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
It has been the general characteristic of religion that organization marks
the interruption of the true spiritual influence and serves to prevent the
original impulse from being carried into the world. The organization has
invariably become a substitute for religion rather than a method or an
instrument used to give the religion effect. The separation of peoples
into different traditions unbridged by any peaceful or constructive
intercourse has made this inevitable. Up to the present time, in fact, no
Founder of a revealed religion has explicitly laid down the principles
that should guide the administrative machinery of the Faith He has
established.
In the Bahá’í Cause, the principles of world administration were expressed
by Bahá’u’lláh, and these principles were developed in the writings of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, more especially in His Will and Testament.
The purpose of this organization is to make possible a true and lasting
unity among peoples of different races, classes, interests, characters,
and inherited creeds. A close and sympathetic study of this aspect of the
Bahá’í Cause will show that the purpose and method of Bahá’í
administration is so perfectly adapted to the fundamental spirit of the
Revelation that it bears to it the same relationship as body to soul. In
character, the principles of Bahá’í administration represent the science
of cooperation; in application, they provide for a new and higher type of
morality worldwide in scope....
A Bahá’í community differs from other voluntary gatherings in that its
foundation is so deeply laid and broadly extended that it can include any
sincere soul. Whereas other associations are exclusive, in effect if not
in intention, and from method if not from ideal, Bahá’í association is
inclusive, shutting the gates of fellowship to no sincere soul. In every
gathering there is latent or developed some basis of selection. In
religion this basis is a creed limited by the historical nature of its
origin; in politics this is party or platform; in economics this is a
mutual misfortune or mutual power; in the arts and sciences this basis
consists of special training or activity or interest. In all these
matters, the more exclusive the basis of selection, the stronger the
movement—a condition diametrically opposed to that existing in the Bahá’í
Cause. Hence the Cause, for all its spirit of growth and progress,
develops slowly as regards the numbers of its active adherents. For people
are accustomed to exclusiveness and division in all affairs. The important
sanctions have ever been warrants and justifications of division. To enter
the Bahá’í Movement is to leave these sanctions behind—an experience which
at first invariably exposes one to new trials and sufferings, as the human
ego revolts against the supreme sanction of universal love. The scientific
must associate with the simple and unlearned, the rich with the poor, the
white with the colored, the mystic with the literalist, the Christian with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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