty…

47 The many evidences of your increasing zeal and activities in the service of our beloved Cause, have to a great measure, relieved my sorrow-laden heart. I will continue to pray for your unsparing efforts, and wish you to persevere,…

Esslemont's *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era* records the early growth of the Bahá'í Faith in Egypt — the publication of Bahá'í pamphlets in Cairo from the 1890s, the establishment of small communities in Cairo and Alexandria, and the difficulties when the Egyptian religious authorities ruled, in the 1920s, that Bahá'ís were no longer to be considered Muslims.

In *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*, J. E. Esslemont preserves the small, heartbreaking image of Persian believers who walked thousands of miles to the prison-city of 'Akká, were refused admittance at the gates, and contented themselves with standing on the plain beyond the third moat, looking up at the windows of the Blessed Beauty's quarters.

In order that we may attain the spiritual condition in which conversation with God becomes possible, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:— We must strive to attain to that condition by being separated from all things and from the people of the world…

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<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the whole range of Bahá'u'lláh's Writings, the Kitáb-i-Íqán (The Book of Certitude) has most importance, with the exception of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book). It was revealed in Baghdad…

Nabíl's chronicle records the Báb's removal from Iṣfáhán in 1847 to the remote frontier prisons of Máh-Kú and Chihríq, in the bleak mountains of north-western Persia. The intent of the authorities was to silence Him by isolation; the effect was the opposite — the journey itself became a teaching, the remote fortresses became places of pilgrimage, and from the cells the Persian Bayán was revealed.

Nabíl's chronicle records that in the spring and summer of 1850, the city of Zanján was the scene of one of the most prolonged Bábí defenses of the early years. Mullá Muḥammad-'Alíy-i-Zanjání, surnamed Ḥujjat, took refuge with his followers in the fortress of 'Alí-Mardán Khán; he and they held against the assembled forces of the Sháh's army for nine months.

Nabíl's chronicle opens with the figure of Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá'í, the Arabian scholar who, at the age of forty, set out from al-Aḥsá in 1216 A.H. to prepare a generation of disciples for the imminent appearance of the promised One. He recognized the birth of Bahá'u'lláh in Núr in 1233 A.H. as the secret event that justified his entire ministry.

As his life drew to a close in Karbilá in 1259 A.H., Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí gathered his disciples and gave them the charge that the Dawn-Breakers treats as the immediate prologue to the Báb's Declaration: scatter yourselves over the face of the earth, detach yourselves from all earthly things, and seek the Promised One who is now manifest.

Nabíl's chronicle records the final months of Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí in late 1843 and early 1844 — the second of the two great preparatory teachers of the dawn of the Revelation. He told his closest students that the Promised One would appear in their own lifetime; that he himself would not live to see Him; that they must scatter across Persia in search of Him.

From early morning until dark, often more than eight hours on his feet, day after day and month after month he directed the work. It was certainly not his work to do this, but he was determined to ensure it was done not only quickly, but…

Shoghi Effendi's narration, in *God Passes By*, of the Master's laying of the cornerstone of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár at Wilmette in May 1912 — a moment the Guardian describes as the inauguration of the construction of the first House of Worship of the Bahá'í Dispensation in the Western world.

On May 1, 1912, 'Abdu'l-Bahá traveled north of Chicago to lay the cornerstone of the first Bahá'í House of Worship in the West. Many stones had been sent from Bahá'í communities for the ceremony. Only one — found in a builders' rejection pile and dragged to the site by Nettie Tobin, a Chicago seamstress — had actually arrived. The Master asked for hers.

Mahmúd records a brief reception with the small group of Vancouver and Victoria believers who travelled south across the Canadian border to meet 'Abdu'l-Bahá in Seattle in October 1912 — the Master's only direct encounter with the believers of British Columbia.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute to Ḥájí Amín — the Trustee of Ḥuqúqu'lláh, whose lifetime of patient travel through the Persian provinces, collecting and disbursing the offerings of the believers, sustained the financial life of the Cause for fifty years.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's portrait of Ḥájí Mírzá Ḥaydar-'Alí — the great teacher of Iṣfáhán whose lifetime of imprisonment, exile, and patient teaching across three Sudanese cities earned him the title *the Angel of Carmel.*

'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute to Mullá Ṣádiq-i-Muqaddas — the Khurásání cleric who, after recognising the Báb, suffered the bastinado in Shíráz with Quddús and went on to give the rest of his life to the Cause through every successive trial of its early decades.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute to Pahlaván Riḍá — the strong man, the wrestler of Yazd, who heard the Cause of God and turned the whole frame of his powerful life into the service of the Beloved.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute to Sakínih Sulṭán — the mother of the Iṣfahán martyrs, whose life of steady faith carried her through the deaths of her sons and into the long quiet years of teaching that followed.

In *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh* Adib Taherzadeh recounts the pilgrimage of Aḥmad-i-Yazdí — a believer of about sixty who walked, on foot, the 1,700 kilometres from Baghdád to Constantinople in search of Bahá'u'lláh in Adrianople. The Tablet that reached him by the wayside, the *Tablet of the Nightingale,* turned him from pilgrim into teacher and sent him another 2,240 kilometres back into Persia.

Question.—In the Gospel Christ said: “Many are called, but few are chosen,”110 and in the Qur’án it is written: “He will confer particular mercy on whom He pleaseth.” What is the wisdom of…

This Remembrance is indeed the glorious Remnant of the Light of God, and He will be best for you,57 if ye in very truth remain faithful to God, the Most…

The Sunday school for the children in which the Tablets and Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh are read, and the Word of God is recited for the children is indeed a blessed thing. Thou must certainly continue this organized activity without…

O thou sincere and loyal handmaid of the Lord! I have read thy letter. Thou art truly attached to the Kingdom and devoted to the All-Glorious Horizon. I beg of God in His bounty to make thee to burn ever more brightly in the fire of His…

O ye blessed souls! Although ye are undergoing crucial tests in view of the repeated and assiduous attempts of some people to shake the faith of the friends in Los Angeles, yet ye are under the guarding eye of the bounty of Bahá’u’lláh…

O ye concourse of the Kingdom of Abhá! Two calls to success and prosperity are being raised from the heights of the happiness of mankind, awakening the slumbering, granting sight to the blind, causing the heedless to become mindful,…

O handmaids of the beauty of Abhá! Your letter hath come, and its perusal brought great joy. Praised be God, the women believers have organized meetings where they will learn how to teach the Faith, will spread the sweet savours of the…

O handmaids of the Lord! The spiritual assemblage that ye established in that illumined city is most propitious. Ye have made great strides; ye have surpassed the others, have arisen to serve the Holy Threshold, and have won heavenly…

A short story preserved by Hand of the Cause Furutan in *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh*: an aged believer who set out on foot from Persia to attain the presence of Bahá'u'lláh in 'Akká, and the welcome that met him at the door when he arrived, exhausted, decades younger in his soul.

In *Stories of Bahá'u'lláh* Mr. Furutan recalls the circumstances in which the Tablet of Aḥmad — recited by Bahá'ís throughout the world in seasons of difficulty — was revealed for a single Persian believer who had become discouraged in his journey, and the consolation it carried back to him on the road.

In June 1916 the Star of the West printed a letter from Agnes B. Alexander — the first American Bahá'í to settle in Japan — describing her teaching work in Tokyo and Yokohama, her gatherings with university students, her placement of Bahá'í books in libraries, and her use of Esperanto as a bridge into Japanese intellectual life.

In 1920 the Star of the West printed Corinne True's report on the acquisition of the Temple property at Wilmette, on the shore of Lake Michigan — the small group of acres on which, by the Master's direction, the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the West would in time be raised.

In 1922 the Star of the West preserved a tribute by Martha Root to Mírzá Ḥaydar-'Alí — the eleven-year prisoner of Khartoum who had become, in his later years, the great traveling teacher of the Bahá'ís of Persia, called by the friends *the Angel of the believers.*

In 1916 the Star of the West reported on the publication of Ali-Kuli Khan's translation of the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the first complete rendering into English of Bahá'u'lláh's principal doctrinal work, made available to the American friends after fifteen years of patient labour.

In 1911 the Star of the West printed a report from Tihrán on the Tarbíyat Schools — the Bahá'í-founded schools for boys and for girls in the Persian capital that, in the years before they were forcibly closed by the Persian government in 1934, became the educational pride of the Iranian Bahá'í community.

In 1915 the *Star of the West* carried news of the small but significant entry of the Faith into Japan — through the patient teaching work of Agnes Alexander in Tokyo and the formation of the first small Japanese Bahá'í community.

In November 1918 the Star of the West printed a letter from Elizabeth H. Stewart, the American teacher in Tehran, describing the wartime shortages — eggs at six cents apiece, flour scarce — and the unprecedented spectacle of Persian Bahá'í men bringing their wives to the public meetings of the friends.

In the spring of 1916 the *Star of the West* carried the first published Tablets of the Divine Plan, sent by 'Abdu'l-Bahá from the war-strained Holy Land to the American believers — eight letters that would prove to be the charter of the Bahá'í teaching enterprise of the twentieth century.

In October 1912 the Star of the West printed the news of the death of Thornton Chase — the first American to embrace the Bahá'í Faith, who had passed in Los Angeles only weeks after meeting 'Abdu'l-Bahá on the Master's American journey. The Master called him *the first American believer.*

Among the parables 'Abdu'l-Bahá used in conversation with friends was the story of three ducks who set off across a meadow to find the great river of which their elders had spoken — and how their different ways of seeking shaped what each one finally found.

O thou servant who art near and dear to the Glorious…

O thou who art directed unto…

O thou who hast humbled thyself before the Kingdom of…

O thou who seekest for the Will of…

O ye two134 pilgrims of the Holy…

An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the New York believers, preserved in the 1909 *Tablets of 'Abdu'l-Bahá Abbas* — addressing the city of New York as the eventual centre through which the Cause will reach the New World and exhorting the friends to prepare for that destiny.

An early Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá to Lua Getsinger — the *mother teacher of the West,* one of the first Western pilgrims to 'Akká in 1898 — sent to her after her return to America with a charge to undertake the lifelong teaching work that her pilgrimage had opened.

The word sport is a contracted form of “disport” which means to amuse, to divert one’s self. It includes play, amusement, entertainments or recreation. It is a word which signifies the outdoor recreations, the athletic work as contrasted…

*World Order* magazine carried, in a historical profile, the story of Keith Ransom-Kehler — the American Bahá'í pioneer who died in Iṣfáhán in 1933 of smallpox contracted during her teaching tour of Persia, and who was named by Shoghi Effendi the first American Bahá'í martyr.

*World Order* magazine carried, in a 1980s issue, an appreciation of Marzieh Gail — the American Bahá'í translator whose six-decade career rendered into English a substantial portion of the Persian and Arabic Bahá'í Writings, including major works of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi.