Dawn of a New Day

by Effendi Shoghi

[From the Guardian:]

To the Hands of the Cause, the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies, the pioneers, the resident believers and visitors attending the Asian Intercontinental Teaching Conference in New Delhi, India.

Well-beloved friends:

With high hopes and a joyful heart I acclaim the convocation, in the leading city of the Indian sub-continent, of the fourth and last of the Intercontinental Teaching Conferences of a memorable Holy Year commemorating the centenary of the birth of the prophetic Mission of Baha’u’llah.

On this historic occasion, when the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies of the Baha’is of the United States of America, of the Dominion of Canada, of Central and of South America, of Persia, of the Indian subcontinent and of Burma, of Iraq and of Australasia, as well as representatives of the sovereign states and dependencies of the Asiatic continent, of the Republics of North, Central and South America, and of Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania are assembled, and are to deliberate on the needs and requirements of the recently launched triple Campaign embracing the Asiatic mainland, the Australian continent and the islands of the Pacific Ocean—a campaign which may well be regarded as the most extensive, the most arduous and the most momentous of all the campaigns of a world-girdling Crusade, and which, in its scope, is unparalleled in the history of the Faith in the entire eastern Hemisphere—my thoughts, on such an occasion, go back to the early dawn of our Faith, to those unforgettable scenes of matchless heroism, of dark tragedy, of imperishable glory which heralded its birth, and accompanied the spread, of its infant Light, in the heart of the Asiatic continent.

I vividly recall the meteoric rise of the Faith of the Bab in the provinces of Persia and the stirring episodes associated with His cruel incarceration in the mountain-fastnesses of Adhirbayjan, with the revelation of the laws of His Dispensation, with the proclamation of the independence of His Faith, with the peerless heroism of His disciples, with the fiendish cruelty of His foes—the Chief Magistrate, the civil authorities, the ecclesiastical dignitaries and the masses of the people, of His native land—with the humiliation, the spoliation, the dispersal, the eventual massacre of a vast number of His followers, and, above all, with His own execution in the City of Tabriz.

With a throb of wonder I call to mind the early and sudden fruition of His Dispensation in the capital city of that land, and the dramatic circumstances attending the birth of Baha’u’llah’s Revelation culminating in His precipitate banishment to Iraq.

I am reminded, moreover, of the initial spread of the light of this Revelation, in consequence of the banishment of Baha’u’llah, to the adjoining territories of Iraq, and, as far as the western fringes of that continent, to Turkey and the neighbouring territories of Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, and, at a later stage, to the Indian sub-continent and China, situated on the southern and eastern extremities of that continent as well as to the Caucasus and Russian Turkistan.

Nor can I fail to remember the series of alternating crises and victories—each constituting a landmark in the evolution of the Faith—which it has experienced in some of these territories, associated with the distressful withdrawal of its Author to the mountains of Sulaymaniyyih; with the glorious Declaration of His Mission in Baghdad; with His second and third banishments to Constantinople and Adrianople; with the grievous rebellion of His half-brother; with the proclamation of His own Mission; with His fourth banishment to the desolate and far-off penal colony of Akka in Syria; with the revelation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book; with His ascension in the Holy Land; with the establishment of His Covenant and the inauguration of the Ministry of Abdu’l-Baha, His son and the Exemplar and authorized interpreter of His teachings.

These opening stages in the evolution of His Faith in the Asiatic continent were followed, while the first and Apostolic Age of His Dispensation was drawing to a close, by the opening of the Islands situated in the Pacific Ocean, Japan in the north, and the Australian continent in the South. To these memorable chapters of Asian Baha’i history another was soon added, on the morrow of the ascension of the Centre of Baha’u’llah’s Covenant, and during the initial epoch of the Formative Age of the Faith, distinguished by the rise of the Administrative Order and the erection of its pillars in the cradle of that Faith, in Iraq, in India, Pakistan and Burma and in the Antipodes. This memorable episode in its development in that vast continent was succeeded by the initiation, during the second Epoch of that same Age, of a series of Plans in those same territories in support of Abdu’l-Baha’s Divine Plan and as a prelude to the opening of the recently launched world-embracing Spiritual Crusade.