A Study of a Christlike Character – by George Townshend, Hand of the Cause (sometime Cannon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland)

circa 1920

To live today in deed and truth the kind of life that Jesus of Nazareth led and bade His followers lead; to love God wholeheartedly, and for God’s sake to love all mankind, even one’s slanderers and enemies; to give consistently good for evil, blessings for curses, kindness for cruelty and, through a career darkened along its entire length by tragic misrepresentation and persecution, to preserve one’s courage, one’s sweetness and calm faith in God - to do all this and yet to play the man in a world of men, sharing at home and in business the common life of humanity, administering when occasion arose affairs large and small and handling complex situations with foresight and firmness — to live in such a manner throughout a long and arduous life, and when, in the fullness of time, death came, to leave to multitudes of mourners a sense of desolation and to be remembered and loved by them all as the servant of God - to how many men is such an achievement given as it has been given in this age of ours to ‘Abdu’l-Baha?

To the historian, the psychologist, the student of comparative religion, the narrative in all its aspects has much to offer of interest and value. But to the would-be Christian of the twentieth century the personal life and character of Sir Abbas Effendi (more widely known as ‘Abdu’l-Baha) make a direct and peculiar appeal.

An ordinary man who has set himself really to follow the precepts of Christ finds himself in special difficulties today. The very understanding and knowledge of the will of Christ, as well as the performance of it, seem now less easy to attain than they were for our forefathers. The accuracy of the Gospel record not only in phrase and detail, but in larger matters likewise is, however unjustifiably, questioned by a number of scholars. The record in any case is brief and fragmentary; and the utterances attributed to the Christ are not only very few but so terse and epigrammatic that their bearing is often uncertain and they admit of diverse interpretations. The problems of the contemporary world, too, are so much more complex than those of the period in which Christ lived that His words which suited so well the conditions of the past are difficult to apply to the present. Those who profess themselves the teachers of Christendom speak, as a whole, with such different voices and offer such contradictory advice that there is much bewilderment.