Once more, the love of God and the love of humanity--which Abdul Baha boldly says is the love of God--is the only thing that greatly matters. And if he favours either half of humanity in preference to the other, it is women folk. He has a great repugnance to the institution of polygamy, and has persistently refused to take a second wife himself, though he has only daughters. Baha-'ullah, as we have seen, acted differently; apparently he did not consider that the Islamic peoples were quite ripe for monogamy. But surely he did not choose the better part, as the history of Bahaism sufficiently shows. At any rate, the Centre of the Covenant has now spoken with no uncertain sound.
As we have seen, the two schismatic enterprises affected the sensitive nature of the true Centre of the Covenant most painfully; one thinks of a well-known passage in a Hebrew psalm. But he was more than compensated by several most encouraging events. The first was the larger scale on which accessions took place to the body of believers; from England to the United States, from India to California, in surprising numbers, streams of enthusiastic adherents poured in. It was, however, for Russia that the high honour was reserved of the erection of the first Bahai temple. To this the Russian Government was entirely favourable, because the Bahais were strictly forbidden by Baha-'ullah and by Abdul Baha to take part in any revolutionary enterprises. The temple took some years to build, but was finished at last, and two Persian workmen deserve the chief praise for willing self-sacrifice in the building. The example thus set will soon be followed by our kinsfolk in the United States. A large and beautiful site on the shores of Lake Michigan has been acquired, and the construction will speedily be proceeded with.
It is, in fact, the outward sign of a new era. If Baha-'ullah be our guide, all religions are essentially one and the same, and all human societies are linked By a covenant of brotherhood. Of this the Bahai temples--be they few, or be they many--are the symbols. No wonder that Abdul Baha is encouraged and consoled thereby. And yet I, as a member of a great world-wide historic church, cannot help feeling that our (mostly) ancient and beautiful abbeys and cathedrals are finer symbols of union in God than any which our modern builders can provide. Our London people, without distinction of sect, find a spiritual home in St. Paul's Cathedral, though this is no part of our ancient inheritance.