e exerted by
the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power
released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive and resplendent Spirit. We
testify that when He came into the world, He shed the splendor of His
glory upon all created things. Through Him the leper recovered from the
leprosy of perversity and ignorance. Through Him the unchaste and wayward
were healed. Through His power, born of Almighty God, the eyes of the
blind were opened and the soul of the sinner sanctified.... He it is Who
purified the world. Blessed is the man who, with a face beaming with
light, hath turned towards Him."

Indeed, the essential prerequisites of admittance into the Baha'i fold of
Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and the followers of other ancient
faiths, as well as of agnostics and even atheists, is the wholehearted and
unqualified acceptance by them all of the divine origin of both Islam and
Christianity, of the Prophetic functions of both Muhammad and Jesus
Christ, of the legitimacy of the institution of the Imamate, and of the
primacy of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. Such are the central,
the solid, the incontrovertible principles that constitute the bedrock of
Baha'i belief, which the Faith of Baha'u'llah is proud to acknowledge,
which its teachers proclaim, which its apologists defend, which its
literature disseminates, which its summer schools expound, and which the
rank and file of its followers attest by both word and deed.

Nor should it be thought for a moment that the followers of Baha'u'llah
either seek to degrade or even belittle the rank of the world's religious
leaders, whether Christian, Muslim, or of any other denomination, should
their conduct conform to their professions, and be worthy of the position
they occupy. "Those divines," Baha'u'llah has affirmed, "...who are truly
adorned with the ornament of knowledge and of a goodly character are,
verily, as a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations.
The guidance of men hath, at all times, been and is dependent upon these
blessed souls." And again: "The divine whose conduct is upright, and the
sage who is just, are as the spirit unto the body of the world. Well is it
with that divine whose head is attired with the crown of justice, and
whose temple is adorned with the ornament of equity." And yet again: "The
divine who hath seized and quaffed the most holy Wine, in the name of the
sovereign Ordainer, is as an eye u