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That reason, Col. ii. 20, doth no less irresistibly infringe the ordinances about our holidays than about the Jewish; for if men’s ordinances, about things once appointed by God himself, ought not to be obeyed, how much less should the precepts of men be received about such things in religion as never had this honour to be God’s ordinances, when their mere authority doth limit or adstrict us in things which God hath made lawful or free to us.
For a Bahá’í reader, such belated recognition awakens echoes of warning addressed over a century earlier by Bahá’u’lláh to the rulers of human affairs: “The vitality of men’s belief in God is dying out in every land.... The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of human society....”
Then, and only then, will the Trust of God, latent in the reality of man, emerge ... and implant the ensign of its revealed glory upon the summits of men’s hearts. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.
There is a particular corruption in one man’s heart—for instance, ambition—which makes him unfit to be trusted with government; therefore the same corruption is in all other men’s hearts; even as the face in the water answereth the face out of the water so just, that there is not a spot or blemish in the one but it is in the other.
Neither doth any writer, whom I have seen, hold that princes have any power over men’s consciences, but only that conscience is bound by the laws of princes, for this respect, because God, who hath power over our consciences, hath tied us to their laws. As to the assumption, he who denyeth it must give instance to the contrary.
The learned men of Christendom are held to be learned by virtue of their safeguarding the teaching of Christ, and yet consider how they themselves have been the cause of men’s failure to accept the Faith and attain unto salvation! Is it still thy wish to follow in their footsteps?
Small wonder that Bahá’u’lláh, the Divine Physician, should have declared: “In this day the tastes of men have changed, and their power of perception hath altered. The contrary winds of the world, and its colors, have provoked a cold, and deprived men’s nostrils of the sweet savors of Revelation.”
Religious phrenzy had arrived at its climax; men’s only occupation seemed to be that of building churches, destroying mosques, and ostentatiously displaying the triumphs of the new creed over that which for many centuries had polluted the soil. It was impossible that Isabella could long resist these continuous remonstrances.
The matter is most often decided in men’s hearts on other grounds much more natural. And as for rights—who has not the right to wish?” “Not for another man’s death?” “What even if for another man’s death? Why lie to oneself since all men live so and perhaps cannot help living so. Are you referring to what I said just now—that one reptile will devour the other?
Hold Thou the hand of this seeker who hath set his face towards Thee, O my Lord, and draw him out of the depths of his vain imaginations, that the light of certainty may shine brightly above the horizon of his heart in the days whereon the sun of the knowledge of Thy creatures hath been darkened through the shining of the Day-Star of Thy glory; the days whereon the moon of the world’s wisdom hath been eclipsed through the appearance of Thy hidden knowledge, and the manifestation of Thy well-guarded secret, and the revelation of Thine enshrined mystery; the days whereon the stars of men’s doings have fallen through the rising of the orb of Thy unity and the shedding of the radiance of Thy transcendent oneness.
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