Impressions on ‘Abdu’l-Baha

A Recollection by Horace Holley

Source: Horace Holley, quoted in The Baha’i World Volume 13

. . . As the party rose I saw among them a stately old man, robed in a cream-coloured gown, his white hair and beard shining in the sun. He displayed a beauty of stature, an inevitable harmony of attitude and dress I had never seen nor thought of in men. Without having ever visualized the Master, I knew that this was He. My whole body underwent a shock. My heart leaped, my knees weakened, a thrill of acute receptive feeling flowed from head to foot. I seemed to have turned into some most sensitive sense-organ, as if eyes and ears were not enough for this sublime impression. In every part of me I stood aware of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s presence. From sheer happiness I wanted to cry -it seemed the most suitable form of self-expression at my command. While my own personality was flowing away, even while I exhibited a state of complete humility, a new being, not my own, assumed its place. A glory, as it were from the summits of human nature, poured into me, and I was conscious of a most intense impulse to admire. In ‘Abdu’l-Baha I felt the awful presence of Baha’u’llah, and as my thoughts returned to activity, I realized that I had drawn as near as man now may to pure spirit and pure being. This wonderful experience came to me beyond my own volition. I had entered the Master’s presence and become the servant of a higher will for its own purpose. Even my memory of that temporary change of being bears strange authority over me. I know men can become; and that single overcharged moment, shining out from the dark mountain pass of all past time, reflects like a mirror I can turn upon all circumstances to consider their worth by an intelligence purer than my own.