In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá'u'lláh refers to a new World Order which may be regarded as one of the fruits of His Revelation. The Báb in the Persian Bayán has revealed the following: 'Well is it with him who fixeth his gaze upon the order of Bahá'u'lláh and rendereth thanks unto his Lord! For He will assuredly be made manifest.' And these are the words of Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas:

The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System--the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.¹

Beset on every side by the cumulative evidences of disintegration, of turmoil and of bankruptcy, serious-minded men and women, in almost every walk of life, are beginning to doubt whether society, as it is now organized, can, through its unaided efforts, extricate itself from the slough into which it is steadily sinking. Every system, short of the unification of the human race, has been tried, repeatedly tried, and been found wanting. Wars again and

again have been fought, and conferences without number have met and deliberated. Treaties, pacts and covenants have been painstakingly negotiated, concluded and revised. Systems of government have been patiently tested, have been continually recast and superseded. Economic plans of reconstruction have been carefully devised, and meticulously executed. And yet crisis has succeeded crisis, and the rapidity with which a perilously unstable world is declining has been correspondingly accelerated. A yawning gulf threatens to involve in one common disaster both the satisfied and dissatisfied nations, democracies and dictatorships, capitalists and wage-earners, Europeans and Asiatics, Jew and Gentile, white and coloured. An angry Providence, the cynic might well observe, has abandoned a hapless planet to its fate, and fixed irrevocably its doom. Sore-tried and disillusioned, humanity has no doubt lost its orientation, and would seem to have lost as well its faith and hope. It is hovering, unshepherded and visionless, on the brink of disaster. A sense of fatality seems to pervade it. An ever-deepening gloom is settling on its fortunes as she recedes further and further from the outer fringes of the darkest zone of its agitated life and penetrates its very heart.²

A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause, or perceived its motive.³

3. Quoted by Shoghi Effendi, ibid. p. 202.

Let us examine, for example, the principle of the conception of a new life and the growth of the embryo. We may study the condition of an egg before and after it is fertilized. Before the conception of the new life, the egg is in its normal state and contains good food. But when the new life begins to grow within it, the condition inside changes radically. The food turns bad and becomes corrupted. Yet the new life lives within this corrupted matter and feeds on it. At first this change is not obvious. But as the new life grows, the condition inside becomes more unstable. And there comes a time when the egg cannot remain whole anymore. Eventually, it breaks open; the young creature is born and the egg is reduced to a broken shell.

Exactly the same is happening in the world of humanity today. For thousands of years mankind's progress was very slow and limited, and few changes took place in the life of nations. One might say that before the coming of Bahá'u'lláh the peoples of the world had lived their lives in peace and tranquillity, compared to what came afterwards.

But over a hundred years ago when Bahá'u'lláh declared His mission, He sowed the seed of a new community in human society. At that moment a new life was conceived and the world has never been the same since--it has been revolutionized. With the coming of Bahá'u'lláh, as the process of growth and development of the embryonic institutions of His Faith was set in motion, so was the process of the extinction of the old order. The new world community is now growing within the womb of the old. The more it grows and becomes lively, the more will human society be plunged into the abyss of darkness and corruption. Its condition will continue to deteriorate until, as prophesied by Bahá'u'lláh over a hundred years ago, it will disintegrate like the egg in the

The world is in travail and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then and only then will the Divine Standard be unfurled and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody.⁴

After a time, all the governments on earth will change. Oppression will envelop the world. And following a universal convulsion, the sun of justice will rise from the horizon of the unseen realm.⁵

Resplendent as has been the Age that has witnessed the inception of the Mission with which Bahá'u'lláh has been entrusted, the interval which must elapse ere that Age yields its choicest fruit must, it is becoming increasingly apparent, be overshadowed by such moral and social gloom as can alone prepare an unrepentant humanity for the prize she is destined to inherit.

Into such a period we are now steadily and irresistibly moving. Amidst the shadows which are increasingly gathering about us we can faintly discern the glimmerings of Bahá'u'lláh's unearthly sovereignty appearing fitfully on the horizon of history...

Deep as is the gloom that already encircles the world, the afflictive ordeals which that world is to suffer are still in preparation, nor can their blackness be as yet imagined. We

5. Quoted by Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come, p. 121.

stand on the threshold of an age whose convulsions proclaim alike the death-pangs of the old order and the birth-pangs of the new. Through the generating influence of the Faith announced by Bahá'u'lláh this New World Order may be said to have been conceived. We can, at the present moment, experience its stirrings in the womb of a travailing age--an age waiting for the appointed hour at which it can cast its burden and yield its fairest fruit.

'The whole earth,' writes Bahá'u'lláh, 'is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings. Immeasurably exalted is the breeze that wafteth from the garment of thy Lord, the Glorified! For lo, it hath breathed its fragrance and made all things new! Well is it with them that comprehend...'

'The Call of God,' 'Abdu'l-Bahá has written, 'when raised, breathed a new life into the body of mankind, and infused a new spirit into the whole creation. It is for this reason that the world hath been moved to its depths, and the hearts and consciences of men been quickened. Erelong the evidences of this regeneration will be revealed, and the fast asleep will be awakened.' ⁶

The reason for this ignorance is, that although the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh is being increasingly proclaimed to humanity, the institutions of the Faith have not yet fully evolved to the point of being noticed by the people. In the passage quoted on page

And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then and only then will the Divine Standard be unfurled and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its melody.

The position of the Bahá'í community today is similar to the position of a gardener who claims to have a most beautiful garden full of flowers and trees. But when the enquirer visits the garden he sees no sign of vegetation whatsover. All that the gardener can do is to point to the seeds that he has sown and explain that the plants will emerge in time.

Only when the pangs of the birth of the new order of Bahá'u'lláh have been experienced and the embryonic institutions of His Faith have emerged, will the peoples of the world take notice of them and become aware of their potentialities. This emergence, closely linked with the rolling up of the old order, is only the beginning and must not be confused with that day of days in the distant future when Bahá'u'lláh's World Order will be established throughout the planet. The emergence of the embryonic institutions of the Faith is similar to the birth of a child. A newly born infant cannot use his limbs and organs effectively. A long time must elapse before it can reach the state of maturity and manhood. The emergence of the Bahá'í community from obscurity and the evolution of its institutions are therefore different from the emergence, in the distant future, of the World Order of Bahá'u'lláh.

Indeed, the rolling up of the present-day order and the trembling which, according to Bahá'u'lláh's pronouncement,

The blessings which the Lesser Peace will confer upon humanity will enable it to produce a new political structure freeing humanity from the curse of war. The social and humanitarian teachings and principles of Bahá'u'lláh which have already become the spirit of the age and which are being pursued by the enlightened peoples of the world will become incorporated in this political structure. Without being conscious of their origin, mankind will increasingly adopt these social teachings in every aspect of its life. These principles include the establishment of a world federated system, a world commonwealth, a world legislature, a world government backed by an international force, a world language, and other institutions as enunciated by Bahá'u'lláh in His teachings. The energies released by the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh over a hundred years ago will to an increasing degree so penetrate within human society as to leave no other option for humanity but to incorporate such teachings as the equality of the sexes, compulsory education, the abolition of extremes of poverty and wealth and similar ones in all its institutions. This is already evidenced by the application of these Bahá'í principles within many progressive movements in the world.

This new form of government must emerge from amidst the ruins of a doomed and dilapidated present-day order, and govern humanity until such time as the nascent institutions of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh will have attained their state of maturity. It is then that the Bahá'í World Order will be established in its great glory and this vision of Shoghi Effendi stretching far into the future will be realized.

To the general character, the implications and features of

* see pp. 125ff.

this world commonwealth, destined to emerge, sooner or later, out of the carnage, agony, and havoc of this great world convulsion, I have already referred in my previous communications. Suffice it to say that this consummation will, by its very nature, be a gradual process, and must, as Bahá'u'lláh has Himself anticipated, lead at first to the establishment of that Lesser Peace which the nations of the earth, as yet unconscious of His Revelation and yet unwittingly enforcing the general principles which He has enunciate will themselves establish. This momentous and historic step, involving the reconstruction of mankind, as the result of the universal recognition of its oneness and wholeness, will bring in its wake the spiritualization of the masses, consequent to the recognition of the character, and the acknowledgement of the claims, of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh--the essential condition to that ultimate fusion of all races, creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New World Order.

Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted. Then will the world-wide sovereignty of Bahá'u'lláh--the Establisher of the Kingdom of the Father, foretold by the Son, and anticipated by the Prophets of God before Him and after Him--be recognized, acclaimed, and firmly established. Then will a world civilization be born, flourish, and perpetuate itself, a civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor can as yet conceive. Then will the Everlasting Covenant be fulfilled in its completeness. Then will the promise enshrined in all the Books of God be redeemed, and all the prophecies uttered by the Prophets of old come to pass, and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet, galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God, and their allegiance to one common Revelation, mirror, within the limitations imposed upon it, the effulgent glories of the sovereignty of Bahá'u'lláh, shining in the plenitude of its splendour in the Abhá Paradise, and be made the footstool of His Throne on high, and acclaimed as the earthly heaven,

capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it, from time immemorial, by the love and wisdom of its Creator.⁷

The Local and the Universal Houses of Justice, the basic institutions of the Faith, were ordained by Bahá'u'lláh. These are His words in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas concerning the institution of the Local House of Justice:

The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established wherein shall gather counsellors to the number of Bahá,* and should it exceed this number it does not matter...It behoveth them to be the trusted ones of the Merciful among men and to regard themselves as the guardians appointed of God for all that dwell on earth. It is incumbent upon them to take counsel together and to have regard for the interests of the servants of God, for His sake, even as they regard their own interests, and to choose that which is meet and seemly. Thus hath the Lord your God commanded you. Beware lest ye put away that which is clearly revealed in His Tablet. Fear God, O ye that perceive.⁸

Present-day Local Spiritual Assemblies are instituted in localities where there are nine or more adult believers resident. These bodies are elected annually by every adult member of the Bahá'í community, and are charged with the responsibility

One of the unique features of the Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh is that He has attached great importance to consultation in every sphere of human activity. Bahá'í communities and institutions, whether local, national or international, function through Bahá'í consultation. These bodies not only consult on community affairs, but are empowered also to deal with personal matters affecting the lives of individual believers. However, Bahá'u'lláh has not limited consultation to the institutions of His Faith. He has stressed the importance of consultation on personal matters with friends and experts. These are some of the words of Bahá'u'lláh gleaned from His Writings on this subject:

The Great Being saith: The heaven of divine wisdom is illumined with the two luminaries of consultation and compassion. Take ye counsel together in all matters, inasmuch as consultation is the lamp of guidance which leadeth the way, and is the bestower of understanding.⁹

Consultation bestoweth greater awareness and transmuteth conjecture into certitude. It is a shining light which, in a dark world, leadeth the way and guideth. For everything there is and will continue to be a station of perfection and maturity. The maturity of the gift of understanding is made manifest through consultation.¹⁰

In all things it is necessary to consult. This matter should be forcibly stressed by thee, so that consultation may be

10. Consultation: A Compilation, p. 3.

observed by all. The intent of what hath been revealed from the Pen of the Most High is that consultation may be fully carried out among the friends, inasmuch as it is and will always be a cause of awareness and of awakening and a source of good and well-being.¹¹

Settle all things, both great and small, by consultation. Without prior consultation, take no important step in your own personal affairs. Concern yourselves with one another. Help along one another's projects and plans. Grieve over one another. Let none in the whole country go in need. Befriend one another until ye become as a single body, one and all...¹²

The purpose of consultation is to show that the views of several individuals are assuredly preferable to one man, even as the power of a number of men is of course greater than the power of one man. Thus consultation is acceptable in the presence of the Almighty, and hath been enjoined upon the believers, so that they may confer upon ordinary and personal matters, as well as on affairs which are general in nature and universal.

For instance, when a man hath a project to accomplish, should he consult with some of his brethren, that which is agreeable will of course be investigated and unveiled to his eyes, and the truth will be disclosed. Likewise on a higher level, should the people of a village consult one another about their affairs, the right solution will certainly be revealed. In like manner, the members of each profession, such as in industry, should consult, and those in commerce should similarly consult on business affairs. In short, consultation is desirable and acceptable in all things and on all issues.¹³

13. ibid. pp. 8-9.

In the Ishráqát (Splendours) revealed in the latter part of Bahá'u'lláh's life He declares:

This passage, now written by the pen of Glory, is accounted as part of the Most Holy Book: The men of God's House of Justice have been charged with the affairs of the people. They, in truth, are the Trustees of God among His servants and the daysprings of authority in His countries.

O people of God! That which traineth the world is justice, for it is upheld by two pillars, reward and punishment. These two pillars are the sources of life to the world. Inasmuch as for each day there is a new problem and for every problem an expedient solution, such affairs should be referred to the House of Justice that the members thereof may act according to the needs and requirements of the time. They that, for the sake of God, arise to serve His Cause, are the recipients of divine inspiration from the unseen Kingdom. It is incumbent upon all to be obedient unto them. All matters of State should be referred to the House of Justice, but acts of worship must be observed according to that which God hath revealed in His Book.¹⁵

In contrast to such a machine, which is lifeless and depends for its proper functioning on perfect coordination between its parts, we may observe that a young and living organism grows healthily without being perfect, and before its faculties are fully matured. A child, for example, can flourish and be active while possessing many imperfections due to immaturity. It has a vigour and a vitality that no lifeless object can rival. Although it makes mistakes, upsets the order of things and creates disturbances around itself, yet no one demands maturity and perfection from it, and no one is unduly concerned about its childish behaviour. For it is normal that as the child grows up it will cease to act immaturely, and in the fullness of time will acquire wisdom and other perfections.

True Bahá'ís understand the nature of their national and local institutions to be organic. They know that these bodies, animated by the spirit of the Cause, are in their infancy. They recognize that these assemblies, the embryos of future National and Local Houses of justice, may make wrong decisions at times and may on occasion act unjustly, but in spite of these shortcomings they are pulsating with life and growing in strength and vitality day by day. Far from attacking and criticizing them, Bahá'ís rally around them with loving care and pride. For they know that Bahá'u'lláh has vouchsafed His protection to the embryonic institutions of His Faith. And they realize that like any living organism, the local and national institutions of the Faith must have their growing pains until