It is evident that the changes brought about in every
Dispensation constitute the dark clouds that intervene between the eye of man’s
understanding and the divine Luminary which shineth forth from the dayspring of
the divine Essence. Consider how men for generations have been blindly
imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such ways and
manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith. Were these men,
therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst,
Who, with respect to every human limitation, hath been their equal, had risen
to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith—principles by
which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of
which they have come to regard as infidel, profligate and wicked,—they would of
a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth. Such things
are as “clouds” that veil the eyes of those whose inner being hath not tasted
the Salsabíl of detachment, nor drunk from the Kawthar of the knowledge
of God. Such men, when acquainted with these circumstances, become so veiled
that without the least question, they pronounce the Manifestation of God an
infidel, and sentence Him to death. You must have heard of such things taking
place all down the ages, and are now observing them in these days.
(Baha’u’llah,
‘Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah’)
