Once, in the early days, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá sent an eager believer there to ’sow the seed, deliver the Message.’ The man went, and two years later returned very discouraged. “I have sown the seed. I have delivered the Message through the length end breadth of India and they will not listen. Not one single soul has declared his belief in Bahá’u’lláh! What shall I do now?” And ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said rather sternly, “Go back and sow the seeds. I did not tell you to gain believers. I told you to sow the seeds.”
(Reginald Grant Barrow, Mother’s Stories: Stories of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Early Believers told by Muriel Ives Barrow Newhall to her son, p. 39)
