What, we may well inquire at this juncture, were the nature
and implications of that Revelation [Baha’u’llah’s] which, manifesting itself
so soon after the Declaration of the Báb, abolished, at one stroke, the
Dispensation which that Faith had so newly proclaimed, and upheld, with such
vehemence and force, the Divine authority of its Author? What, we may well
pause to consider, were the claims of Him Who, Himself a disciple of the Báb,
had, at such an early stage, regarded Himself as empowered to abrogate the Law
identified with His beloved Master? What, we may further reflect, could be the
relationship between the religious Systems established before Him and His own
Revelation—a Revelation which, flowing out, in that extremely perilous hour,
from His travailing soul, pierced the gloom that had settled upon that
pestilential pit, and, bursting through its walls, and propagating itself as
far as the ends of the earth, infused into the entire body of mankind its
boundless potentialities, and is now under our very eyes, shaping the course of
human society?
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
