glory of this age, according to Bahá’u’lláh, is its capacity to understand the oneness of all religions; and His inextinguishable vision of united humanity vitalizes a method of unity based upon that understanding.
This point is essential to any consideration of the Bahá’í Cause. Let us turn to Bahá’u’lláh’s own words: “God, singly and alone, abideth in His place which is holy above space and time, mention and utterance, sign, description and definition, height and depth. God hath been and is everlastingly hidden in His own essence and will be eternally concealed in His identity from the sight of eyes. Nay, there hath not been nor will be any connection or relation between the created beings and His Word.
“Therefore God hath caused brilliant Essences of sanctity to appear from the holy worlds of the spirit, in human bodies, walking among mankind, in accordance with His abundant mercy.
“These Mirrors of sanctity fully reflect that Sun of existence and Essence of desire. Their knowledge expresses His knowledge, their dominion His dominion, their beauty His beauty, their power His power, and their manifestation His manifestation.
“Whosoever is favored by these shining and glorious Lights and hath attained to these luminous, radiant Suns of Truth during every manifestation, hath attained the realization of God, and entered the city of eternal life.
“Those who earnestly endeavor in the way of God, after severance from all else, will become so attached to that city that they will not abandon it for an instant. This city is the revelation of God, renewed everyone thousand years, more or less.”
It is a fair estimate of the teaching of Bahá’u’lláh, I believe, to consider it as being made up almost equally of an interpretation of that which is fundamental and true to all religions alike, and of encouragement and exhortation to respond, with spirit, mind and soul, to the new and greater religious possibilities of this age. “Know that in every age and dispensation all divine ordinances are changed, according to the requirements of the time, except the law of Love which, like unto a fountain, flows always and is never overtaken by change.”
But it is not the experience of one soul alone which establishes a religion; rather is it the sharing of that experience with others under conditions which raise the others to the level of the experience, transmuting them while maintaining the source undefiled. The supreme test of every religion is its power of spiritual continuity after the passing of the Founder Himself.
Bahá’u’lláh departed from this world in 1892, leaving among His papers a Will or Testament appointing His eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the executive head of His Cause and the interpreter of His teachings. Whether or not the Bahá’í movement deserves the name “living religion” today is solely dependent upon the administration of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during the thirty years that intervened between the death of Bahá’u’lláh and His own ascension in 1921.
By 1892 the Cause had spread to India, to Egypt, to Turkistan, to Palestine. Even a sympathetic observer might readily have considered it inherently limited in its appeal to the Oriental character and tradition. But forces were already at work which eventually extended the boundary of the Cause to include adherents in Europe and America as well. A returned missionary, for example, speaking at the Congress of Religions held at the World's Fair in Chicago, during 1893*, made the statement that there had just passed away in ‘Akká one whose spirit was so broad and universal that His teachings might well be studied as a means of restoring true religious faith. A number of people from America shortly afterwards visited ‘Akká in order to investigate the teachings, with the result that in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá they found a living
[*Henry H . Jessup, D. D .. of Beirut. Syria. See page 169.—Editors.]