Bahai Faith; Kings and rulers; Shoghi, Effendi, 1897-1957 -- Correspondence
Contrasting with, and irreconcilably opposed to, these war-engendering,
world-convulsing doctrines are the healing, the saving, the pregnant
truths proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, the Divine Organizer and Savior of the
whole human race—truths which should be regarded as the animating force
and the hallmark of His Revelation: “The world is but one country, and
mankind its citizens.” “Let not a man glory in that he loves his country;
let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.” And again: “Ye are
the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.” “Bend your minds
and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth, that
haply ... all mankind may become the upholders of one order, and the
inhabitants of one city.... Ye dwell in one world, and have been created
through the operation of one Will.” “Beware lest the desires of the flesh
and of a corrupt inclination provoke divisions among you. Be ye as the
fingers of one hand, the members of one body.” And yet again: “All the
saplings of the world have appeared from one Tree, and all the drops from
one Ocean, and all beings owe their existence to one Being.” And
furthermore: “That one indeed is a man who today dedicateth himself to the
service of the entire human race.”
THE WEAKENED PILLARS OF RELIGION
Not only must irreligion and its monstrous offspring, the triple curse
that oppresses the soul of mankind in this day, be held responsible for
the ills which are so tragically besetting it, but other evils and vices,
which are, for the most part, the direct consequences of the “weakening of
the pillars of religion,” must also be regarded as contributory factors to
the manifold guilt of which individuals and nations stand convicted. The
signs of moral downfall, consequent to the dethronement of religion and
the enthronement of these usurping idols, are too numerous and too patent
for even a superficial observer of the state of present-day society to
fail to notice. The spread of lawlessness, of drunkenness, of gambling,
and of crime; the inordinate love of pleasure, of riches, and other
earthly vanities; the laxity in morals, revealing itself in the
irresponsible attitude towards marriage, in the weakening of parental
control, in the rising tide of divorce, in the deterioration in the
standard of literature and of the press, and in the advocacy of theories
that are the very negation of purity, of morality and chastity—these
evidences of moral decadence, invading both the East and the West,
permeating every stratum of society, and instilling their poison in its
members of both sexes, young and old alike, blacken still further the
scroll upon which are inscribed the manifold transgressions of an
unrepentant humanity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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