f ignorance and
abomination? God has given us eyes, that we may look about us at the
world, and lay hold of whatsoever will further civilization and the arts
of living. He has given us ears, that we may hear and profit by the wisdom
of scholars and philosophers and arise to promote and practice it. Senses
and faculties have been bestowed upon us, to be devoted to the service of
the general good; so that we, distinguished above all other forms of life
for perceptiveness and reason, should labor at all times and along all
lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary,
until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of
knowledge. We should continually be establishing new bases for human
happiness and creating and promoting new instrumentalities toward this
end. How excellent, how honorable is man if he arises to fulfil his
responsibilities; how wretched and contemptible, if he shuts his eyes to
the welfare of society and wastes his precious life in pursuing his own
selfish interests and personal advantages. Supreme happiness is man's, and
he beholds the signs of God in the world and in the human soul, if he
urges on the steed of high endeavor in the arena of civilization and
justice. "We will surely show them Our signs in the world and within
themselves."(4)

And this is man's uttermost wretchedness: that he should live inert,
apathetic, dull, involved only with his own base appetites. When he is
thus, he has his being in the deepest ignorance and savagery, sinking
lower than the brute beasts. "They are like the brutes: Yea, they go more
astray... For the vilest beasts in God's sight, are the deaf, the dumb,
who understand not."(5)

We must now highly resolve to arise and lay hold of all those
instrumentalities that promote the peace and well-being and happiness, the
knowledge, culture and industry, the dignity, value and station, of the
entire human race. Thus, through the restoring waters of pure intention
and unselfish effort, the earth of human potentialities will blossom with
its own latent excellence and flower into praiseworthy qualities, and bear
and flourish until it comes to rival that rosegarden of knowledge which
belonged to our forefathers. Then will this holy land of Persia become in
every sense the focal center of human perfections, reflecting as if in a
mirror the full panoply of world civilization.

All praise and honor be to the Dayspring of Divine wisdom