2/15/2014

Early soldiers of the Guardian - by David Hofman

Those early believers on whose shoulders we now stand ‑ a debt we can never forget or repay ‑ although beatified by their recognition of the Promised One of all ages, were, nevertheless, insofar as His Revelation was concerned, largely uninformed, naive and not yet weaned from the old order which Baha'u'llah was rolling up. Yet they were the Guardian's soldiers ‑ the army of life: he trained them, enlarged their vision, and led them on to victory.

The late Hand of the Cause H. M. Balyuzi related that even the erudite among the Persians, who could read the entire Sacred Text in its original, were not exempt from the general simplicity. He maintained that the Bab's statement 'Well is it with him who fixeth His gaze upon the Order of Baha'u'llah . . .', was understood by them to refer to Baha'u'llah's literary style. It was Shoghi Effendi who put the capital 'O' to that Order ‑ a device not used apparently in Persian orthography. 
- David Hofman  (The late member of the Universal House of Justice, from an essay: ‘Shoghi Effendi, Expounder of the Word of God’; published in ‘Studying the Writings of Shoghi Effendi’, by George Ronald)
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