Bahá'u'lláh and the New EraEsslemont, J. E. (John Ebenezer)
Religion
Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era
Esslemont, J. E. (John Ebenezer)
Bahai Faith; Bahá'u'lláh, 1817-1892
... Know that ... a creator without a creature is impossible, a
provider without those provided for cannot be conceived; for all
the divine names and attributes demand the existence of beings. If
we could imagine a time when no beings existed, this imagination
would be the denial of the Divinity of God. Moreover, absolute
non-existence cannot become existence. If the beings were
absolutely non-existent, existence would not have come into being.
Therefore, as the Essence of Unity, that is the existence of God,
is everlasting and eternal—that is to say, it has neither
beginning nor end—it is certain that this world of existence ...
has neither beginning nor end.... it may be that one of the parts
of the universe, one of the globes, for example, may come into
existence, or may be disintegrated, but the other endless globes
are still existing.... As each globe has a beginning, necessarily
it has an end, because every composition, collective or
particular, must of necessity be decomposed; the only difference
is that some are quickly decomposed, and others more slowly, but
it is impossible that a composed thing should not eventually be
decomposed.—Some Answered Questions, pp. 209–210.
The Evolution of Man
Bahá’u’lláh also confirms the biologist who finds for the body of man a
history reaching back in the development of the species through millions
of years. Starting from a very simple, apparently insignificant form, the
human body is pictured as developing stage by stage, in the course of
untold generations, becoming more and more complex, and better and better
organized until the man of the present day is reached. Each individual
human body develops through such a series of stages, from a tiny round
speck of jelly-like matter to the fully developed man. If this is true of
the individual, as nobody denies, why should we consider it derogatory to
human dignity to admit a similar development for the species? This is a
very different thing from claiming that man is descended from a monkey.
The human embryo may at one time resemble a fish with gill-slits and tail,
but it is not a fish. It is a human embryo. So the human species(38) may
at various stages of its long development have resembled to the outward
eye various species of lower animals, but it was still the human species,
possessing the mysterious latent power of developing into man as we know
him today, nay more, of developing in the future, we trust, into something
far higher still.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:—
... it is clear that this terrestrial globe in its present form
did not come into existence all at once; but ... gradually passed
through different phases until it became adorned with its present
perfection....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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