BahÃĄâ•Žuâ•ŽllÃĄh and the New Era - Knowledge Rush

Sectarianism in the Nineteenth CenturyNever, perhaps, did the world seem farther away from religiousunity than in the nineteenth century. For many centuries had thegreat religious communities—the Zoroastrian, Mosaic, Buddhist,Christian, Mu%ammadan and others—been existing side by side,but instead of blending together into a harmonious whole theyhad been at constant enmity and strife, each against the others.Not only so, but each had become split up, by division afterdivision, into an increasing number of sects which were oftenbitterly opposed to each other. Yet Christ had said: “By thisshall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love oneto another, “ and Mu%ammad had said: “This your religion isthe one religion.... To you hath God prescribed the faith whichHe commanded unto Noah, and which We have revealed untothee, and which We commanded unto Abraham and Moses andJesus saying: ‘Observe this faith, and be not divided into sectstherein!’” The Founder of every one of the great religions hadcalled His followers to love and unity, but in every case the aimof the Founder was to a large extent lost sight of in a welter ofintolerance and bigotry, formalism and hypocrisy, corruption andmisrepresentation, schism and contention. The aggregate numberof more or less hostile sects in the world was probably greater atthe commencement of the Bahá’í era than at any previous periodin human history. It seemed as if humanity at that time wereexperimenting with every possible kind of religious belief, withevery possible sort of ritual and ceremonial observance, withevery possible variety of moral code.At the same time an increasing number of men were devotingtheir energies to fearless investigation and critical examination ofthe laws of nature and the foundations of belief. New scientificknowledge was being rapidly acquired and new solutions werebeing found for many of the problems of life. The developmentof inventions such as steamship and railway, postal system and