" said Christ, "that ye may have life and that ye may have it more
abundantly." That is what we all need--life, more life, the life that is
life indeed! Baha'u'llah's message is the same as Christ's. "Today," He
says, "this servant has assuredly come to vivify the world" (Tablet to
Ra'is), and to His followers He says: "Come ye after Me, that We may make
you to become quickeners of mankind." (Tablet to the Pope.)

CHAPTER 12: RELIGION AND SCIENCE

'Ali, the son-in-law of Muhammad, said: "That which is in conformity with
science is also in conformity with religion." Whatever the intelligence of
man cannot understand, religion ought not to accept. Religion and science
walk hand in hand, and any religion contrary to science is not the
truth.--'ABDU'L-BAHA, Wisdom of 'Abdu'l-Baha.

Conflict Due to Error

One of the fundamental teachings of Baha'u'llah is that true science and
true religion must always be in harmony. Truth is one, and whenever
conflict appears it is due, not to truth, but to error. Between so-called
science and so-called religion there have been fierce conflicts all down
the ages, but looking back on these conflicts in the light of fuller truth
we can trace them every time to ignorance, prejudice, vanity, greed,
narrow-mindedness, intolerance, obstinacy or something of the
kind--something foreign to the true spirit of both science and religion,
for the spirit of both is one. As Huxley tells us, "The great deeds of
philosophers have been less the fruit of their intellect than the
direction of that intellect by an eminently religious tone of mind. Truth
has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, their
single-heartedness and self-denial than to their logical acumen." Boole,
the mathematician, assures us that "geometric induction is essentially a
process of prayer--an appeal from the finite mind to the Infinite for light
on finite concerns." The great prophets of religion and science have never
denounced each other. It is the unworthy followers of these great world
teachers--worshipers of the letter but not of the spirit of their
teaching--who have always been the persecutors of the later prophets and
the bitterest opponents of progress. They have studied the light of the
particular revelation which they hold sacred, and have defined its
properties and peculiarities as seen by their limited vision, with the
utmost care and precision. That is for them the one true light. If God