ords,
"Let Us make man in Our image, and after Our likeness."(2) This is the
goal of the world of humanity.
Now we need an educator who will be at the same time a material, human and
spiritual educator, and whose authority will be effective in all
conditions. So if anyone should say, "I possess perfect comprehension and
intelligence, and I have no need of such an educator," he would be denying
that which is clear and evident, as though a child should say, "I have no
need of education; I will act according to my reason and intelligence, and
so I shall attain the perfections of existence"; or as though the blind
should say, "I am in no need of sight, because many other blind people
exist without difficulty."
Then it is plain and evident that man needs an educator, and this educator
must be unquestionably and indubitably perfect in all respects and
distinguished above all men. Otherwise, if he should be like the rest of
humanity, he could not be their educator, more particularly because he
must be at the same time their material and human as well as their
spiritual educator--that is to say, he must teach men to organize and carry
out physical matters, and to form a social order in order to establish
cooperation and mutual aid in living so that material affairs may be
organized and regulated for any circumstances that may occur. In the same
way he must establish human education--that is to say, he must educate
intelligence and thought in such a way that they may attain complete
development, so that knowledge and science may increase, and the reality
of things, the mysteries of beings and the properties of existence may be
discovered; that, day by day, instructions, inventions and institutions
may be improved; and from things perceptible to the senses conclusions as
to intellectual things may be deduced.
He must also impart spiritual education, so that intelligence and
comprehension may penetrate the metaphysical world, and may receive
benefit from the sanctifying breeze of the Holy Spirit, and may enter into
relationship with the Supreme Concourse. He must so educate the human
reality that it may become the center of the divine appearance, to such a
degree that the attributes and the names of God shall be resplendent in
the mirror of the reality of man, and the holy verse "We will make man in
Our image and likeness" shall be realized.(3)
It is clear that human power is not able to fill such a great office, and
that
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