conception..."

The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception of
religion is the assertion that the differences among the revealed faiths
are so fundamental that to present them as stages or aspects of one
unified system of truth does violence to the facts. Given the confusion
surrounding the nature of religion, the reaction is understandable.
Chiefly, however, such an objection offers Baha'is an invitation to set
the principles reviewed here more explicitly in the evolutionary context
provided in Baha'u'llah's writings.

The differences referred to fall into the categories of either practice or
doctrine, both of them presented as the intent of the relevant scriptures.
In the case of religious customs governing personal life, it is helpful to
view the subject against the background of comparable features of material
life. It is most unlikely that diversity in hygiene, dress, medicine,
diet, transportation, warfare, construction or economic activity, however
striking, would any longer be seriously advanced in support of a theory
that humanity does not in fact constitute one people, single and unique.
Until the opening of the twentieth century, such simplistic arguments were
commonplace, but historical and anthropological research now provides a
seamless panorama of the process of cultural evolution by which these and
countless other expressions of human creativity came into existence, were
transmitted through successive generations, underwent gradual
metamorphoses and often spread to enrich the lives of peoples in far
distant lands. That present-day societies represent a wide spectrum of
such phenomena, therefore, does not in any way define a fixed and
immutable identity of the peoples concerned, but merely distinguishes the
stage through which given groups are--or at least until recently have
been--passing. Even so, all such cultural expressions are now in a state of
fluidity in consequence of the pressures of planetary integration.

A similar evolutionary process, Baha'u'llah indicates, has characterized
the religious life of humankind. The defining difference lies in the fact
that, rather than representing simply the accidents of history's ongoing
method of trial and error, such norms were explicitly prescribed in each
case, as integral features of one or another revelation of the Divine,
embodied in scripture, their integrity scrupulously maintained over a
period of centuries. While certain