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Forsaking human leaders and their doctrines, they are in danger of also forsaking the Apostles as religious leaders and their doctrines once for all delivered to the saints. Sectarianism is bad, but sectarian life and strife is better than a lifeless, conviction-less, graveyard, sentimental union that is the result of a dying faith.

First, the agitating labourer is strongly of opinion that, besides giving the land and subscribing, and paying a large voluntary rate, the landlord ought to defray the annual expenses and save him the weekly pence. The sectarian bodies, though neutralised by their own divisions, are ill-affected behind their mask, and would throw it off if they got the opportunity.

Among the generals who had greatly distinguished themselves in the Syrian wars was Amrou, destined to be the conqueror of Egypt; for the khalifs, not content with their victories on the North and East, now turned their eyes to the West, and prepared for the annexation of Africa. As in the former cases, so in this, sectarian treason assisted them.

For when the religious faiths of the world recognize each other as brothers, children of one Father, whom all profess to love and serve, then, and not until then, will the nations of the earth yield to the spirit of concord and learn war no more.... We meet on the mountain height of absolute respect for the religious convictions of each other.... This day the sun of a new era of religious peace and progress arises over the world, dispelling the dark clouds of sectarian strife.

And yet I am told that this doctrine must not be resisted or called in question, because of its fitness to preserve unity of faith, and for the prevention of schism and sectarian byways! Let the man who holds this language trace the history of Protestantism, and the growth of sectarian divisions, ending with Dr. Hawker's ultra- Calvinistic Tracts, and Mr. Belsham's New Version of the Testament.

There is no reason why any modern should not read and enjoy Browne or Wither, in whose softly flowing verse the sweetness and contentment of the countryside, that "merry England" which was the background of all sectarian and intellectual strife and labour, finds as in a placid stream a calm reflection and picture of itself.

In spite of Powell's obvious opinion on the trial, he could not hinder a conviction. No doubt the jury were greatly swayed by the crowds. The judge seems to have gone through the form of condemning the woman, but took pains to see that she was reprieved. In the mean time her affair, like that of Richard Dugdale, had become a matter of sectarian quarrel.

The fierce polemical discussions and the bold sectarian dogmatism of the day had taught them anything but "the modesty of true science," and now the unsolvable problems of the centuries were taken out of the hands of puzzled scholars and settled as summarily and positively as the relative merits of "gourd-seed" and "flint" corn.

Astonished at the sight of so many ‘ulamás and Súfís of Kurdish origin, of both the Qádiríyyih and Khalídíyyih Orders, thronging the house of Bahá’u’lláh, and impelled by racial and sectarian rivalry, the religious leaders of the city, such as the renowned Ibn-i-Álúsí, the Muftí of Baghdád, together with Shaykh ‘Abdu’s-Salám, Shaykh ‘Abdu’l-Qádir and Siyyid Dáwúdí, began to seek His presence, and, having obtained completely satisfying answers to their several queries, enrolled themselves among the band of His earliest admirers.

Far from the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár offering such a spectacle of incoherent and confused sectarian observances and rites, a condition wholly incompatible with the provisions of the Aqdas and irreconcilable with the spirit it inculcates, the central House of Bahá’í worship, enshrined within the Mashriqu’l-Adhkár, will gather within its chastened walls, in a serenely spiritual atmosphere, only those who, discarding forever the trappings of elaborate and ostentatious ceremony, are willing worshipers of the one true God, as manifested in this age in the Person of Bahá’u’lláh.