--Issue No. 3 March 1925:
To the Assemblies of the United States and Canada:
To the Assemblies of the United States and Canada:
Dear Baha’i friends:
Many significant events are now taking place throughout the
Baha’i world. We ask all the friends to give their special attention at the
present moment to the details of the Nayriz disaster, to the announcement of
the National Baha’i Congress and Convention of 1925, and to the recent appeal
of Shoghi Effendi in behalf of the urgent need of the Temple, as given
elsewhere in this News Letter.
If any sincere and well-informed servant of the Cause were
to attempt to express the one fundamental subject to which the American
believers should give their hearts and minds at this stage in the development
of the Baha’i Movement, -- the one subject underlying every aspect of our
individual and collective efforts of service -- the result would be
unquestionably the advice that each and every believer forthwith acquaint
himself with the letters of Shoghi Effendi.
Since that day when, three years ago, we received the first
communication from him whom ‘Abdu’l-Baha had left as His precious legacy to His
friends and followers, the National Spiritual Assembly have spared no effort to
place these general messages in the hands of each local Assembly. There can be
no doubt but that the letters of Shoghi Effendi have become the strongest
unifying influence around which the vital life of each Assembly has revolved.
There can be no doubt but that the spiritual strength of each Assembly at the
present time can be estimated entirely by the degree to which its members have
acquainted themselves with these letters and attempted to found their Baha’i
activities upon the exhortations, the advices, the suggestions, and the
decisions given us by the Guardian of the Cause.
Recognizing on the one hand, the difficulty, especially among the larger Assemblies, of studying these letters with sufficient attention so long as only one manuscript copy was available; and on the other hand the extreme importance to the Cause of having every believer make these letters of Shoghi Effendi an intimate part of his daily life, the National Spiritual Assembly have recently made a comprehensive series of excerpts from all the general letters of Shoghi Effendi written from January 21, 1922, to November 27, 1924, and arranged with the Publishing Committee to have these excerpts printed in booklet form.
This booklet, entitled, “Letters from Shoghi Effendi”, will
be ready for distribution by the time this News Letter appears.
By the Will and Testament of Abdu’l Baha we have been
solemnly charged to bring no stain upon the radiant nature of the Guardian of
the Cause. The first and essential response we can make to this inviolable
command is to turn constantly to the letters of Shoghi Effendi and direct our
every activity into the definite channels of spiritual and material service the
Guardian has carved so deep and straight through the mental and social
anarchies of this troubled age. Apart from these channels there can be no
effective unity, no sincere effort among the Baha’is. Just as the spirit of man
needs a human temple in order to achieve its eternal identity, so the universal
spirit of the Revelation of God needs a world-wide unity in order to bestow its
manifold blessings, visible and invisible, upon a suffering and distracted
mankind.
How often, as the desolate ruins of the past remind us, has
that Revelation descended only to be soon lost by the hearts of men for lack of
a unity among the believers that could reflect its myriad rays of light -- its
significance to mind as well as to soul, its influence upon government and industry
as well as upon the conduct of the individual believer.
Amid the differences of race, class, creed and character,
necessarily existing throughout the body of the believers, no point of unity
could ever arise to protect the Cause and insure its universal triumph apart
from the center appointed by the Covenant itself and upheld by the authority of
Baha’u’llah.
Every problem that now confronts us has its true solution in
the letters of Shoghi Effendi. In those letters the all-conquering energy of
the “spirit of the age” is communicated to every sincere heart. Let us make it
our foremost endeavor to study these letters, to become penetrated by them
without reserve, forgetting any and every limitation of our past, so that we
may become worthy to receive in fullest measure the confirmations awaiting the
friends of God.
Yours sincerely, in love of ‘Abdu’l-Baha,
National Spiritual Assembly,
By: Horace Holley,
Secretary.