away the gloom that has encircled
humanity."(17) Apart from encouraging humility, this fact should serve
also as a constant reminder that Baha'u'llah has not brought into
existence a new religion to stand beside the present multiplicity of
sectarian organizations. Rather has He recast the whole conception of
religion as the principal force impelling the development of
consciousness. As the human race in all its diversity is a single species,
so the intervention by which God cultivates the qualities of mind and
heart latent in that species is a single process. Its heroes and saints
are the heroes and saints of all stages in the struggle; its successes,
the successes of all stages. This is the standard demonstrated in the life
and work of the Master and exemplified today in a Baha'i community that
has become the inheritor of humanity's entire spiritual legacy, a legacy
equally available to all the earth's peoples.

The recurring proof of the existence of God, therefore, is that from time
immemorial He has repeatedly manifested Himself. In the larger sense, as
Baha'u'llah explains, the vast epic of humanity's religious history
represents the fulfilment of the "Covenant", the enduring promise by which
the Creator of all things assures the race of the unfailing guidance
essential to its spiritual and moral development, and calls on it to
internalize and give expression to these values. One is free to dispute
through historicist interpretations of the evidence the unique role of
this or that Messenger of God, if that is one's purpose, but such
speculation is of no help in accounting for developments that have
transformed thought and produced changes in human relationships critical
to social evolution. At intervals so rare that the known instances can be
counted on one's fingers, the Manifestations of God have appeared, have
each been explicit as to the authority of His teachings and have each
exerted an influence on the advance of civilization incomparably beyond
that of any other phenomenon in history. "Consider the hour at which the
supreme Manifestation of God revealeth Himself unto men", Baha'u'llah
points out: "Ere that hour cometh, the Ancient Being, Who is still unknown
of men and hath not as yet given utterance to the Word of God, is Himself
the All-Knower in a world devoid of any man that hath known Him. He is
indeed the Creator without a creation."(18)

"The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing