Coming into ‘Abdu'l-Baha's presence, we may forget
everything, cease to believe anything, and may say He is but an Oriental man
after all. We may question whether we are even a believer. We may desire to
revise everything, that we may have only the truth and nothing but the truth.
Then, Lo and behold. Truth stands out boldly! We still believe, but this belief
which formerly floated high upon the surface of the sea - where it was rocked
and tossed by every wind - now floats more deeply, being well ballasted, so
that outer things henceforth can little affect it.
When we look at ‘Abdu'l-Baha with the eye of insight,
meditating upon the words of love and wisdom emanating from Him, remembering
the hosts of people so deeply affected by them… then do we grasp some little
idea of the wonderful Guidance given Him in the midst of the difficulties with
which He has ever been surrounded. In the light of this, the personality first
encountered, disappears; it is sunk, it is resolved in His perfect
consecration, in His absolute abandonment to the Spirit. As you look, a veil
seems to come over His eyes, and you wonder where He is gazing. He, the
individual person, seems as if eclipsed by the very divine Spirit of God.
‘Abdu’l-Baha is there, but only as the material focal-point perfectly serving
the Light, as an existing object upon which the invisible Radiance impinges,
and which thus becomes manifested unto us in all manner of wise, loving and
fruitful ways. So doth the Reality of ‘Abdu’l-Baha impress the soul as it advances.
(Star of the West, vol. 2, no. 12, October 16, 1911)
* He was one of the early British Bahá'ís, evidently saw
Bahá'u'lláh from a distance as confirmed by 'Abdu'l-Bahá in an unpublished
tablet addressed to him. It appears that he saw Baha’u’llah while He was
walking in the streets in the German colony at Haifa. (Moojan Momen, The
Bábí and Bahá'í Religions 1844-1944, p.
234)
