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Exemplar of Bahá’í Life |
Bahá’u’lláh was preeminently the Revealer of the Word. His
forty years’ imprisonment gave Him but limited opportunities
of intercourse with His fellowmen. To ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, therefore,
fell the important task of becoming the exponent of the Revelation,
the Doer of the Word, the Great Exemplar of the Bahá’í
life in actual contact with the world of today, in the most
diverse phases of its myriad activities. He showed that it is still
possible, amid the whirl and rush of modern life, amid the
self-love and struggle for material prosperity that everywhere
prevail, to live the life of entire devotion to God and to the
service of one’s fellows, which Christ and Bahá’u’lláh and all
the Prophets have demanded of men. Through trial and vicissitudes,
calumnies, and treachery on the one hand, and through
love and praise, devotion and veneration on the other, He
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stood like a lighthouse founded on a rock, around which
wintry tempests rage and the summer ocean plays, His poise
and serenity remaining ever steadfast and unshaken. He lived
the life of faith, and calls on His followers to live it here and
now. He raised amid a warring world the Banner of Unity and
Peace, the Standard of a New Era, and He assures those who
rally to its support that they shall be inspired by the Spirit of
the New Day. It is the same Holy Spirit which inspired the
Prophets and Saints of old, but it is a new outpouring of that
Spirit, suited to the needs of the new time.
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