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Messages to Canada

  • Author:

  • Shoghi Effendi

  • Source:
  • Bahá’í Canada Publications
  • Pages:
  • 276
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Pages 12-13

Letter of 4 February 1924

[From the Guardian:]

4 February 1924

The beloved of the Lord and the handmaids of the Merciful throughout Canada

Esteemed fellow-labourers in the Vineyard of God!
My close companionship during the last few days with that zealous and promising disciple of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, our dearly beloved Mr. Schopflocher1 has served to remind me of my Canadian friends, who are destined and chosen by Bahá’u’lláh to prepare the way for the ultimate triumph of His Cause in that great and vast Dominion.
I have received from him the assurance of your warm and abiding affection, of your unflinching faith and noble resolve to carry on the work so heroically begun by the Báb, so securely established by Bahá’u’lláh, and so widely and powerfully promoted by His beloved Son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. In my hours of association with your beloved representative I could not but feel deeply impressed by the sweetness of his nature, his ardour, his humility and selflessness, his clear understanding of, and entire devotion to, the interests of our beloved Cause. True, his has not been the privilege to gaze at our Beloved’s face, yet who that has seen him can but for a moment doubt that his soul is aglow with the flame of our Master’s love, that in him the Spirit of our departed Master abides in all its power and beauty?
I am confident that his radiant heart is but the reflecting mirror of that undying Fire, lit by our Beloved’s hand in the heart of your country, and destined one day to blaze forth and illumine all the Dominion of Canada—nay the whole of the Western continent. My prayers at the three Holy Shrines are that the Almighty may guide you and enable you to adhere steadfastly to the admonitions and counsels of our All-Wise Master, that you may combine and harmonize the essential qualities of prudence and courage, discretion and candour, dignity and lowliness, fidelity and goodwill, that thus you may guard His Cause and promote its interests at all times and under all conditions.
I am glad to convey to you the glad news of the improving health of that loved one of God, our dear Mrs. Maxwell.2 That pioneer worker of the Cause, so precious an asset to the Movement in Canada, will soon be in your midst, refreshed and restored. I am waiting with intense expectation to see your individual activities and talents all merged into one motive force, sustained by your combined efforts, directed by a unified purpose, and inspired by one common aim. Then will the showers of His grace rain upon you, and the unfailing promises of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá be speedily and effectively fulfilled.
That His Word will eventually be spread and firmly established none of us can ever doubt; my only yearning and hope is that we may through sustained effort and prayer be graciously aided to hasten by our words and deeds the advent of this glorious and long-awaited Day.

Your true brother in His service,

Shoghi
1.Siegfried Schopflocher—known as the “Temple Builder” because of his great contributions to the completion of the first Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of the West, appointed a Hand of the Cause of God in 1952, died in Montreal in 1953. For a review of his “numerous, magnificent services” see The Bahá’í World Vol. XII, 664–666, In Memoriam.  [ Back To Reference]
2.May Ellis Maxwell—spiritual mother of the Canadian Bahá’í community, became a believer in 1898, visited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Haifa in 1899 and returned to Paris to found the first Bahá’í centre on the European continent, married Sutherland Maxwell and settled in Montreal in 1902, achieved “the priceless honour” of a “martyr’s death” in Argentina in 1940. For a review of the vast range of her contributions to the Faith in Europe and America, see The Bahá’í World Vol. VIII, 631–642, In Memoriam.  [ Back To Reference]