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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 148-150
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THE INDIVIDUAL BAHÁ'Í MUST ARISE
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There can be no doubt whatever that to achieve this fourfold
purpose is the most strenuous, the least spectacular, and the most
challenging of the tasks now confronting the American Bahá'í Community.
It is primarily a task that concerns the individual believer,
wherever he may be, and whatever his calling, his resources, his race, or
his age. Neither the local nor national representatives of the community,
no matter how elaborate their plans, or persistent their appeals, or
sagacious their counsels, nor even the Guardian himself, however
much he may yearn for this consummation, can decide where the duty
of the individual lies, or supplant him in the discharge of that task. The
individual alone must assess its character, consult his conscience,
prayerfully consider all its aspects, manfully struggle against the natural
inertia that weighs him down in his effort to arise, shed, heroically
and irrevocably, the trivial and superfluous attachments which hold
him back, empty himself of every thought that may tend to obstruct his
path, mix, in obedience to the counsels of the Author of His Faith, and
in imitation of the One Who is its true Exemplar, with men and
women, in all walks of life, seek to touch their hearts, through the
distinction which characterizes his thoughts, his words and his acts, and
win them over tactfully, lovingly, prayerfully and persistently, to the
Faith he himself has espoused.
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The gross materialism that engulfs the entire nation at the present
hour; the attachment to worldly things that enshrouds the souls of men;
the fears and anxieties that distract their minds; the pleasure and
dissipations that fill their time, the prejudices and animosities that
darken their outlook, the apathy and lethargy that paralyze their
spiritual faculties--these are among the formidable obstacles that stand
in the path of every would-be warrior in the service of Bahá'u'lláh,
obstacles which he must battle against and surmount in his crusade for
the redemption of his own countrymen.
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To the degree that the home front crusader is himself cleansed of
these impurities, liberated from these petty preoccupations and gnawing
anxieties, delivered from these prejudices and antagonisms, emptied
of self, and filled by the healing and the sustaining power of
God, will he be able to combat the forces arrayed against him, magnetize
the souls of those whom he seeks to convert, and win their unreserved,
their enthusiastic and enduring allegiance to the Faith of
Bahá'u'lláh.
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Delicate and strenuous though the task may be, however arduous
and prolonged the effort required, whatsoever the nature of the perils
and pitfalls that beset the path of whoever arises to revive the fortunes
of a Faith struggling against the rising forces of materialism, nationalism,
secularism, racialism, ecclesiasticism, the all-conquering potency
of the grace of God, vouchsafed through the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh,
will, undoubtedly, mysteriously and surprisingly, enable whosoever
arises to champion His Cause to win complete and total victory.
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The history of a century-old Faith eloquently bears witness to
similar unnumbered successes won, in both the Apostolic and Formative
Ages of the Bahá'í Dispensation, in circumstances even more
challenging than those in which the American Bahá'í Community now
finds itself.
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So magnificent a victory, won collectively, at such a time, in a
country so vitally affecting the immediate destinies of mankind,
singled out to play so predominant a role in the unification and
spiritualization of the entire human race, by a community which in
every other field can boast a brilliant and unbroken record of victories,
will, no doubt, exert not only a profound influence on the ultimate
destinies of an entire nation and people, but will galvanize, through its
repercussions, the entire Bahá'í world.
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