One Common Faith | Page 5

reflection has
come a questioning of all established authority, no longer merely that
of religion and morality, but also of government, academia, commerce,
the media and, increasingly, scientific opinion.
Apart from technological factors, unification of the planet is exerting
other, even more direct effects on thought. It would be impossible to
exaggerate, for example, the transformative impact on global
consciousness that has resulted from mass travel on an international
scale. Greater still have been the consequences of the enormous
migrations that the world has witnessed during the century and a half
since the Báb declared His mission. Millions of refugees fleeing from
persecution have swept like tidal waves back and forth across the

European, African and Asiatic continents, particularly. Amid the
suffering such turmoil has caused, one perceives the progressive
integration of the world's races and cultures as the citizenry of a single
global homeland. As a result, people of every background have been
exposed to the cultures and norms of others about whom their
forefathers knew little or nothing, exciting a search for meaning that
cannot be evaded.
It is impossible to imagine how different the history of the past century
and a half would have been had any of the leading arbiters of world
affairs addressed by Bahá'u'lláh spared time for reflection on a
conception of reality supported by the moral credentials of its Author,
moral credentials of the kind they professed to hold in the highest
regard. What is unmistakable to a Bahá'í is that, despite such failure,
the transformations announced in Bahá'u'lláh's message are resistlessly
accomplishing themselves. Through shared discoveries and shared
travails, peoples of diverse cultures are brought face to face with the
common humanity lying just beneath the surface of imagined
differences of identity. Whether stubbornly opposed in some societies
or welcomed elsewhere as a release from meaningless and suffocating
limitations, the sense that the earth's inhabitants are indeed "the leaves
of one tree"(4) is slowly becoming the standard by which humanity's
collective efforts are now judged.
Loss of faith in the certainties of materialism and the progressive
globalizing of human experience reinforce one another in the longing
they inspire for understanding about the purpose of existence. Basic
values are challenged; parochial attachments are surrendered; once
unthinkable demands are accepted. It is this universal upheaval,
Bahá'u'lláh explains, for which the scriptures of past religions
employed the imagery of "the Day of Resurrection": "The shout hath
been raised, and the people have come forth from their graves, and
arising, are gazing around them."(5) Beneath all of the dislocation and
suffering, the process is essentially a spiritual one: "The breeze of the
All-Merciful hath wafted, and the souls have been quickened in the
tombs of their bodies."(6)

"Throughout history, the primary agents of spiritual development
have..."
Throughout history, the primary agents of spiritual development have
been the great religions. For the majority of the earth's people, the
scriptures of each of these systems of belief have served, in
Bahá'u'lláh's words, as "the City of God",(7) a source of a knowledge
that totally embraces consciousness, one so compelling as to endow the
sincere with "a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind".(8) A
vast literature, to which all religious cultures have contributed, records
the experience of transcendence reported by generations of seekers.
Down the millennia, the lives of those who responded to intimations of
the Divine have inspired breathtaking achievements in music,
architecture, and the other arts, endlessly replicating the soul's
experience for millions of their fellow believers. No other force in
existence has been able to elicit from people comparable qualities of
heroism, self-sacrifice and self-discipline. At the social level, the
resulting moral principles have repeatedly translated themselves into
universal codes of law, regulating and elevating human relationships.
Viewed in perspective, the major religions emerge as the primary
driving forces of the civilizing process. To argue otherwise is surely to
ignore the evidence of history.
Why, then, does this immensely rich heritage not serve as the central
stage for today's reawakening of spiritual quest? On the periphery,
earnest attempts are being made to reformulate the teachings that gave
rise to the respective faiths, in the hope of imbuing them with new
appeal, but the greater part of the search for meaning is diffused,
individualistic and incoherent in character. The scriptures have not
changed; the moral principles they contain have lost none of their
validity. No one who sincerely poses questions to Heaven, if he persists,
will fail to detect an answering voice in the Psalms or in the
Upanishads. Anyone with some intimation of the Reality that
transcends this material one will be touched to the heart by the words in
which Jesus or Buddha speaks so intimately of it. The Qur'án's
apocalyptic visions continue to provide compelling assurance to its

readers that the