le to
distinguish between its eternal and transitory features, and attempt to
impose on society rules of behaviour that have long since accomplished
their purpose. The principle is fundamental to an understanding of
religion's social role: "The remedy the world needeth in its present-day
afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may
require", Baha'u'llah points out. "Be anxiously concerned with the needs
of the age ye live in, and centre your deliberations on its exigencies and
requirements."(47)

"The exigencies of the new age of human experience to which..."

The exigencies of the new age of human experience to which Baha'u'llah
summoned the political and religious rulers of the nineteenth century
world have now been largely adopted, at least as ideals, by their
successors and by progressive minds everywhere. By the time the twentieth
century had drawn to a close, principles that had, only short decades
earlier, been patronized as visionary and hopelessly unrealistic had
become central to global discourse. Buttressed by the findings of
scientific research and the conclusions of influential commissions--often
lavishly funded--they direct the work of powerful agencies at
international, national and local levels. A vast body of scholarly
literature in many languages is devoted to exploring practical means for
their implementation, and those programmes can count on media attention on
five continents.

Most of these principles are, alas, also widely flouted, not only among
recognized enemies of social peace, but in circles professedly committed
to them. What is lacking is not convincing testimony as to their
relevance, but the power of moral conviction that can implement them, a
power whose only demonstrably reliable source throughout history has been
religious faith. As late as the inception of Baha'u'llah's own mission,
religious authority still exercised a significant degree of social
influence. When the Christian world was moved to break with millennia of
unquestioning conviction and address at last the evil of slavery, it was
to Biblical ideals that the early British reformers sought to appeal.
Subsequently, in the defining address he gave regarding the central role
played by the issue in the great conflict in America, the president of the
United States warned that if "every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand
yea