are: shameful deeds,
whether open or secret; sins and trespasses against truth or reason;
assigning of partners to God, for which he hath given no authority; and
saying things about God of which ye have no knowledge."(27) To the modern
mind it is the greatest of ironies that generations of theologians, whose
impositions on religion embody precisely the betrayal so strongly
denounced in these texts, should seek to use the warning itself as a
weapon in suppressing protest against their usurpation of Divine
authority.

In effect, each new stage in the progressively unfolding revelation of
spiritual truth was frozen in time and in an array of literalistic images
and interpretations, many of them borrowed from cultures which were
themselves morally exhausted. Whatever their value at earlier stages in
the evolution of consciousness, conceptions of physical resurrection, a
paradise of carnal delights, reincarnation, pantheistic prodigies, and the
like, today raise walls of separation and conflict in an age when the
earth has literally become one homeland and human beings must learn to see
themselves as its citizens. In this context one can appreciate the reasons
for the vehemence of Baha'u'llah's warnings about the barriers that
dogmatic theology creates in the path of those seeking to understand the
will of God: "O leaders of religion! Weigh not the Book of God with such
standards and sciences as are current amongst you, for the Book itself is
the unerring Balance established amongst men."(28) In His Tablet to Pope
Pius IX, He advises the pontiff that God has in this day "stored away ...
in the vessels of justice" whatever is enduring in religion and "cast into
fire that which befitteth it".(29)

"Freed from the thickets with which theology has hedged religious..."

Freed from the thickets with which theology has hedged religious
understanding about, the mind is able to explore familiar scriptural
passages through the eyes of Baha'u'llah. "Peerless is this Day," He
asserts, "for it is as the eye to past ages and centuries, and as a light
unto the darkness of the times."(30) The most striking observation that
results from taking advantage of this perspective is the unity of purpose
and principle running throughout the Hebrew scriptures, the Gospel and the
Qur'an, particularly, although echoes can readily be discerned in the
scriptures of others among the world's religions. Repeatedly, the same
organizing themes emer