Statement on Baha'u'llah

+P 1
&BAHA'U'LLAH


&Baha'i International Community
Office of Public Information
New York


May 29, 1992, marks the centenary of the passing of
&Baha'u'llah. His vision of humanity as one people and of
the earth as a common homeland, dismissed out of hand by
the world leaders to whom it was first enunciated over a
hundred years ago, has today become the focus of human hope.
Equally inescapable is the collapse of moral and social order,
which this same declaration foresaw with awesome clarity.

The occasion has encouraged publication of this brief
introduction to &Baha'u'llah's life and work. Prepared at
the request of the Universal House of Justice, trustee of the
global undertaking which the events of a century ago set in
motion, it offers a perspective on the feeling of confidence
with which &Baha'is the world over contemplate the future of
our planet and our race.



















+P 1









&BAHA'U'LLAH




As the new millennium approaches, the crucial need of the human race is to
find a unifying vision of the nature of man and society. For the past century
humanity's response to this impulse has driven a succession of ideological
upheavals that have convulsed our world and that appear now to have exhausted
themselves. The passion invested in the struggle, despite its disheartening
results, testifies to the depth of the need. For, without a common conviction
about the course and direction of human history, it is inconceivable that foun-
dations can be laid for a global society to which the mass of humankind can
commit themselves.

Such a vision unfolds in the writings of &Baha'u'llah, the nineteenth
century prophetic figure whose growing influence is the most remarkable devel-
opment of contemporary religious history. Born in Persia, November 12, 1817,
&Baha'u'llah1 began at age 27 an undertaking that has gradually captured the
imagination and loyalty of several million people from virtually every race,
culture, class, and nation on earth. The phenomenon is one that has no refer-
ence points in the contemporary world, but is associated rather with climactic
changes of direction in the collective past of the human race. For &Baha'u'llah
claimed to be no less than the Messenger of God to the age of human maturity,
the Bearer of a Divine Revelation that fulfills the promises made in earlier
religions, and that will generate the spiritual nerves and sinews for the
unification of the peoples of the world.

If they were to do nothing else, the effects which &Baha'u'llah's life
and writings have already had should command the earnest attention of anyone
who believes that human nature is fundamentally spiritual and that the coming
organization of our planet must be informed by this aspect of reality. The
documentation lies open to general scrutiny. For the first time in history
humanity has available a detailed and verifiable record of the birth of an inde-
pendent religious system and of the life of its Founder. Equally accessible is
the record of the response that the new faith has evoked, through the emergence
of a global community which can already justly claim to represent a microcosm
of the human race.2

During the earlier decades of this century, this development was rela-
tively obscure. &Baha'u'llah's writings forbid the aggressive proselytism
through which many religious messages have been widely promulgated. Further,
the priority which the &Baha'i community gave to the establishment of groups
at the local level throughout the entire planet militated against the early
emergence of large concentrations of adherents in any one country or the mobi-
lization of resources required for large-scale programs of public information.
Arnold Toynbee, intrigued by phenomena that might represent the emergence of
+P 2
a new universal religion, noted in the 1950s that the &Baha'i Faith was then
about as familiar to the average educated Westerner as Christianity had been
to the corresponding class in the Roman empire during the second century A.D.3

In more recent years, as the &Baha'i community's numbers have rapidly
increased in many countries, the situation has changed dramatically. There
is now virtually no area in the world where the pattern of life taught by
&Baha'u'llah is not taking root. The respect which the community's social and
economic development projects are beginning to win in governmental, academic,
and United Nations circles further reinforces the argument for a detached and
serious examination of the impulse behind a process of social transformation
that is, in critical respects, unique in our world.

No uncertainty surrounds the nature of the generating impulse.
&Baha'u'llah's writings cover an enormous range of subjects from social issues
such as racial integration, the equality of the sexes, and disarmament, to
those questions that affect the innermost life of the human soul. The original
texts, many of them in His own hand, the others dictated and affirmed by their
author, have been meticulously preserved. For several decades, a systematic
program of translation and publication has made selections from &Baha'u'llah's
writings accessible to people everywhere, in over eight hundred languages.

Birth of a New Revelation

&Baha'u'llah's mission began in a subterranean dungeon in Teheran in August
1852. Born into a noble family that could trace its ancestry back to the great
dynasties of Persia's imperial past, He declined the ministerial career open
to Him in government, and chose instead to devote His energies to a range of
philanthropies which had, by the early 1840s, earned Him widespread renown as
"Father of the Poor." This privileged existence swiftly eroded after 1844, when
&Baha'u'llah became one of the leading advocates of a movement that was to change
the course of His country's history.

The early nineteenth century was a period of messianic expectations in many
lands. Deeply disturbed by the implications of scientific inquiry and indus-
trialization, earnest believers from many religious backgrounds turned to the
scriptures of their faiths for an understanding of the accelerating processes
of change. In Europe and America groups like the Templers and the Millerites
believed they had found in the Christian scriptures evidence supporting their
conviction that history had ended and the return of Jesus Christ was at hand.
A markedly similar ferment developed in the Middle East around the belief that
the fulfillment of various prophecies in the &Qur'an and Islamic Traditions was
imminent.

By far the most dramatic of these millennialist movements had been the one
in Persia, which had focused on the person and teachings of a young merchant
from the city of Shiraz, known to history as the &Bab.4 For nine years, from
1844 to 1853, Persians of all classes had been caught up in a storm of hope and
excitement aroused by the &Bab's announcement that the Day of God was at hand
and that He was himself the One promised in Islamic scripture. Humanity stood,
He said, on the threshold of an era that would witness the restructuring of all
aspects of life. New fields of learning, as yet inconceivable, would permit
even the children of the new age to surpass the most erudite of nineteenth-
century scholars. The human race was called by God to embrace these changes
+P 3
through undertaking a transformation of its moral and spiritual life. His own
mission was to prepare humanity for the event that lay at the heart of these
develop- ments, the coming of that universal Messenger of God, "He Whom God
will make manifest," awaited by the followers of all religions.5

The claim had evoked violent hostility from the Muslim clergy, who taught
that the process of Divine Revelation had ended with &Muhammad; and that any
assertion to the contrary represented apostasy, punishable by death. Their
denunciation of the &Bab had soon enlisted the support of the Persian authori-
ties. Thousands of followers of the new faith had perished in a horrific series
of massacres throughout the country, and the &Bab had been publicly executed on
July 9, 1850.6 In an age of growing Western involvement in the Orient, these
events had aroused interest and compassion in influential European circles.
The nobility of the &Bab's life and teachings, the heroism of His followers, and
the hope for fundamental reform that they had kindled in a darkened land had
exerted a powerful attraction for personalities ranging from Ernest Renan and
Leo Tolstoy to Sarah Bernhardt and the Comte de Gobineau.7

Because of His prominence in the defense of the &Bab's cause, &Baha'u'llah
was arrested and brought, in chains and on foot, to Teheran. Protected in some
measure by an impressive personal reputation and the social position of His
family, as well as by protests which the &Babi pogroms had evoked from Western
embassies, He was not sentenced to death, as influential figures at the royal
court were urging. Instead, He was cast into the notorious &Siyah-Chal, the
"Black Pit", a deep, vermin-infested dungeon which had been created in one of
the city's abandoned reservoirs. No charges were laid but He and some thirty
companions were, without appeal, kept immured in the darkness and filth of this
pit, surrounded by hardened criminals, many of them under sentence of death.
Around &Baha'u'llah's neck was clamped a heavy chain, so notorious in penal
circles as to have been given its own name. When He did not quickly perish, as
had been expected, an attempt was made to poison Him. The marks of the chain
were to remain on His body for the rest of His life.

Central to &Baha'u'llah's writings is an exposition of the great themes
which have preoccupied religious thinkers throughout the ages: God, the role
of Revelation in history, the relationship of the world's religious systems
to one another, the meaning of faith, and the basis of moral authority in the
organization of human society. Passages in these texts speak intimately of
His own spiritual experience, of His response to the Divine summons, and of
the dialogue with the "Spirit of God" which lay at the heart of His mission.
Religious history has never before offered the inquirer the opportunity for
so candid an encounter with the phenomenon of Divine Revelation.

Toward the end of His life, &Baha'u'llah's writings on His early experiences
included a brief description of the conditions in the &Siyah-Chal.

We were consigned for four months to a place foul beyond comparison....
The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow-prisoners
numbered nearly a hundred and fifty souls: thieves, assassins and
highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by
which We entered. No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe
its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither clothes nor bedding
to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling
and gloomy place!8
+P 4
Each day the guards would descend the three steep flights of stairs of
the pit, seize one or more of the prisoners, and drag them out to be executed.
In the streets of Teheran, Western observers were appalled by scenes of &Babi
victims blown from cannon mouths, hacked to death by axes and swords, and led
to their deaths with burning candles inserted into open wounds in their bodies.9
It was in these circumstances, and faced with the prospect of His own imminent
death, that &Baha'u'llah received the first intimation of His mission:

One night, in a dream, these exalted words were heard on every
side: "Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy
Pen. Grieve Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee, neither be Thou
afraid, for Thou art in safety. Erelong will God raise up the treasures
of the earth -- men who will aid Thee through Thyself and through Thy
name, wherewith God hath revived the hearts of such as have recognized
Him."10

The experience of Divine Revelation, touched on only at secondhand in sur-
viving accounts of the lives of the Buddha, Moses, Jesus Christ, and &Muhammad,
is described graphically in &Baha'u'llah's own words:

During the days I lay in the prison of &Tihran, though the galling
weight of the chains and the stench-filled air allowed Me but little
sleep, still in those infrequent moments of slumber I felt as if something
flowed from the crown of My head over My breast, even as a mighty torrent
that precipitateth itself upon the earth from the summit of a lofty
mountain. Every limb of My body would, as a result, be set afire. At
such moments My tongue recited what no man could bear to hear.11

Exile

Eventually, still without trial or recourse, &Baha'u'llah was released from
prison and immediately banished from His native land, His wealth and properties
arbitrarily confiscated. The Russian diplomatic representative, who knew Him
personally and who had followed the &Babi persecutions with growing distress,
offered Him his protection and refuge in lands under the control of his govern-
ment. In the prevailing political climate, acceptance of such help would almost
certainly have been misrepresented by others as having political implications.12
Perhaps for this reason, &Baha'u'llah chose to accept banishment to the neigh-
boring territory of Iraq, then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. This
expulsion was the beginning of forty years of exile, imprisonment, and bitter
persecution.

In the years which immediately followed His departure from Persia,
&Baha'u'llah gave priority to the needs of the &Babi community which had gathered
in Baghdad, a task which had devolved on Him as the only effective &Babi leader
to have survived the massacres. The death of the &Bab and the almost simultane-
ous loss of most of the young faith's teachers and guides had left the body of
the believers scattered and demoralized. When His efforts to rally those who
had fled to Iraq aroused jealousy and dissension,13 He followed the path that
had been taken by all of the Messengers of God gone before Him, and withdrew to
the wilderness, choosing for the purpose the mountain region of Kurdistan. His
withdrawal, as He later said, had "contemplated no return." Its reason "was to
avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance
+P 5
unto Our companions." Although the two years spent in Kurdistan were a period
of intense privation and physical hardship, &Baha'u'llah describes them as a
time of profound happiness during which He reflected deeply on the message
entrusted to Him: "Alone, We communed with Our spirit, oblivious of the world
and all that is therein."14

Only with great reluctance, believing it His responsibility to the cause
of the &Bab, did He eventually accede to urgent messages from the remnant of
the desperate group of exiles in Baghdad who had discovered His whereabouts
and appealed to Him to return and assume the leadership of their community.

Two of the most important volumes of &Baha'u'llah's writings date from this
first period of exile, preceding the declaration of His mission in 1863. The
first of these is a small book which He named The Hidden Words. Written in
the form of a compilation of moral aphorisms, the volume represents the ethical
heart of &Baha'u'llah's message. In verses which &Baha'u'llah describes as a
distillation of the spiritual guidance of all the Revelations of the past, the
voice of God speaks directly to the human soul:

O Son of Spirit!
The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away
therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide
in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not
through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and
not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart;
how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and
the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.

O Son of Being!
Love Me that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in
no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.

O Son of Man!
Sorrow not save that thou art far from Us. Rejoice not save that
thou art drawing near and returning unto Us.

O Son of Being!
With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength
I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light.
Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect
and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof.15

The second of the two major works composed by &Baha'u'llah during this
period is The Book of Certitude, a comprehensive exposition of the nature and
purpose of religion. In passages that draw not only on the &Qur'an, but with
equal facility and insight on the Old and New Testaments, the Messengers of God
are depicted as agents of a single, unbroken process, the awakening of the
human race to its spiritual and moral potentialities. A humanity which has
come of age can respond to a directness of teaching that goes beyond the
language of parable and allegory; faith is a matter not of blind belief, but of
conscious knowledge. Nor is the guidance of an ecclesiastical elite any longer
required: the gift of reason confers on each individual in this new age of
enlightenment and education the capacity to respond to Divine guidance. The
test is that of sincerity:

+P 6
No man shall attain the shores of the ocean of true understanding
except he be detached from all that is in heaven and on earth.... The
essence of these words is this: they that tread the path of faith, they
that thirst for the wine of certitude, must cleanse themselves of all
that is earthly -- their ears from idle talk, their minds from vain
imaginings, their hearts from worldly affections, their eyes from that
which perisheth. They should put their trust in God, and, holding
fast unto Him, follow in His way. Then will they be made worthy of
the effulgent glories of the sun of divine knowledge and understanding,
... inasmuch as man can never hope to attain unto the knowledge of the
All-Glorious ... unless and until he ceases to regard the words and deeds
of mortal men as a standard for the true understanding and recognition
of God and His Prophets.

Consider the past. How many, both high and low, have, at all times,
yearningly awaited the advent of the Manifestations of God in the
sanctified persons of His chosen Ones.... And whensoever the portals of
grace did open, and the clouds of divine bounty did rain upon mankind,
and the light of the Unseen did shine above the horizon of celestial
might, they all denied Him, and turned away from His face -- the face of
God Himself....

Only when the lamp of search, of earnest striving, of longing desire,
of passionate devotion, of fervid love, of rapture, and ecstasy, is
kindled within the seeker's heart, and the breeze of His loving-kindness
is wafted upon his soul, will the darkness of error be dispelled, the
mists of doubts and misgivings be dissipated, and the lights of knowledge
and certitude envelop his being.... Then will the manifold favors and
outpouring grace of the holy and everlasting Spirit confer such new life
upon the seeker that he will find himself endowed with a new eye, a new
ear, a new heart, and a new mind.... Gazing with the eye of God, he will
perceive within every atom a door that leadeth him to the stations of
absolute certitude. He will discover in all things the ... evidences of
an everlasting Manifestation.

When the channel of the human soul is cleansed of all worldly and impeding
attachments, it will unfailingly perceive the breath of the Beloved across
immeasurable distances, and will, led by its perfume, attain and enter the
City of Certitude....

That city is none other than the Word of God revealed in every age and
dispensation.... All the guidance, the blessings, the learning, the
understanding, the faith, and certitude, conferred upon all that is in
heaven and on earth, are hidden and treasured within these Cities.16

No overt reference is made to &Baha'u'llah's own as yet unannounced mission;
rather, The Book of Certitude is organized around a vigorous exposition of the
mission of the martyred &Bab. Not the least of the reasons for the book's power-
ful influence on the &Babi community, which included a number of scholars and
former seminarians, was the mastery of Islamic thought and teaching its author
displays in demonstrating the &Bab's claim to have fulfilled the prophecies of
Islam. Calling on the &Babis to be worthy of the trust which the &Bab had placed
in them and of the sacrifice of so many heroic lives, &Baha'u'llah held out
before them the challenge not only of bringing their personal lives into confor-
mity with the Divine teachings, but of making their community a model for the
heterogeneous population of Baghdad, the Iraqi provincial capital.
+P 7
Though living in very straitened material circumstances, the exiles were
galvanized by this vision. One of their company, a man called &Nabil, who
was later to leave a detailed history of both the ministries of the &Bab and
&Baha'u'llah, has described the spiritual intensity of those days:

Many a night no less than ten persons subsisted on no more than a
pennyworth of dates. No one knew to whom actually belonged the shoes, the
cloaks, or the robes that were to be found in their houses. Whoever went
to the bazaar could claim that the shoes upon his feet were his own, and
each one who entered the presence of &Baha'u'llah could affirm that the
cloak and robe he then wore belonged to him.... O, for the joy of those
days, and the gladness and wonder of those hours!17

To the dismay of the Persian consular authorities who had believed the &Babi
"episode" to have run its course, the community of exiles gradually became a
respected and influential element in Iraq's provincial capital and the neigh-
boring towns. Since several of the most important shrines of Shi`ih Islam were
located in the area, a steady stream of Persian pilgrims was also exposed, under
the most favorable circumstances, to the renewal of &Babi influence. Among dig-
nitaries who called on &Baha'u'llah in the simple house He occupied were princes
of the royal family. So enchanted by the experience was one of them that he
conceived the somewhat naive idea that by erecting a duplicate of the building
in the gardens of his own estate, he might recapture something of the atmo-
sphere of spiritual purity and detachment he had briefly encountered. Another,
more deeply moved by the experience of his visit, expressed to friends the
feeling that "were all the sorrows of the world to be crowded into my heart
they would, I feel, all vanish, when in the presence of &Baha'u'llah. It is as
if I had entered Paradise..."18


The Declaration in the &Ridvan Garden

By 1863, &Baha'u'llah concluded that the time had come to begin acquainting
some of those around Him with the mission which had been entrusted to Him in
the darkness of the &Siyah-Chal. This decision coincided with a new stage in
the campaign of opposition to His work, which had been relentlessly pursued by
the Shi`ih Muslim clergy and representatives of the Persian government.
Fearing that the acclaim which &Baha'u'llah was beginning to enjoy among
influential Persian visitors to Iraq would re-ignite popular enthusiasm in
Persia, the Shah's government pressed the Ottoman authorities to remove Him far
from the borders and into the interior of the empire. Eventually, the Turkish
government acceded to these pressures and invited the exile, as its guest, to
make His residence in the capital, Constantinople. Despite the courteous terms
in which the message was couched, the intention was clearly to require
compliance.19

By this time, the devotion of the little company of exiles had come to
focus on &Baha'u'llah's person as well as on His exposition of the &Bab's teach-
ings. A growing number of them had become convinced that He was speaking not
only as the &Bab's advocate, but on behalf of the far greater cause which the
latter had declared to be imminent. These beliefs became a certainty in late
April 1863 when &Baha'u'llah, on the eve of His departure for Constantinople,
called together individuals among His companions, in a garden to which was
later given the name &Ridvan ("Paradise"), and confided the central fact of
His mission. Over the next four years, although no open announcement was con-
sidered timely, the hearers gradually shared with trusted friends the news that
the &Bab's promises had been fulfilled and that the "Day of God" had dawned.
+P 8
The precise circumstances surrounding this private communication are, in
the words of the &Baha'i authority most intimately familiar with the records of
the period, "shrouded in an obscurity which future historians will find it
difficult to penetrate."20 The nature of the declaration may be appreciated
in various references which &Baha'u'llah was to make to His mission in many of
His subsequent writings:

The purpose underlying all creation is the revelation of this most
sublime, this most holy Day, the Day known as the Day of God, in His
Books and Scriptures -- the Day which all the Prophets, and the Chosen
Ones, and the holy ones, have wished to witness.21

...this is the Day in which mankind can behold the Face, and hear the
Voice, of the Promised One. The Call of God hath been raised, and the
light of His countenance hath been lifted up upon men. It behooveth
every man to blot out the trace of every idle word from the tablet of his
heart, and to gaze, with an open and unbiased mind, on the signs of His
Revelation, the proofs of His Mission, and the tokens of His glory.22

As repeatedly emphasized in &Baha'u'llah's exposition of the &Bab's message,
the primary purpose of God in revealing His will is to effect a transformation
in the character of humankind, to develop within those who respond the moral
and spiritual qualities that are latent within human nature:

Beautify your tongues, O people, with truthfulness, and adorn your
souls with the ornament of honesty. Beware, O people, that ye deal not
treacherously with any one. Be ye the trustees of God amongst His
creatures, and the emblems of His generosity amidst His people....23

Illumine and hallow your hearts; let them not be profaned by the thorns
of hate or the thistles of malice. Ye dwell in one world, and have been
created through the operation of one Will. Blessed is he who mingleth
with all men in a spirit of utmost kindliness and love.24

The aggressive proselytism that had characterized efforts in ages past to
promote the cause of religion is declared to be unworthy of the Day of God.
Each person who has recognized the Revelation has the obligation to share it
with those who he believes are seeking, but to leave the response entirely to
his hearers:

Show forbearance and benevolence and love to one another. Should
any one among you be incapable of grasping a certain truth, or be
striving to comprehend it, show forth, when conversing with him, a spirit
of extreme kindliness and good-will....25

The whole duty of man in this Day is to attain that share of the
flood of grace which God poureth forth for him. Let none, therefore,
consider the largeness or smallness of the receptacle....26

Against the background of the bloody events in Persia, &Baha'u'llah not only
told His followers that "if ye be slain, it is better for you than to slay," but
urged them to set an example of obedience to civil authority: "In every country
where any of this people reside, they must behave towards the government of that
country with loyalty, honesty and truthfulness."27
+P 9
The conditions surrounding &Baha'u'llah's departure from Baghdad provided
a dramatic demonstration of the potency of these principles. In only a few
years, a band of foreign exiles whose arrival in the area had aroused suspicion
and aversion on the part of their neighbors had become one of the most respected
and influential segments of the population. They supported themselves through
flourishing businesses; as a group they were admired for their generosity and
the integrity of their conduct; the lurid allegations of religious fanaticism
and violence, sedulously spread by Persian consular officials and members of
the Shi`ih Muslim clergy, had ceased to have an effect on the public mind.
By May 3, 1863, when He rode out of Baghdad, accompanied by His family and
those of His companions and servants who had been chosen to accompany Him to
Constantinople, &Baha'u'llah had become an immensely popular and cherished
figure. In the days immediately preceding the leave-taking a stream of nota-
bles, including the Governor of the province himself, came to the garden where
He had temporarily taken up residence, many of them from great distances, in
order to pay their respects. Eyewitnesses to the departure have described in
moving terms the acclaim that greeted Him, the tears of many of the onlookers,
and the concern of the Ottoman authorities and civil officials to do their
visitor honor.28

"The Changeless Faith of God..."

Following the declaration of His mission in 1863, &Baha'u'llah began to
elaborate a theme already introduced in The Book of Certitude, the relationship
between the Will of God and the evolutionary process by which the spiritual and
moral capacities latent in human nature find expression. This exposition would
occupy a central place in His writings over the remaining thirty years of His
life. The reality of God, He asserts, is and will always remain unknowable.
Whatever words human thought may apply to the Divine nature relate only to human
existence and are the products of human efforts to describe human experience:

Far, far from Thy glory be what mortal man can affirm of Thee, or
attribute unto Thee, or the praise with which he can glorify Thee!
Whatever duty Thou hast prescribed unto Thy servants of extolling to the
utmost Thy majesty and glory is but a token of Thy grace unto them, that
they may be enabled to ascend unto the station conferred upon their own
inmost being, the station of the knowledge of their own selves.29

To every discerning and illumined heart it is evident that God, the
unknowable Essence, the divine Being, is immensely exalted beyond every
human attribute, such as corporeal existence, ascent and descent, egress
and regress. Far be it from His glory that human tongue should adequately
recount His praise, or that human heart comprehend His fathomless mystery.
He is and hath ever been veiled in the ancient eternity of His Essence,
and will remain in His Reality everlastingly hidden from the sight of
men....30

What humanity experiences in turning to the Creator of all existence
are the attributes or qualities which are associated with God's recurring
Revelations:

The door of the knowledge of the Ancient of Days being thus closed
in the face of all beings, the Source of infinite grace, ... hath caused
those luminous Gems of Holiness to appear out of the realm of the spirit,
in the noble form of the human temple, and be made manifest unto all men,
that they may impart unto the world the mysteries of the unchangeable
Being, and tell of the subtleties of His imperishable Essence....31
+P 10
These sanctified Mirrors ... are one and all the Exponents on earth of
Him Who is the central Orb of the universe, its Essence and ultimate
Purpose. From Him proceed their knowledge and power; from Him is derived
their sovereignty. The beauty of their countenance is but a reflection
of His image, and their revelation a sign of His deathless glory....32

The Revelations of God do not differ in any essential respect from one
another, although the changing needs they serve from age to age have called out
unique responses from each of them:

These attributes of God are not and have never been vouchsafed
specially unto certain Prophets, and withheld from others. Nay, all the
Prophets of God, His well-favored, His holy, and chosen Messengers, are,
without exception, the bearers of His names, and the embodiments of His
attributes. They only differ in the intensity of their revelation, and
the comparative potency of their light....33

Students of religion are cautioned not to permit theological dogmas or
other preconceptions to lead them into discriminating among those whom God has
used as channels of His light:

Beware, O believers in the Unity of God, lest ye be tempted to make
any distinction between any of the Manifestations of His Cause, or to
discriminate against the signs that have accompanied and proclaimed their
Revelation. This indeed is the true meaning of Divine Unity, if ye be of
them that apprehend and believe this truth. Be ye assured, moreover, that
the works and acts of each and every one of these Manifestations of God,
nay whatever pertaineth unto them, and whatsoever they may manifest in
the future, are all ordained by God, and are a reflection of His Will and
Purpose....34

&Baha'u'llah compares the interventions of the Divine Revelations to the
return of spring. The Messengers of God are not merely teachers, although this
is one of their primary functions. Rather, the spirit of their words, together
with the example of their lives, has the capacity to tap the roots of human
motivation and to induce fundamental and lasting change. Their influence opens
new realms of understanding and achievement:

And since there can be no tie of direct intercourse to bind the one
true God with His creation, and no resemblance whatever can exist between
the transient and the Eternal, the contingent and the Absolute, He hath
ordained that in every age and dispensation a pure and stainless Soul be
made manifest in the kingdoms of earth and heaven.... Led by the light
of unfailing guidance, and invested with supreme sovereignty, They [the
Messengers of God] are commissioned to use the inspiration of Their words,
the effusions of Their infallible grace and the sanctifying breeze of
Their Revelation for the cleansing of every longing heart and receptive
spirit from the dross and dust of earthly cares and limitations. Then,
and only then, will the Trust of God, latent in the reality of man,
emerge ... and implant the ensign of its revealed glory upon the summits
of men's hearts.35
+P 11
Without this intervention from the world of God, human nature remains the
captive of instinct, as well as of unconscious assumptions and patterns of
behavior that have been culturally determined:

Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He
[God] ... chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity
to know Him and to love Him -- a capacity that must needs be regarded as
the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of
creation.... Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He
hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the
glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He
hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made
it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been
singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.

These energies with which the ... Source of heavenly guidance hath
endowed the reality of man lie, however, latent within him, even as the
flame is hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially
present in the lamp. The radiance of these energies may be obscured by
worldly desires even as the light of the sun can be concealed beneath the
dust and dross which cover the mirror. Neither the candle nor the lamp
can be lighted through their own unaided efforts, nor can it ever be
possible for the mirror to free itself from its dross. It is clear and
evident that until a fire is kindled the lamp will never be ignited, and
unless the dross is blotted out from the face of the mirror it can never
represent the image of the sun nor reflect its light and glory.36

The time has come, &Baha'u'llah said, when humanity has both the capacity
and the opportunity to see the entire panorama of its spiritual development as
a single process: "Peerless is this Day, for it is as the eye to past ages and
centuries, and as a light unto the darkness of the times."37 In this perspec-
tive, the followers of differing religious traditions must strive to understand
what He called "the changeless Faith of God"38 and to distinguish its central
spiritual impulse from the changing laws and concepts that were revealed to
meet the requirements of an ever-evolving human society:

The Prophets of God should be regarded as physicians whose task is
to foster the well-being of the world and its peoples, that, through the
spirit of oneness, they may heal the sickness of a divided humanity....
Little wonder, then, if the treatment prescribed by the physician in this
day should not be found to be identical with that which he prescribed
before. How could it be otherwise when the ills affecting the sufferer
necessitate at every stage of his sickness a special remedy? In like
manner, every time the Prophets of God have illumined the world with
the resplendent radiance of the Day Star of Divine knowledge, they have
invariably summoned its peoples to embrace the light of God through
such means as best befitted the exigencies of the age in which they
appeared....39

It is not only the heart, but the mind, which must devote itself to this
process of discovery. Reason, &Baha'u'llah asserts, is God's greatest gift to
the soul, "a sign of the revelation of ... the sovereign Lord."40 Only by
freeing itself from inherited dogma, whether religious or materialistic, can
+P 12
the mind take up an independent exploration of the relationship between the Word
of God and the experience of humankind. In such a search, a major obstacle is
prejudice: "Warn ... the beloved of the one true God, not to view with too
critical an eye the sayings and writings of men. Let them rather approach such
sayings and writings in a spirit of open-mindedness and loving sympathy."41

The Manifestation of God

What is common to all who are devoted to one or another of the world's
religious systems is the conviction that it is through the Divine Revelation
that the soul comes in touch with the world of God, and that it is this rela-
tionship which gives real meaning to life. Some of the most important passages
in &Baha'u'llah's writings are those which discuss at length the nature and
role of those who are the channels of this Revelation, the Messengers or
"Manifestations of God." A recurrent analogy found in these passages is that
of the physical sun. While the latter shares certain characteristics of the
other bodies in the solar system, it differs from them in that it is, in
itself, the source of the system's light. The planets and moons reflect light
whereas the sun emits it as an attribute inseparable from its nature. The
system revolves around this focal point, each of its members influenced not
only by its particular composition, but by its relationship to the source of
the system's light.42

In the same way, &Baha'u'llah asserts, the human personality which the
Manifestation of God shares with the rest of the race is differentiated from
others in a way that fits it to serve as the channel or vehicle for the
Revelation of God. Apparently contradictory references to this dual station,
attributed, for example, to Christ,43 have been among the many sources of
religious confusion and dissension throughout history. &Baha'u'llah says on
the subject:

Whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth is a direct
evidence of the revelation within it of the attributes and names of God
... To a supreme degree is this true of man, who, among all created
things, ... hath been singled out for the glory of such distinction.
For in him are potentially revealed all the attributes and names of God
to a degree that no other created being hath excelled or surpassed....
And of all men, the most accomplished, the most distinguished, and the
most excellent are the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth. Nay, all else
besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of their Will, and
move and have their being through the outpourings of their grace.44

Throughout history, the conviction of believers that the Founder of their
own religion occupied a unique station has had the effect of stimulating
intense speculation on the nature of the Manifestation of God. Such
speculation has, however, been severely hampered by the difficulties of
interpreting and resolving the allegorical allusions in past scriptures. The
attempt to crystallize opinion in the form of religious dogma has been a
divisive rather than unifying force in history. Indeed, despite the enormous
energy devoted to theological pursuits -- or perhaps because of it -- there are
today profound differences among Muslims as to the precise station of
&Muhammad, among Christians as to that of Jesus, and among Buddhists with
respect to the Founder of their own religion. As is all too apparent, the
controversies created by these and other differences within any one given
tradition have proven at least as acute as those separating that tradition from
its sister faiths.

+P 13
Particularly important to an understanding of &Baha'u'llah's teachings on
the unity of religions, therefore, are His statements about the station of the
successive Messengers of God and the functions performed by them in the
spiritual history of humankind:

[The] Manifestations of God have each a twofold station. One is
the station of pure abstraction and essential unity. In this respect,
if thou callest them all by one name, and dost ascribe to them the same
attributes, thou hast not erred from the truth....

The other station is the station of distinction, and pertaineth to
the world of creation, and to the limitations thereof. In this respect,
each Manifestation of God hath a distinct individuality, a definitely
prescribed mission, a predestined revelation, and specially designated
limitations. Each one of them is known by a different name, is
characterized by a special attribute, fulfills a definite mission...

Viewed in the light of their second station ... they manifest
absolute servitude, utter destitution, and complete self-effacement.
Even as He saith: "I am the servant of God. I am but a man like
you."...

Were any of the all-embracing Manifestations of God to declare:
"I am God," He, verily, speaketh the truth, and no doubt attacheth
thereto. For ... through their Revelation, their attributes and names,
the Revelation of God, His names and His attributes, are made manifest
in the world.... And were any of them to voice the utterance, "I am
the Messenger of God," He, also, speaketh the truth, the indubitable
truth.... Viewed in this light, they are all but Messengers of that
ideal King, that unchangeable Essence.... And were they to say, "We
are the Servants of God," this also is a manifest and indisputable fact.
For they have been made manifest in the uttermost state of servitude,
a servitude the like of which no man can possibly attain....45

Thus it is that whatsoever be their utterance, whether it pertain to the
realm of Divinity, Lordship, Prophethood, Messengership, Guardianship,
Apostleship, or Servitude, all is true, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Therefore these sayings ... must be attentively considered, that the
divergent utterances of the Manifestations of the Unseen and Day Springs
of Holiness may cease to agitate the soul and perplex the mind.46

"An Ever-Advancing Civilization..."

Implicit in these paragraphs is a perspective which represents the most
challenging feature of &Baha'u'llah's exposition of the function of the
Manifestation of God. Divine Revelation is, He says, the motive power of
civilization. When it occurs, its transforming effect on the minds and souls
of those who respond to it is replicated in the new society that slowly takes
shape around their experience. A new center of loyalty emerges that can win
the commitment of peoples from the widest range of cultures; music and the arts
seize on symbols that mediate far richer and more mature inspirations; a radical
redefinition of concepts of right and wrong makes possible the formulation of
new codes of civil law and conduct; new institutions are conceived in order
+P 14
to give expression to impulses of moral responsibility previously ignored or
unknown: "He was in the world, and the world was made by him..."47 As the new
culture evolves into a civilization, it assimilates achievements and insights
of past eras in a multitude of fresh permutations. Features of past cultures
that cannot be incorporated atrophy or are taken up by marginal elements among
the population. The Word of God creates new possibilities within both the
individual consciousness and human relationships.

Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God is endowed with
such potency as can instill new life into every human frame... All the
wondrous works ye behold in this world have been manifested through the
operation of His supreme and most exalted Will, His wondrous and
inflexible Purpose.... No sooner is this resplendent word uttered, than
its animating energies, stirring within all created things, give birth
to the means and instruments whereby such arts can be produced and
perfected.... In the days to come, ye will, verily, behold things of
which ye have never heard before.... Every single letter proceeding out
of the mouth of God is indeed a mother letter, and every word uttered by
Him Who is the Well Spring of Divine Revelation is a mother word....48

The sequence of the Divine Revelations, the &Bab asserts, is "a process
that hath had no beginning and will have no end."49 Although the mission of
each of the Manifestations is limited in time and in the functions it performs,
it is an integral part of an ongoing and progressive unfoldment of God's power
and will:

Contemplate with thine inward eye the chain of successive Revelations
that hath linked the Manifestation of Adam with that of the &Bab. I testify
before God that each one of these Manifestations hath been sent down
through the operation of the Divine Will and Purpose, that each hath been
the bearer of a specific Message, that each hath been entrusted with a
divinely revealed Book... The measure of the Revelation with which every
one of them hath been identified had been definitely foreordained....50

Eventually, as an ever-evolving civilization exhausts its spiritual
sources, a process of disintegration sets in, as it does throughout the phenome-
nal world. Turning again to analogies offered by nature, &Baha'u'llah compares
this hiatus in the development of civilization to the onset of winter. Moral
vitality diminishes, as does social cohesion. Challenges which would have been
overcome at an earlier age, or been turned into opportunities for exploration
and achievement, become insuperable barriers. Religion loses its relevance, and
experimentation becomes increasingly fragmented, further deepening social divi-
sions. Increasingly, uncertainty about the meaning and value of life generates
anxiety and confusion. Speaking about this condition in our own age &Baha'u'llah
says:

We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with
great, with incalculable afflictions. We see it languishing on its bed
of sickness, sore-tried and disillusioned. They that are intoxicated by
self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and
infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves
included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the
cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy. They
have conceived the straight to be crooked, and have imagined their friend
an enemy.51
+P 15
When each of the Divine impulses has fulfilled itself, the process recurs.
A new Manifestation of God appears with the fuller measure of Divine inspira-
tion for the next stage in the awakening and civilizing of humankind:

Consider the hour at which the supreme Manifestation of God revealeth
Himself unto men. 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.... This is indeed the Day
of which it hath been written: "Whose shall be the Kingdom this Day?"
And none can be found ready to answer!52

Until a section of humanity begins to respond to the new Revelation, and a
new spiritual and social paradigm begins to take shape, people subsist spiri-
tually and morally on the last traces of earlier Divine endowments. The routine
tasks of society may or may not be done; laws may be obeyed or flouted; social
and political experimentation may flame up or fail; but the roots of faith --
without which no society can indefinitely endure -- have been exhausted. At
the "end of the age," at the "end of the world," the spiritually minded begin
to turn again to the Creative source. However clumsy or disturbing the process
may be, however inelegant or unfortunate some of the options considered, such
searching is an instinctive response to the awareness that an immense chasm has
opened in the ordered life of humankind.53 The effects of the new Revelation,
&Baha'u'llah says, are universal, and not limited to the life and teachings of
the Manifestation of God Who is the Revelation's focal point. Though not
understood, these effects increasingly permeate human affairs, revealing the
contradictions in popular assumptions and in society, and intensifying the
search for understanding.

The succession of the Manifestations is an inseparable dimension of exis-
tence, &Baha'u'llah declares, and will continue throughout the life of the
world: "God hath sent down His Messengers to succeed to Moses and Jesus, and
He will continue to do so till `the end that hath no end'..."54

The Day of God

What does &Baha'u'llah hold to be the goal of the evolution of human
consciousness? In the perspective of eternity, its purpose is that God should
see, ever more clearly, the reflection of His perfections in the mirror of His
creation, and that, in the words of &Baha'u'llah:

...every man may testify, in himself, by himself, in the station of the
Manifestation of his Lord, that verily there is no God save Him, and that
every man may thereby win his way to the summit of realities, until none
shall contemplate anything whatsoever but that he shall see God therein.55

Within the context of the history of civilization, the objective of the
succession of divine Manifestations has been to prepare human consciousness for
the race's unification as a single species, indeed as a single organism capable
of taking up the responsibility for its collective future: "He Who is your
Lord, the All-Merciful," &Baha'u'llah says, "cherisheth in His heart the desire
of beholding the entire human race as one soul and one body."56 Not until
humanity has accepted its organic oneness can it meet even its immediate
+P 16
challenges, let alone those that lie ahead: "The well-being of mankind,"
&Baha'u'llah insists, "its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until
its unity is firmly established."57 Only a unified global society can provide
its children with the sense of inner assurance implied in one of &Baha'u'llah's
prayers to God: "Whatever duty Thou hast prescribed unto Thy servants of
extolling to the utmost Thy majesty and glory is but a token of Thy grace
unto them, that they may be enabled to ascend unto the station conferred upon
their own inmost being, the station of the knowledge of their own selves."58
Paradoxically, it is only by achieving true unity that humanity can fully cul-
tivate its diversity and individuality. This is the goal which the missions
of all of the Manifestations of God known to history have served, the Day of
"one fold and one shepherd."59 Its attainment, &Baha'u'llah says, is the stage
of civilization upon which the human race is now entering.

One of the most suggestive analogies to be found in the writings not only
of &Baha'u'llah, but of the &Bab before Him, is the comparison between the evolu-
tion of the human race and the life of the individual human being. Humanity
has moved through stages in its collective development which are reminiscent of
the periods of infancy, childhood, and adolescence in the maturation of its
individual members. We are now experiencing the beginnings of our collective
maturity, endowed with new capacities and opportunities of which we as yet have
only the dimmest awareness.60

Against this background, it is not difficult to understand the primacy
given in &Baha'u'llah's teachings to the principle of unity. The oneness of
humanity is the leitmotif of the age now opening, the standard against which
must be tested all proposals for the betterment of humanity. There is,
&Baha'u'llah insists, but one human race; inherited notions that a particular
racial or ethnic group is in some way superior to the rest of humanity are
without foundation. Similarly, since all of the Messengers of God have served
as agents of the one Divine Will, their revelations are the collective legacy
of the entire human race; each person on earth is a legitimate heir of the
whole of that spiritual tradition. Persistence in prejudices of any kind is
both damaging to the interests of society and a violation of the Will of God
for our age:

O contending peoples and kindreds of the earth! Set your faces
towards unity, and let the radiance of its light shine upon you. Gather
ye together, and for the sake of God resolve to root out whatever is the
source of contention amongst you.... There can be no doubt whatever that
the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their
inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God.
The difference between the ordinances under which they abide should be
attributed to the varying requirements and exigencies of the age in which
they were revealed. All of them, except a few which are the outcome of
human perversity, were ordained of God, and are a reflection of His Will
and Purpose. Arise and, armed with the power of faith, shatter to pieces
the gods of your vain imaginings, the sowers of dissension amongst
you....61

The theme of unity runs throughout &Baha'u'llah's writings: "The
tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers."62
"Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness
and fellowship."63 "Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one
branch."64
+P 17
The process of humanity's coming-of-age has occurred within the evolution
of social organization. Beginning from the family unit and its various exten-
sions, the human race has developed, with varying degrees of success, societies
based on the clan, the tribe, the city-state, and most recently the nation.
This progressively broader and more complex social milieu provides human
potential with both stimulation and scope for development, and this
development, in turn, has induced ever-new modifications of the social fabric.
Humanity's coming-of-age, therefore, must entail a total transformation of the
social order. The new society must be one capable of embracing the entire
diversity of the race and of benefiting from the full range of talents and
insights which many thousands of years of cultural experience have refined: -

This is the Day in which God's most excellent favors have been poured
out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused
into all created things. It is incumbent upon all the peoples of the
world to reconcile their differences, and, with perfect unity and peace,
abide beneath the shadow of the Tree of His care and loving-kindness....
Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out
in its stead. Verily, thy Lord speaketh the truth, and is the Knower of
things unseen.65

The chief instrument for the transformation of society and the achievement
of world unity, &Baha'u'llah asserts, is the establishment of justice in the
affairs of humankind. The subject has a central place in His teachings:

The light of men is Justice. Quench it not with the contrary winds of
oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity
among men. The ocean of divine wisdom surgeth within this exalted word,
while the books of the world cannot contain its inner significance....66

In His later writings &Baha'u'llah made explicit the implications of this
principle for the age of humanity's maturity. "Women and men have been and
will always be equal in the sight of God,"67 He asserts, and the advancement
of civilization requires that society so organize its affairs as to give
full expression to this fact. The earth's resources are the property of all
humanity, not of any one people. Different contributions to the common
economic welfare deserve and should receive different measures of reward and
recognition, but the extremes of wealth and poverty which afflict most nations
on earth, regardless of the socio-economic philosophies they profess, must be
abolished.

Announcement to the Kings

The writings which have been quoted in the foregoing were revealed, for the
most part, in conditions of renewed persecution. Soon after the exiles' arrival
in Constantinople, it became apparent that the honors showered upon &Baha'u'llah
during His journey from Baghdad had represented only a brief interlude. The
Ottoman authorities' decision to move the "&Babi" leader and His companions to
the capital of the empire rather than to some remote province deepened the
alarm among the representatives of the Persian government.68 Fearing that the
developments in Baghdad would be repeated, and might attract this time not only
the sympathy but perhaps even the allegiance of influential figures in the
Turkish government, the Persian ambassador pressed insistently for the dispatch
of the exiles to some more distant part of the empire. His argument was that
the spread of a new religious message in the capital could produce political as
well as religious repercussions.
+P 18
Initially, the Ottoman government strongly resisted. The chief minister,
&Ali &Pasha, had indicated to Western diplomats his belief that &Baha'u'llah was
"a man of great distinction, exemplary conduct, great moderation, and a most
dignified figure." His teachings were, in the minister's opinion, "worthy of
high esteem" because they counteracted the religious animosities dividing the
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim subjects of the empire.69

Gradually, however, a degree of resentment and suspicion developed. In
the Ottoman capital, political and economic power was in the hands of court
functionaries who, with but few exceptions, were persons of little or no compe-
tence. Venality was the oil on which the machinery of government operated, and
the capital was a magnet for a horde of people who flocked there from every
part of the empire and beyond, seeking favors and influence. It was expected
that any prominent figure from another country or from one of the tribute
territories would, immediately upon arrival in Constantinople, join the throngs
of patronage-seekers in the reception rooms of the pashas and ministers of the
imperial court. No element had a worse reputation than the competing groups of
Persian political exiles who were known for both their sophistication and their
lack of scruple.

To the distress of friends who urged Him to make use of the prevailing
hostility toward the Persian government and of the sympathy which His own
sufferings had aroused, &Baha'u'llah made it clear that He had no requests to
make. Although several government ministers made social calls at the residence
assigned to Him, he did not take advantage of these openings. He was in
Constantinople, He said, as the guest of the Sultan, at his invitation, and
His interest lay in spiritual and moral concerns.

Many years later, the Persian ambassador, &Mirza &Husayn &Khan, reflecting
on his tour of duty in the Ottoman capital, and complaining about the damage
which the greed and untrustworthiness of his countrymen had done to Persia's
reputation in Constantinople, paid a surprisingly candid tribute to the example
which &Baha'u'llah's conduct had been able briefly to set.70 At the time,
however, he and his colleagues made use of the situation to represent it as an
astute way on the exile's part of concealing secret conspiracies against public
security and the religion of the State. Under pressure of these influences, the
Ottoman authorities finally took the decision to transfer &Baha'u'llah and His
family to the provincial city of Adrianople. The move was made hastily, in
the depth of an extremely severe winter. Housed there in inadequate buildings,
lacking suitable clothing and other provisions, the exiles endured a year of
great suffering. It was clear that, though charged with no crime and given
no opportunity to defend themselves, they had arbitrarily been made state
prisoners.

From the point of view of religious history, the successive banishments of
&Baha'u'llah to Constantinople and Adrianople have a striking symbolism. For the
first time, a Manifestation of God, Founder of an independent religious system
which was soon to spread throughout the planet, had crossed the narrow neck of
water separating Asia from Europe, and had set foot in "the West." All of the
other great religions had arisen in Asia and the ministries of their Founders
had been confined to that continent. Referring to the fact that the dispensa-
tions of the past, and particularly those of Abraham, Christ, and &Muhammad,
had produced their most important effects on the development of civilization
+P 19
during the course of their westward expansion, &Baha'u'llah predicted that the
same thing would occur in this new age, but on a vastly larger scale: "In
the East the Light of His Revelation hath broken; in the West the signs of His
dominion have appeared. Ponder this in your hearts, O people..."71

It is then perhaps not surprising that &Baha'u'llah chose this moment to
make public the mission which had been slowly enlisting the allegiance of the
followers of the &Bab throughout the Middle East. His announcement took the
form of a series of statements which are among the most remarkable documents in
religious history. In them, the Manifestation of God addresses the "Kings and
Rulers of the world," announcing to them the dawning of the Day of God, alluding
to the as yet inconceivable changes which were gathering momentum throughout
the world, and calling on them as the trustees of God and of their fellow human
beings to arise and serve the process of the unification of the human race.
Because of the veneration in which they were held by the mass of their subjects,
and because of the absolute nature of the rule which most of them exercised, it
lay in their power, He said, to assist in bringing about what He called the
"Most Great Peace," a world order characterized by unity and animated by Divine
justice.

Only with the greatest difficulty can the modern reader envision the moral
and intellectual world in which these monarchs of a century ago lived. From
their biographies and private correspondence, it is apparent that, with few
exceptions, they were personally devout, taking a leading part in the spiritual
life of their respective nations, often as the heads of the state religions,
and convinced of the unerring truths of the Bible or the &Qur'an. The power
which most of them wielded they attributed directly to the divine authority of
passages in these same Scriptures, an authority about which they were vigorously
articulate. They were the anointed of God. Prophecies of "the Latter Days"
and "the Kingdom of God" were not for them myth or allegory, but certainties
upon which all moral order rested and in which they would themselves be called
on by God to give an account of their stewardship.

The letters of &Baha'u'llah address themselves to this mental world:

O Kings of the earth! He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come.
The Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting....
This is a Revelation to which whatever ye possess can never be compared,
could ye but know it.

Take heed lest pride deter you from recognizing the Source of Revelation,
lest the things of this world shut you out as by a veil from Him Who is
the Creator of heaven.... By the righteousness of God! It is not Our
wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess
the hearts of men....72

Know ye that the poor are the trust of God in your midst. Watch that
ye betray not His trust, that ye deal not unjustly with them and that ye
walk not in the ways of the treacherous. Ye will most certainly be called
upon to answer for His trust on the day when the Balance of Justice shall
be set, the day when unto every one shall be rendered his due, when the
doings of all men, be they rich or poor, shall be weighed.

...
+P 20
Examine Our Cause, inquire into the things that have befallen Us,
and decide justly between Us and Our enemies, and be ye of them that
act equitably towards their neighbor. If ye stay not the hand of the
oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the downtrodden, what
right have ye then to vaunt yourselves among men?73

If ye pay no heed unto the counsels which ... We have revealed in
this Tablet, Divine chastisement shall assail you from every direction,
and the sentence of His justice shall be pronounced against you. On that
day ye shall have no power to resist Him, and shall recognize your own
impotence....74

The vision of the "Most Great Peace" evoked no response from the rulers
of the nineteenth century. Nationalistic aggrandizement and imperial expansion
recruited not only kings but parliamentarians, academics, artists, newspapers,
and the major religious establishments as eager propagandists of Western trium-
phalism. Proposals for social change, however disinterested and idealistic,
quickly fell captive to a swarm of new ideologies thrown up by the rising tide
of dogmatic materialism. In the Orient, mesmerized by its own claims to repre-
sent all that humanity ever could or would know of God and truth, the Islamic
world sank steadily deeper into ignorance, lethargy, and a sullen hostility to
a human race which failed to acknowledge this spiritual preeminence.

Arrival in the Holy Land

Given the earlier events in Baghdad, it seems surprising that the Ottoman
authorities did not anticipate what would result from the establishment of
&Baha'u'llah in another major provincial capital. Within a year of His arrival
in Adrianople, their prisoner had attracted first the interest and then the
fervent admiration of figures prominent in both the intellectual and administra-
tive life of the region. To the dismay of the Persian consular representatives,
two of the most devoted of these admirers were &Khurshid &Pasha, the Governor of
the province, and the &Shaykhu'l-Islam, the leading Sunni religious dignitary.
In the eyes of His hosts and the public generally, the exile was a moral phi-
losopher and saint the validity of whose teachings was reflected not only in
the example of His own life but in the changes they effected among the flood of
Persian pilgrims who flocked to this remote center of the Ottoman Empire in
order to visit Him.75

These unanticipated developments convinced the Persian ambassador and his
colleagues that it was only a matter of time before the &Baha'i movement, which
was continuing to spread in Persia, would have established itself as a major
influence in Persia's neighboring and rival empire. Throughout this period of
its history, the ramshackle Ottoman Empire was struggling against repeated
incursions by Tsarist Russia, uprisings among its subject peoples, and persis-
tent attempts by the ostensibly sympathetic British and Austrian governments to
detach various Turkish territories and incorporate them into their own empires.
These unstable political conditions in Turkey's European provinces offered new
and urgent arguments supporting the ambassador's appeal that the exiles be
sent to a distant colony where &Baha'u'llah would have no further contact with
influential circles, whether Turkish or Western.

When the Turkish foreign minister, &Fu'ad &Pasha, returned from a visit to
Adrianople, his astonished reports of the reputation which &Baha'u'llah had come
+P 21
to enjoy throughout the region appeared to lend credibility to the Persian
embassy's suggestions. In this climate of opinion, the government abruptly
decided to subject its guest to strict confinement. Without warning, early
one day, &Baha'u'llah's house was surrounded by soldiers, and the exiles were
ordered to prepare for departure to an unknown destination.

The place chosen for this final banishment was the grim fortress-town of
&Akka (Acre) on the coast of the Holy Land. Notorious throughout the empire
for the foulness of its climate and the prevalence of many diseases, &Akka was
a penal colony used by the Ottoman State for the incarceration of dangerous
criminals who could be expected not to survive too long their imprisonment
there. Arriving in August 1868, &Baha'u'llah, the members of His family, and a
company of His followers who had been exiled with Him were to experience two
years of suffering and abuse within the fortress itself, and then be confined
under house arrest to a nearby building owned by a local merchant. For a long
time the exiles were shunned by the superstitious local populace who had been
warned in public sermons against "the God of the Persians," who was depicted as
an enemy of public order and the purveyor of blasphemous and immoral ideas.
Several members of the small group of exiles died of the privations and other
conditions to which they were subjected.76

It seems, in retrospect, the keenest irony that the selection of the Holy
Land as the place of &Baha'u'llah's forced confinement should have been the
result of pressure from ecclesiastical and civil enemies whose aim was to
extinguish His religious influence. Palestine, revered by three of the great
monotheistic religions as the point where the worlds of God and of man inter-
sect, held then, as it had for thousands of years, a unique place in human
expectation. Only a few weeks before &Baha'u'llah's arrival, the main
leadership of the German Protestant Templer movement sailed from Europe to
establish at the foot of Mount Carmel a colony that would welcome Christ, whose
advent they believed to be imminent. Over the lintels of several of the small
houses they erected, facing across the bay to &Baha'u'llah's prison at &Akka,
can still be seen such carved inscriptions as "Der Herr ist nahe" ("The Lord is
near").77

In &Akka, &Baha'u'llah continued the dictation of a series of letters to
individual rulers, which He had begun in Adrianople. Several contained warnings
of the judgment of God on their negligence and misrule, warnings whose dramatic
fulfillment aroused intense public discussion throughout the Near East. Less
than two months after the exiles arrived in the prison-city, for example,
&Fu'ad &Pasha, the Ottoman foreign minister, whose misrepresentations had helped
precipitate the banishment, was abruptly dismissed from his post and died in
France of a heart attack. The event was marked by a statement which predicted
the early dismissal of his colleague, Prime Minister &Ali &Pasha, the overthrow
and death of the Sultan, and the loss of Turkish territories in Europe, a series
of disasters which followed on the heels of one another.78

A letter to Emperor Napoleon III warned that, because of his insincerity
and the misuse of his power: "...thy kingdom shall be thrown into confusion,
and thine empire shall pass from thine hands, as a punishment for that which
thou hast wrought.... Hath thy pomp made thee proud? By My life! It shall
+P 22
not endure..."79 Of the disastrous Franco-Prussian War and the resulting over-
throw of Napoleon III, which occurred less than a year after this statement,
Alistair Horne, a modern scholar of nineteenth century French political history
has written:

History knows of perhaps no more startling instance of what the Greeks
called peripateia, the terrible fall from prideful heights. Certainly no
nation in modern times, so replete with apparent grandeur and opulent in
material achievement, has ever been subjected to a worse humiliation in
so short a time.80

Only a few months before the unexpected series of events in Europe that led
to the invasion of the Papal States and the annexation of Rome by the forces of
the new Kingdom of Italy, a statement addressing Pope Pius IX had urged the
Pontiff "Abandon thy kingdom unto the kings, and emerge from thy habitation,
with thy face set towards the Kingdom... Be as thy Lord hath been.... Verily,
the day of ingathering is come, and all things have been separated from each
other. He hath stored away that which He chose in the vessels of justice, and
cast into the fire that which befitteth it...."81

Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, whose armies had won such a sweeping victory
in the Franco-Prussian War, had been warned by &Baha'u'llah in the &Kitab-i-Aqdas
to heed the example of the fall of Napoleon III and of other rulers who had
been victorious in war, and not to allow pride to keep him back from recognizing
this Revelation. That &Baha'u'llah foresaw the failure of the German Emperor to
respond to this warning is shown by the ominous passage which appears later in
that same Book:

O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as
the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have
another turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be
today in conspicuous glory.82

A strikingly different note characterizes two of the major pronouncements,
that addressed to Queen Victoria83 and another to the "Rulers of America and
the Presidents of the Republics therein." The former praises the pioneering
achievement represented by the abolition of slavery throughout the British
Empire, and commends the principle of representative government. The latter,
which opens with the announcement of the Day of God, concludes with a summons,
a virtual mandate, that has no parallel in any of the other messages: "Bind ye
the broken with the hands of justice, and crush the oppressor who flourisheth
with the rod of the commandments of your Lord, the Ordainer, the All-Wise."84

Religion as Light and Darkness

&Baha'u'llah's severest condemnation is reserved for the barriers which,
throughout history, organized religion has erected between humanity and the
Revelations of God. Dogmas, inspired by popular superstition and perfected by
misspent intelligence, have repeatedly been imposed on a Divine process whose
purpose has at all times been spiritual and moral. Laws of social interaction,
revealed for the purpose of consolidating community life, have been made the
basis for structures of arcane doctrine and practice which have burdened the
masses whose benefit they were supposed to serve. Even the exercise of
intellect, the chief tool possessed by the human race, has been deliberately
hampered, producing an eventual breakdown in the dialogue between faith and
science upon which civilized life depends.
+P 23
The consequence of this sorry record is the worldwide disrepute into which
religion has fallen. Worse, organized religion has become itself a most viru-
lent cause of hatred and warfare among the peoples of the world. "Religious
fanaticism and hatred," &Baha'u'llah warned over a century ago, "are a world-
devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. The Hand of Divine power can,
alone, deliver mankind from this desolating affliction."85

Those whom God will hold responsible for this tragedy, &Baha'u'llah says,
are humanity's religious leaders, who have presumed to speak for Him throughout
history. Their attempts to make the Word of God a private preserve, and its
exposition a means for personal aggrandizement, have been the greatest single
handicap against which the advancement of civilization has struggled. In the
pursuit of their ends, many of them have not hesitated to raise their hands
against the Messengers of God themselves, at their advent:

Leaders of religion, in every age, have hindered their people
from attaining the shores of eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held
the reins of authority in their mighty grasp. Some for the lust of
leadership, others through want of knowledge and understanding, have
been the cause of the deprivation of the people. By their sanction
and authority, every Prophet of God hath drunk from the chalice of
sacrifice...86

In an address to the clergy of all faiths, &Baha'u'llah warns of the
responsibility which they have so carelessly assumed in history:

Ye are even as a spring. If it be changed, so will the streams that
branch out from it be changed. Fear God, and be numbered with the godly.
In like manner, if the heart of man be corrupted, his limbs will also be
corrupted. And similarly, if the root of a tree be corrupted, its
branches, and its offshoots, and its leaves, and its fruits, will be
corrupted.87

These same statements, revealed at a time when religious orthodoxy was one
of the major powers throughout the world, declared that this power had effec-
tively ended, and that the ecclesiastical caste has no further social role in
world history: "O concourse of divines! Ye shall not henceforward behold
yourselves possessed of any power..."88 To a particularly vindictive opponent
among the Muslim clergy, &Baha'u'llah said: "Thou art even as the last trace
of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it fade away as decreed by God,
the All-Possessing, the Most High. Thy glory and the glory of such as are like
thee have been taken away...89

It is not the organization of religious activity which these statements
address, but the misuse of such resources. &Baha'u'llah's writings are generous
in their appreciation not only of the great contribution which organized reli-
gion has brought to civilization, but also of the benefits which the world has
derived from the self-sacrifice and love of humanity that have characterized
clergymen and religious orders of all faiths:

Those divines ... who are truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge
and of a goodly character are, verily, as a head to the body of the
world, and as eyes to the nations....90

Rather, the challenge to all people, believers and unbelievers, clergy and
laymen alike, is to recognize the consequences now being visited upon the world
as the result of the universal corruption of the religious impulse. In the
+P 24
prevailing alienation of humanity from God over the past century, a relationship
on which the fabric of moral life itself depends has broken down. Natural
faculties of the rational soul, vital to the development and maintenance of
human values, have become universally discounted:

The vitality of men's belief in God is dying out in every land;
nothing short of His wholesome medicine can ever restore it. The
corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society;
what else but the Elixir of His potent Revelation can cleanse and
revive it?... The Word of God, alone, can claim the distinction of
being endowed with the capacity required for so great and far-reaching
a change.91

World Peace

In the light of subsequent events, the warnings and appeals of
&Baha'u'llah's writings during this period take on a terrible poignancy:

O ye the elected representatives of the people in every land!...
Regard the world as the human body which, though at its creation whole
and perfect, hath been afflicted, through various causes, with grave
disorders and maladies. Not for one day did it gain ease, nay its
sickness waxed more severe, as it fell under the treatment of ignorant
physicians, who gave full rein to their personal desires...

We behold it, in this day, at the mercy of rulers so drunk with
pride that they cannot discern clearly their own best advantage, much
less recognize a Revelation so bewildering and challenging as this....92

This is the Day whereon the earth shall tell out her tidings.
The workers of iniquity are her burdens, could ye but perceive it....93

All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing
civilization. The Almighty beareth Me witness: To act like the beasts
of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity
are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the
peoples and kindreds of the earth....94

A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the
earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause or perceived its motive.
Consider the peoples of the West. Witness how, in their pursuit of that
which is vain and trivial, they have sacrificed, and are still sacrificing,
countless lives for the sake of its establishment and promotion....95

In all matters moderation is desirable. If a thing is carried to
excess, it will prove a source of evil.... Strange and astonishing
things exist in the earth but they are hidden from the minds and the
understanding of men. These things are capable of changing the whole
atmosphere of the earth and their contamination would prove lethal....96

In later writings, including those addressed to humanity collectively,
&Baha'u'llah urged the adoption of steps toward what He called the "Great Peace."
These, He said, would mitigate the sufferings and dislocation which He saw lying
ahead of the human race until the world's peoples embrace the Revelation of God
and through it bring about the Most Great Peace:
+P 25
The time must come when the imperative necessity for the holding of a
vast, an all-embracing assemblage of men will be universally realized.
The rulers and kings of the earth must needs attend it, and, participating
in its deliberations, must consider such ways and means as will lay
the foundations of the world's Great Peace amongst men. Such a peace
demandeth that the Great Powers should resolve, for the sake of the
tranquility of the peoples of the earth, to be fully reconciled among
themselves. Should any king take up arms against another, all should
unitedly arise and prevent him. If this be done, the nations of the
world will no longer require any armaments, except for the purpose of
preserving the security of their realms and of maintaining internal order
within their territories.... The day is approaching when all the peoples
of the world will have adopted one universal language and one common
script. When this is achieved, to whatsoever city a man may journey, it
shall be as if he were entering his own home.... That one indeed is a
man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human
race.... It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country,
but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one
country, and mankind its citizens.97

"Not of Mine Own Volition"

In His letter to &Nasiri'd-Din &Shah, the ruler of Persia, which refrains
from any rebuke concerning His imprisonment in the &Siyah-Chal and the other
injustices He had experienced at the king's hand, &Baha'u'llah speaks of His own
role in the Divine Plan:

I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes
of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of
all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but from One Who is
Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me lift up My voice between earth
and heaven, and for this there befell Me what hath caused the tears of
every man of understanding to flow. The learning current amongst men I
studied not; their schools I entered not. Ask of the city wherein I
dwelt, that thou mayest be well assured that I am not of them who speak
falsely.98

The mission to which He had devoted His entire life, which had cost Him
the life of a cherished younger son99, as well as all of His material ,
possessions which had undermined His health, and brought imprisonment, exile,
and abuse, was not one that He had initiated. "Not of Mine own volition," He
said, had He entered on such a course:

Think ye, O people, that I hold within My grasp the control of God's
ultimate Will and Purpose?... Had the ultimate destiny of God's Faith
been in Mine hands, I would have never consented, even though for one
moment, to manifest Myself unto you, nor would I have allowed one word
to fall from My lips. Of this God Himself is, verily, a witness.100
+P 26
Having surrendered unreservedly to God's summons, He was equally in no
doubt about the role which He had been called upon to play in human history.
As the Manifestation of God to the age of fulfillment, He is the one promised
in all the scriptures of the past, the "Desire of all nations," the "King of
Glory." To Judaism He is "Lord of Hosts"; to Christianity, the Return of Christ
in the glory of the Father; to Islam, the "Great Announcement"; to Buddhism,
the Maitreya Buddha; to Hinduism, the new incarnation of Krishna; to
Zoroastrianism, the advent of "&Shah-Bahram."101

Like the Manifestations of God gone before Him, He is both the Voice of
God and its human channel: "When I contemplate, O my God, the relationship that
bindeth me to Thee, I am moved to proclaim to all created things `verily I am
God!'; and when I consider my own self, lo, I find it coarser than clay!"102

"Certain ones among you," He declared, "have said: `He it is Who hath laid
claim to be God.' By God! This is a gross calumny. I am but a servant of God
Who hath believed in Him and in His signs... My tongue, and My heart, and My
inner and My outer being testify that there is no God but Him, that all others
have been created by His behest, and been fashioned through the operation of
His Will.... I am He that telleth abroad the favors with which God hath,
through His bounty, favored Me. If this be My transgression, then I am truly
the first of the transgressors...."103

&Baha'u'llah's writings seize upon a host of metaphors in their attempt
to express the paradox that lies at the heart of the phenomenon of God's
Revelation of His Will:

I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the drooping
wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight.104

This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy Lord, the Almighty,
the All-Praised, have stirred. Can it be still when the tempestuous winds
are blowing? Nay, by Him Who is the Lord of all Names and Attributes!
They move it as they list....105

The Covenant of God with Humankind

In June 1877, &Baha'u'llah at last emerged from the strict confinement of
the prison-city of &Akka, and moved with His family to "Mazra`ih", a small
estate a few miles north of the city.106 As had been predicted in His statement
to the Turkish government, &Sultan &Abdu'l-Aziz had been overthrown and
assassinated in a palace coup, and gusts from the winds of political change
sweeping the world were beginning to invade even the shuttered precincts of the
Ottoman imperial system. After a brief two-year stay at Mazra`ih,
&Baha'u'llah moved to "&Bahji", a large mansion surrounded by gardens, which
His sin &Abdu'l-Baha had rented for Him and the members of His extended
family.107 The remaining twelve years of His life were devoted to His writings
on a wide range of spiritual and social issues, and to receiving a stream of
&Baha'i pilgrims who made their way, with great difficulty, from Persia and
other lands.

Throughout the Near and Middle East the nucleus of a community life was
beginning to take shape among those who had accepted His message. For its
guidance, &Baha'u'llah had revealed a system of laws and institutions designed
to give practical effect to the principles in His writings.108 Authority was
vested in councils democratically elected by the whole community, provisions
were made to exclude the possibility of a clerical elite arising, and principles
of consultation and group decision making were established.
+P 27
At the heart of this system was what &Baha'u'llah termed a "new Covenant"
between God and humankind. The distinguishing feature of humanity's coming of
age is that, for the first time in its history, the entire human race is con-
sciously involved, however dimly, in the awareness of its own oneness and of the
earth as a single homeland. This awakening opens the way to a new relationship
between God and humankind. As the peoples of the world embrace the spiritual
authority inherent in the guidance of the Revelation of God for this age,
&Baha'u'llah said, they will find in themselves a moral empowerment which
human effort alone has proven incapable of generating. "A new race of men"109
will emerge as the result of this relationship, and the work of building a
global civilization will begin. The mission of the &Baha'i community was to
demonstrate the efficacy of this Covenant in healing the ills that divide the
human race.

&Baha'u'llah died at &Bahji on May 29, 1892, in His 75th year. At the time
of His passing, the cause entrusted to Him forty years earlier in the darkness
of Teheran's Black Pit was poised to break free of the Islamic lands where it
had taken shape, and to establish itself first across America and Europe and
then throughout the world. In doing so, it would itself become a vindication
of the promise of the new Covenant between God and humankind. For alone of
all the world's independent religions, the &Baha'i Faith and its community of
believers were to pass successfully through the critical first century of
their existence with their unity firmly intact, undamaged by the age-old
blight of schism and faction. Their experience offers compelling evidence for
&Baha'u'llah's assurance that the human race, in all its diversity, can learn
to live and work as one people, in a common global homeland.

Just two years before His death, &Baha'u'llah received at &Bahji one of the
few Westerners to meet Him, and the only one to leave a written account of the
experience. The visitor was Edward Granville Browne, a rising young orientalist
from Cambridge University, whose attention had originally been attracted by the
dramatic history of the &Bab and His heroic band of followers. Of his meeting
with &Baha'u'llah, Browne wrote:

Though I dimly suspected whither I was going and whom I was to behold
(for no distinct intimation had been given to me), a second or two elapsed
ere, with a throb of wonder and awe, I became definitely conscious that
the room was not untenanted. In the corner where the divan met the wall
sat a wondrous and venerable figure... The face of him on whom I gazed
I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes
seemed to read one's very soul; power and authority sat on that ample
brow... No need to ask in whose presence I stood, as I bowed myself
before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might
envy and emperors sigh for in vain! A mild dignified voice bade me be
seated, and then continued: -- "Praise be to God that thou hast
attained!...Thou hast come to see a prisoner and an exile...We desire
but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they
deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and
banishment...That all nations should become one in faith and all men
as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of
men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and
differences of race be annulled -- what harm is there in this?...Yet so
it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away,
and the `Most great Peace' shall come..."110
+P 28

NOTES


1. &Baha'u'llah ("Glory of God") was born &Husayn-'Ali. The authoritative
work on the missions of the &Bab and &Baha'u'llah is Shoghi Effendi's God
Passes By (Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1987). For a biographical
study see Hasan Balyuzi's &Baha'u'llah: The King of Glory (Oxford:
George Ronald, 1980). &Baha'u'llah's writings are extensively reviewed
in Adib Taherzadeh's The Revelation of &Baha'u'llah (Oxford: George
Ronald, 1975), four volumes.

2. Britannica Yearbook, 1988, indicates that, although the &Baha'i community
numbers only about five million members, the Faith has already become the
most widely diffused religion on earth, after Christianity. There are
today 155 &Baha'i National Assemblies in independent countries and major
territories of the globe, and more than 17,000 elected Assemblies
functioning at the local level. It is estimated that 2,112 nationalities
and tribes are represented.

3. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. VIII (London: Oxford, 1954),
p. 117.

4. The &Bab ("Gate" or "Door") was born Siyyid &Ali-Muhammad in Shiraz,
October 20, 1819.

5. Passages in the &Bab's writings which refer to the advent of "Him Whom
God will make manifest" include cryptic references to "the year Nine" and
"the year Nineteen" (i.e. roughly 1852 and 1863, calculating in lunar
years from the year of the &Bab's inauguration of His mission, 1844).
On several occasions the &Bab also indicated to certain of His followers
that they would themselves come to recognize and serve "Him Whom God will
make manifest."

6. The proclamation of the &Bab's message had been carried out in mosques
and public places by enthusiastic bands of followers, many of them young
seminarians. The Muslim clergy had replied by inciting mob violence.
Unfortunately, these events coincided with a political crisis created by
the death of &Muhammad &Shah and a struggle over the succession. It was
the leaders of the successful political faction, behind the boy-king
&Nasiri'd-Din &Shah, who then turned the royal army against the &Babi
enthusiasts. The latter, raised in a Muslim frame of reference, and
believing that they had a moral right to self-defense, barricaded
themselves in makeshift shelters and withstood long, bloody sieges. When
they had eventually been overcome and slaughtered, and the &Bab had been
executed, two deranged &Babi youth stopped the Shah in a public road and
fired birdshot at him, in an ill-conceived attempt at assassination. It
was this incident which provided the excuse for the worst of the massacres
of &Babis which evoked protests from Western embassies. For an account of
the period see W. Hatcher and D. Martin, The &Baha'i Faith: The Emerging
Global Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 6-32.

7. For an account of these events see God Passes By, chapters I-V. Western
interest in the &Babi movement was aroused, particularly, by the
publication in 1865 of Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau's Les religions et
les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale (Paris: Didier, 1865).

8. &Baha'u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf (Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing
Trust, 1979), pp. 20-21.
+P 29
9. A number of Western diplomatic and military observers have left harrowing
accounts of what they witnessed. Several formal protests were registered
with the Persian authorities. See Moojan Momen, The &Babi and &Baha'i
Religions, 1844-1944 (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981).

10. Epistle, p. 21.

11. Epistle, p. 22.

12. There was, understandably, great suspicion in Persia about the intentions
of the British and Russian governments, both of which had long interfered
in Persian affairs.

13. The focal point of these problems was one &Mirza &Yahya, a younger
half-brother of &Baha'u'llah. While still a youth and under the guidance
of &Baha'u'llah &Yahya had been appointed by the &Bab as nominal head of
the &Babi community, pending the imminent advent of "Him Whom God will
make manifest." Falling under the influence of a former Muslim
theologian, Siyyid &Muhammad &Isfahani, however, &Yahya gradually became
estranged from his brother. Rather than being expressed openly, this
resentment found its outlet in clandestine agitation, which had a
disastrous effect on the exiles' already low morale. &Yahya eventually
refused to accept &Baha'u'llah's declaration, and played no role in the
development of the &Baha'i Faith which this declaration initiated.

14. &Baha'u'llah, The Book of Certitude (Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing Trust,
1985), p. 251.

15. &Baha'u'llah, The Hidden Words of &Baha'u'llah (Wilmette: &Baha'i
Publishing Trust, 1985), Arabic 2 on pp. 3-4, Arabic 5 on p. 4, Arabic 35
on p. 12, Arabic 12 on p. 6.

Except where the context makes it obvious, the conventional use of the
English word "man" translates the concept of "humanity".

16. Certitude, pp. 3-4, pp. 195-200.

17. Cited in God Passes By, p. 137.

18. Quotation from Prince &Zaynu'l-'Abidin &Khan, God Passes By, p. 135.

19. See Note 68 below.

20. God Passes By, p. 153. Increasingly, after 1863, the word "&Baha'i"
replaced "&Babi" as the designation for the new faith, marking the fact
that an entirely new religion had emerged.

21. Cited in Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette: &Baha'i
Publishing Trust, 1984), p. 77.

22. &Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of &Baha'u'llah (Wilmette:
&Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1983), pp. 10-11.

23. Gleanings, p. 297.

24. Gleanings, p. 334.

25. Gleanings, p. 8.
+P 30
26. Gleanings, p. 8.

27. The two statements quoted may be found cited by &Abdu'l-Baha in J. E.
Esslemont, &Baha'u'llah and the New Era (Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing
Trust 1987), p. 170 and Tablets of &Baha'u'llah Revealed after the
&Kitab-i-Aqdas (Haifa: &Baha'i World Centre, 1982), pp. 22-23,
respectively.

28. God Passes By, pp. 127-57, gives an account of these events.

29. Gleanings, pp. 4-5.

30. Certitude, p. 98.

31. Certitude, p. 99.

32. Certitude, pp. 99-100.

33. Certitude, pp. 103-4.

34. Gleanings, p. 59.

35. Gleanings, pp. 66-67.

36. Gleanings, pp. 65-66.

37. Cited in Advent, p. 79.

38. Gleanings, p. 136.

39. Gleanings, p. 80.

40. Gleanings, p. 164.

41. Gleanings, p. 329.

42. For a detailed exposition of this subject see &Abdu'l-Baha, Some
Answered Questions (Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1970),
pp. 163-201.

43. Examples, in the words of Jesus, are "Why callest thou me good? There is
none good but one, that is, God..." (Matthew 19:17); "I and my Father are
one." (John 10:30)

44. Gleanings, pp. 177-79.

45. Gleanings, pp. 54, 55.

46. Gleanings, p. 56.

47. New Testament, John 1:10.

48. Gleanings, pp. 141-42.

49. Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of &Baha'u'llah: Selected Letters
(Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1982), p. 117.
+P 31
50. Gleanings, p. 74. In the &Baha'i writings the term "Adam" is used
symbolically in two different senses. The one refers to the emergence
of the human race, while the other designates the first of the
Manifestations of God.

51. Gleanings, p. 213.

52. Gleanings, p. 151.

53. See &Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys (Wilmette:
&Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1986), pp. 6-7: "Yea, although to the wise it
be shameful to seek the Lord of Lords in the dust, yet this betokeneth
intense ardor in searching."

54. World Order, p. 116.

55. Seven Valleys, pp. 1-2.

56. Gleanings, p. 214.

57. Gleanings, p. 286.

58. Gleanings, pp. 4-5.

59. New Testament, John 10:16.

60. For elaboration on the subject of &Baha'u'llah's teachings on the
process of the maturation of the human race, see World Order,
pp. 162-63, 202.

61. Gleanings, p. 217.

62. Tablets, p. 164.

63. Gleanings, p. 95.

64. Tablets, p. 164.

65. Gleanings, pp. 6-7.

66. Tablets, pp. 66-67.

67. Women: A compilation (Toronto: &Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1986), p. 26.

68. A combination of unusual circumstances had made the central authorities
in Constantinople especially sympathetic to &Baha'u'llah, and resistant
to pressure from the Persian government. The governor of Baghdad,
&Namiq &Pasha, had written enthusiastically to the capital about both the
character and influence of the distinguished Persian exile. &Sultan
&Abdu'l-'Aziz found the reports intriguing because, although he was
Caliph of Sunni Islam, he considered himself a mystical seeker. Equally
important, in another way, was the reaction of his chief minister,
&Ali &Pasha. To the latter, who was an accomplished student of Persian
language and literature as well as a would-be modernizer of the Turkish
administration, &Baha'u'llah seemed a highly sympathetic figure. It was
no doubt this combination of sympathy and interest which led the Ottoman
government to invite &Baha'u'llah to the capital rather than send Him to
a more remote center or deliver Him to the Persian authorities, as the
latter were urging.
+P 32
69. For the full text of the report of the Austrian ambassador, Count von
Prokesch-Osten, in a letter to the Comte de Gobineau, January 10, 1886,
see &Babi and &Baha'i Religions, pp. 186-87.

70. Revelation, Vol. 2, p. 399.

71. Tablets, p. 13.

72. Gleanings, pp. 210-12.

73. Gleanings, pp. 251-52.

74. Gleanings, p. 252.

75. For a description of these events see Revelation, Vol. 3, especially
pp. 296, 331.

76. For a description of this experience see God Passes By, pp. 180-89.

77. In the 1850s two German religious leaders, Christoph Hoffmann and Georg
David Hardegg, collaborated in the development of the "Society of
Templers," devoted to creating in the Holy Land a colony or colonies
which would prepare the way for Christ, on His return. Leaving Germany
on August 6, 1868, the founding group arrived in Haifa on October 30,
1868, two months after &Baha'u'llah's own arrival.

78. For a description of the disasters which befell European Turkey in the
Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 see Addendum III in King of Glory,
pp. 460-62.

79. Epistle, p. 51.

80. Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris (London: Macmillan, 1965), p. 34.

81. Cited in Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come (Wilmette: &Baha'i
Publishing Trust, 1980), pp. 32-33.

82. Cited in Promised Day, p. 37.

83. Cited in Promised Day, p. 35.

84. Cited in Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith: Messages to America 1947-1957
(Wilmette: &Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1980), pp. 18-19.

85. Epistle, p. 14.

86. Certitude, p. 15.

87. Cited in Promised Day, p. 83.

88. Cited in Promised Day, p. 81.

89. Epistle, p. 99.

90. Cited in Promised Day, pp. 110-11.

91. Gleanings, p. 200.
+P 33
92. Gleanings, pp. 254-55.

93. Gleanings, p. 40.

94. Gleanings, p. 215.

95. Gleanings, p. 196.

96. Tablets, p. 69.

97. Tablets, pp. 165-67.

98. Epistle, p. 11. The phrase "Not of Mine own volition" appears in the
same paragraph immediately above the excerpt cited.

99. &Baha'u'llah's son, &Mirza &Mihdi,a youth of twenty-two, died in 1870 in
an accidental fall resulting from the conditions in which the family was
imprisoned.

100. Gleanings, pp. 91.

101. God Passes By, pp. 94-96.

102. World Order, p. 113.

103. Gleanings, p. 228.

104. Tablets, p. 169.

105. Epistle, pp. 11-12.

106. Although &Sultan &Abdu'l-Aziz' order of banishment was never formally
revoked, the responsible political authorities came to regard it as null
and void. They, therefore, indicated that &Baha'u'llah could establish
His residence outside the city walls, should He choose to do so.

107. The mansion, which had been built by a wealthy Christian Arab merchant
of &Akka, had been abandoned by him when an outbreak of plague began
to spread. The property was first rented and, some years after
&Baha'u'llah's passing, purchased by the &Baha'i community. &Baha'u'llah's
grave is located in a Shrine in the gardens of &Bahji, and is now the
focal point of pilgrimage for the &Baha'i world.

108. For a summary of this body of teaching see World Order, pp. 143-57,
and Shoghi Effendi's Principles of &Baha'i Administration (London:
&Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1973), throughout. A fully annotated English
translation of the central document in this body of writings, the
&Kitab-i-Aqdas ("The Most Holy Book"), is being published to coincide
with the centenary of &Baha'u'llah's passing, 1992.

109. Advent, p. 16.

110. Edward G. Browne, A Traveller's Narrative (New York: &Baha'i
Publishing Committee, 1930), pp. xxxix-xl.