borious attention to details may utterly fail to portray. If the
material details blind us to the spiritual meaning, then we should be
better without them; but if we have once firmly grasped the essential
meaning of the whole scheme, then knowledge of the details will give our
conception a wonderful added richness and splendor and make it a
magnificent picture instead of a mere sketch plan.

'Abdu'l-Baha says:--

Know that it is one of the most abstruse spiritual truths that the
world of existence, that is to say this endless universe, has no
beginning....

... Know that ... a creator without a creature is impossible, a
provider without those provided for cannot be conceived; for all
the divine names and attributes demand the existence of beings. If
we could imagine a time when no beings existed, this imagination
would be the denial of the Divinity of God. Moreover, absolute
non-existence cannot become existence. If the beings were
absolutely non-existent, existence would not have come into being.
Therefore, as the Essence of Unity, that is the existence of God,
is everlasting and eternal--that is to say, it has neither
beginning nor end--it is certain that this world of existence ...
has neither beginning nor end.... it may be that one of the parts
of the universe, one of the globes, for example, may come into
existence, or may be disintegrated, but the other endless globes
are still existing.... As each globe has a beginning, necessarily
it has an end, because every composition, collective or
particular, must of necessity be decomposed; the only difference
is that some are quickly decomposed, and others more slowly, but
it is impossible that a composed thing should not eventually be
decomposed.--Some Answered Questions, pp. 209-210.

The Evolution of Man

Baha'u'llah also confirms the biologist who finds for the body of man a
history reaching back in the development of the species through millions
of years. Starting from a very simple, apparently insignificant form, the
human body is pictured as developing stage by stage, in the course of
untold generations, becoming more and more complex, and better and better
organized until the man of the present day is reached. Each individual
human body develops through such a series of stages, from a tiny round
speck of jelly-like matter to the fully developed man. If this is