It was in the course of these epoch-making journeys [to the
West] and before large and representative audiences, at times exceeding a
thousand people, that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá expounded, with brilliant simplicity, with
persuasiveness and force, and for the first time in His ministry, those basic
and distinguishing principles of His Father’s Faith, which together with the
laws and ordinances revealed in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas constitute the bed-rock of
God’s latest Revelation to mankind. The independent search after truth,
unfettered by superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human race,
the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of
all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious,
racial, class or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and
science; the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of
human kind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education; the
adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes of
wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of
disputes between nations; the exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of
service, to the rank of worship; the glorification of justice as the ruling
principle in human society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of
all peoples and nations; and the establishment of a permanent and universal
peace as the supreme goal of all mankind…
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
