features of each code of conduct would
eventually fulfil their purpose and in time be overshadowed by concerns of
a different nature brought on by the process of social evolution, the code
itself would lose none of its authority during the long stage of human
progress in which it played a vital role in training behaviour and
attitudes. "These principles and laws, these firmly-established and mighty
systems", Baha'u'llah asserts, "have proceeded from one Source, and are
the rays of one Light. That they differ one from another is to be
attributed to the varying requirements of the ages in which they were
promulgated."(19)

To argue, therefore, that differences of regulations, observances and
other practices constitute any significant objection to the idea of
revealed religion's essential oneness is to miss the purpose that these
prescriptions served. More seriously, it misses the fundamental
distinction between the eternal and the transitory features of religion's
function. The essential message of religion is immutable. It is, in
Baha'u'llah's words, "the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past,
eternal in the future".(20) Its role in opening the way for the soul to
enter into an evermore mature relationship with its Creator--and in
endowing it with an ever-greater measure of moral autonomy in disciplining
the animal impulses of human nature--is not at all irreconcilable with its
providing auxiliary guidance that enhances the process of civilization
building.

The concept of progressive revelation places the ultimate emphasis on
recognition of the revelation of God at its appearance. The failure of the
generality of humankind in this respect has, time and again, condemned
entire populations to a ritualistic repetition of ordinances and practices
long after these latter have fulfilled their purpose and now merely
stultify moral advance. Sadly, in the present day, a related consequence
of such failure has been to trivialize religion. At precisely the point in
its collective development where humanity began to struggle with the
challenges of modernity, the spiritual resource on which it had
principally depended for moral courage and enlightenment was fast becoming
a subject of mockery, first at those levels where decisions were being
made about the direction society should take, and eventually in
ever-widening circles of the general population. There is little cause for
surprise, then, that this most devastating of th