A similar evolutionary process, Bahá’u’lláh indicates, has characterized the religious life of humankind. The defining difference lies in the fact that, rather than representing simply the accidents of history’s ongoing method of trial and error, such norms were explicitly prescribed in each case, as integral features of one or another revelation of the Divine, embodied in scripture, their integrity scrupulously maintained over a period of centuries. While certain features of each code of conduct would eventually fulfil their purpose and in time be overshadowed by concerns of a different nature brought on by the process of social evolution, the code itself would lose none of its authority during the long stage of human progress in which it played a vital role in training behaviour and attitudes. “These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty systems”, Bahá’u’lláh asserts, “have proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light. That they differ one from another is to be attributed to the varying requirements of the ages in which they were promulgated.”(19) To argue, therefore, that differences of regulations, observances and other practices constitute any significant objection to the idea of revealed religion’s essential oneness is to miss the purpose that these prescriptions served. More seriously, it misses the fundamental distinction between the eternal and the transitory features of religion’s function. The essential message of religion is immutable. It is, in Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future”.(20) Its role in opening the way for the soul to enter into an evermore mature relationship with its Creator—and in endowing it with an ever-greater measure of moral autonomy in disciplining the animal impulses of human nature—is not at all irreconcilable with its providing auxiliary guidance that enhances the process of civilization building.