s of His attributes... These
Tabernacles of Holiness, these primal Mirrors which reflect the Light of
unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the
Invisibles."

That Baha'u'llah should, notwithstanding the overwhelming intensity of His
Revelation, be regarded as essentially one of these Manifestations of God,
never to be identified with that invisible Reality, the Essence of
Divinity itself, is one of the major beliefs of our Faith--a belief which
should never be obscured and the integrity of which no one of its
followers should allow to be compromised.

Nor does the Baha'i Revelation, claiming as it does to be the culmination
of a prophetic cycle and the fulfillment of the promise of all ages,
attempt, under any circumstances, to invalidate those first and
everlasting principles that animate and underlie the religions that have
preceded it. The God-given authority, vested in each one of them, it
admits and establishes as its firmest and ultimate basis. It regards them
in no other light except as different stages in the eternal history and
constant evolution of one religion, Divine and indivisible, of which it
itself forms but an integral part. It neither seeks to obscure their
Divine origin, nor to dwarf the admitted magnitude of their colossal
achievements. It can countenance no attempt that seeks to distort their
features or to stultify the truths which they instill. Its teachings do
not deviate a hairbreadth from the verities they enshrine, nor does the
weight of its message detract one jot or one tittle from the influence
they exert or the loyalty they inspire. Far from aiming at the overthrow
of the spiritual foundation of the world's religious systems, its avowed,
its unalterable purpose is to widen their basis, to restate their
fundamentals, to reconcile their aims, to reinvigorate their life, to
demonstrate their oneness, to restore the pristine purity of their
teachings, to coeordinate their functions and to assist in the realization
of their highest aspirations. These divinely-revealed religions, as a
close observer has graphically expressed it, "are doomed not to die, but
to be reborn... 'Does not the child succumb in the youth and the youth in
the man; yet neither child nor youth perishes?'"

"They Who are the Luminaries of Truth and the Mirrors reflecting the light
of Divine Unity," Baha'u'llah explains in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "in whatever
age and cycle they are sent down from thei