One Common Faith | Page 8

been its ability to free those who believe from the limitations of time itself, eliciting from them sacrifices on behalf of generations centuries into the future. Indeed, because the soul is immortal, its awakening to its true nature empowers it, not only in this world but even more directly in those worlds that lie beyond, to serve the evolutionary process: "The light which these souls radiate", Bahá'u'lláh asserts, "is responsible for the progress of the world and the advancement of its peoples.... All things must needs have a cause, a motive power, an animating principle. These souls and symbols of detachment have provided, and will continue to provide, the supreme moving impulse in the world of being."(15)
Belief is thus a necessary and inextinguishable urge of the species that has been described by an influential modern thinker as "evolution become conscious of itself".(16) If, as the events of the twentieth century provide sad and compelling evidence, the natural expression of faith is artificially blocked, it will invent objects of worship however unworthy--or even debased--that may in some measure appease the yearning for certitude. It is an impulse that will not be denied.
In short, through the ongoing process of revelation, the One Who is the Source of the system of knowledge we call religion demonstrates that system's integrity and its freedom from the contradictions imposed by sectarian ambitions. The work of each Manifestation of God has an autonomy and an authority that transcend appraisal; it is also a stage in the limitless unfolding of a single Reality. Because the purpose of the successive revelations of God is the awakening of humankind to its capacities and responsibilities as the trustee of creation, the process is not simply repetitive, but progressive, and is fully appreciated only when perceived in this context.
In no sense can Bahá'ís profess to have grasped at this early hour more than a minute portion of the truths inherent in the revelation on which their Faith is based. With reference, for example, to the evolution of the Cause, the Guardian said, "All we can reasonably venture to attempt is to strive to obtain a glimpse of the first streaks of the promised Dawn that must, in the fullness of time, chase away the gloom that has encircled humanity."(17) Apart from encouraging humility, this fact should serve also as a constant reminder that Bahá'u'lláh has not brought into existence a new religion to stand beside the present multiplicity of sectarian organizations. Rather has He recast the whole conception of religion as the principal force impelling the development of consciousness. As the human race in all its diversity is a single species, so the intervention by which God cultivates the qualities of mind and heart latent in that species is a single process. Its heroes and saints are the heroes and saints of all stages in the struggle; its successes, the successes of all stages. This is the standard demonstrated in the life and work of the Master and exemplified today in a Bahá'í community that has become the inheritor of humanity's entire spiritual legacy, a legacy equally available to all the earth's peoples.
The recurring proof of the existence of God, therefore, is that from time immemorial He has repeatedly manifested Himself. In the larger sense, as Bahá'u'lláh explains, the vast epic of humanity's religious history represents the fulfilment of the "Covenant", the enduring promise by which the Creator of all things assures the race of the unfailing guidance essential to its spiritual and moral development, and calls on it to internalize and give expression to these values. One is free to dispute through historicist interpretations of the evidence the unique role of this or that Messenger of God, if that is one's purpose, but such speculation is of no help in accounting for developments that have transformed thought and produced changes in human relationships critical to social evolution. At intervals so rare that the known instances can be counted on one's fingers, the Manifestations of God have appeared, have each been explicit as to the authority of His teachings and have each exerted an influence on the advance of civilization incomparably beyond that of any other phenomenon in history. "Consider the hour at which the supreme Manifestation of God revealeth Himself unto men", Bahá'u'lláh points out: "Ere that hour cometh, the Ancient Being, Who is still unknown of men and hath not as yet given utterance to the Word of God, is Himself the All-Knower in a world devoid of any man that hath known Him. He is indeed the Creator without a creation."(18)

"The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception..."
The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception of religion is the assertion that the differences among the revealed faiths are so fundamental that to present them as stages or