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Unfolding Destiny

  • Author:
  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • UK Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1981 edition
  • Pages:
  • 490
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Pages 420-421

EXCERPTS FROM LETTERS TO INDIVIDUALS

420
Over three hundred letters to individuals residing in the British Isles have been studied and passages selected which are of permanent value.
These excerpts were taken from the letters of no more than twenty believers of whom only seven corresponded regularly with the Guardian.
They have been arranged chronologically; for details of the subject matter the reader must turn to the Index.
Almost all these passages are answers given by the Guardian to questions asked in personal letters to him. It is possible therefore to catch a glimpse of the changing problems facing the Bahá’í community and these frequently reflected conditions in the country as a whole. This is particularly significant in the years immediately following the Second World War for as the Guardian, in a letter written on his behalf by his secretary, wrote of the British believers,
“… he feels the greatest sympathy for them, and considers that when their present achievements are assessed in the future, people will give them a double measure of praise for having done so much when they were least fit to do it.” 421

Letter of 28 September 1925

28 September 1925
[From the Guardian]
…I wish you, my dearest friend, to make once again a supreme effort to come to a full understanding with the friends outside…. Extend to them your generous and helping hand, approach them with a spirit of selflessness and cordiality and the result, I am confident will be indeed marvellous. My heart rejoices at the news of the growth of harmony among the friends and I feel paralysed in my work when I hear to the contrary. I am impressing on the friends in … the absolute necessity of cultivating understanding and friendliness and consolidating the foundation of the National Assembly. For upon these National Assemblies will the Edifice of the Universal House of Justice be raised.