Horace Holley: “In ‘Abdu’l-Baha I felt the awful presence of Baha’u’llah …I realized that I had thus drawn as near as man now may to pure spirit and pure being…”

It was while Horace and his wife were living in Siena, Italy, in 1911, that he heard of the arrival of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and his party in Thonon-les-Bains, France, As they had been hoping to make the pilgrimage to the Holy Land in order to meet the Master they lost no time in seizing this golden opportunity to attain His presence and left immediately for the small watering place on Lake Geneva, where they arrived on the afternoon of August 29th. Horace, in his account of this meeting with ‘Abdu’l-Baha, wrote that he had felt that if he could only look upon the Master from a distance, this would satisfy his pilgrim’s heart. He then goes on to describe what this privilege of spending a few days near ‘Abdu’l-Baha meant to him:

“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, 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 thus drawn as near as man now may to pure spirit and pure being... I yielded to a feeling of reverence which contained more than the solution of intellectual or moral problems. To look upon so wonderful a human being, to respond utterly to the charm of His presence -- this brought me continual happiness. I had no fear that its effects would pass away and leave me unchanged. I was content to remain in the background...

"‘Abdu’l-Baha answered questions and made frequent observations on religion in the West. He laughed heartily from time to time -- indeed, the idea of asceticism or useless misery of any kind cannot attach itself to this fully-developed personality. The divine element in Him does not feed at the expense of the human element, but appears rather to vitalize and enrich the human element by its own abundance, as if He had attained His spiritual development by fulfilling His social relations with the utmost ardour...”

- Ruhiyyih Khanum  (The Baha’i World 1954-1963)