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The Process of Integration |
Such a unique and momentous crisis in the life of organized
mankind may, moreover, be likened to the culminating stage in the
political evolution of the great American Republic—the stage which
marked the emergence of a unified community of federated states.
The stirring of a new national consciousness, and the birth of a new
type of civilization, infinitely richer and nobler than any which its
component parts could have severally hoped to achieve, may be said
to have proclaimed the coming of age of the American people.
Within the territorial limits of this nation, this consummation may
be viewed as the culmination of the process of human government.
The diversified and loosely related elements of a divided community
were brought together, unified and incorporated into one coherent
system. Though this entity may continue gaining in cohesive power,
though the unity already achieved may be further consolidated,
though the civilization to which that unity could alone have given
birth may expand and flourish, yet the machinery essential to such
an unfoldment may be said to have been, in its essential structure,
erected, and the impulse required to guide and sustain it may be
regarded as having been fundamentally imparted. No stage above
and beyond this consummation of national unity can, within the
geographical limits of that nation, be imagined, though the highest
destiny of its people, as a constituent element in a still larger entity
that will embrace the whole of mankind, may still remain unfulfilled.
Considered as an isolated unit, however, this process of integration
may be said to have reached its highest and final consummation.
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Such is the stage to which an evolving humanity is collectively
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approaching. The Revelation entrusted by the Almighty Ordainer
to Bahá’u’lláh, His followers firmly believe, has been endowed with
such potentialities as are commensurate with the maturity of the
human race—the crowning and most momentous stage in its evolution
from infancy to manhood.
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The successive Founders of all past Religions Who, from time
immemorial, have shed, with ever-increasing intensity, the splendor
of one common Revelation at the various stages which have marked
the advance of mankind towards maturity may thus, in a sense, be
regarded as preliminary Manifestations, anticipating and paving
the way for the advent of that Day of Days when the whole earth
will have fructified and the tree of humanity will have yielded its
destined fruit.
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Incontrovertible as is this truth, its challenging character should
never be allowed to obscure the purpose, or distort the principle,
underlying the utterances of Bahá’u’lláh—utterances that have established
for all time the absolute oneness of all the Prophets, Himself
included, whether belonging to the past or to the future. Though
the mission of the Prophets preceding Bahá’u’lláh may be viewed
in that light, though the measure of Divine Revelation with which
each has been entrusted must, as a result of this process of evolution,
necessarily differ, their common origin, their essential unity,
their identity of purpose, should at no time and under no circumstances
be misapprehended or denied. That all the Messengers of
God should be regarded as “abiding in the same Tabernacle, soaring
in the same Heaven, seated upon the same Throne, uttering the
same Speech, and proclaiming the same Faith” must, however much
we may extol the measure of Divine Revelation vouchsafed to mankind
at this crowning stage of its evolution, remain the unalterable
foundation and central tenet of Bahá’í belief. Any variations in the
splendor which each of these Manifestations of the Light of God
has shed upon the world should be ascribed not to any inherent superiority
involved in the essential character of any one of them, but
rather to the progressive capacity, the ever-increasing spiritual
receptiveness, which mankind, in its progress towards maturity, has
invariably manifested.
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