At the end of the last section, Baha'u'llah explained what He meant by the “divines” of Persia. They are those who “outwardly attire themselves with the raiment of knowledge, but who inwardly are deprived therefrom”.
Outwardly and inwardly.
Baha'u'llah immediately follows this with a series of passages from the Hidden Words. The first begins, “O ye that are foolish, yet have a name to be wise! Wherefore do ye wear the guise of shepherds, when inwardly ye have become wolves, intent upon My flock?”
Well, that's not subtle.
Baha'u'llah has just said the purpose of religion is to foster “the well-being of the world and the protection of the nations”. It should lead to unity and fellowship. The person who possesses truth should offer it with kindness and goodwill. These are the standards Baha'u'llah has just established. And now we have a shepherd who eats the sheep.
The next image is in the same vein, if a little less violent.
“Ye are even as a spring, which is outwardly clear and pure, but inwardly is of such bitterness that no one can taste thereof.”
Outwardly and inwardly. But this time you can't tell what's wrong with the spring just by looking at it. It looks clear. It looks pure. Until you taste it.
That seems particularly appropriate when Baha'u'llah is talking about people who outwardly possess the “raiment of knowledge”. Someone can look learned. They can have the position, the education, the clothing, the vocabulary, all the outward signs that tell us this is someone worth listening to. But what happens when you actually drink from the spring? What happens when you reflect on their words?
Perhaps this takes us back to something we just saw. If we want to know whether religious leadership is serving its proper purpose, look at what it produces. The appearance of the spring isn't the test. The water is.
Then comes another Hidden Word:
“O essence of desire! At many a dawn have I turned from the realms of the Placeless unto thine abode, and found thee on the bed of ease busied with others than Me.”
Busied. Didn't we just see that word? Just a few paragraphs earlier Baha'u'llah spoke of people who “have busied themselves with the things they possess”, while remaining unaware of “the things God possesseth”. And now God comes looking for this person and finds him busied with something other than Him.
I have to wonder what that means to Muhammad-Taqi. After all, he was a religious scholar. I would imagine he was pretty busy with religion. But are being busy with religion and being occupied with God the same thing? Not necessarily.
That's a little uncomfortable.
I can spend all day studying the Writings, writing about them, talking about them, doing things that appear to be connected with God, and still have to ask myself what I'm actually occupied with. The activity itself doesn't answer the question.
And then the next Hidden Word stopped me.
“O bond slave of the world! Many a dawn hath the breeze of My loving-kindness wafted over thee and found thee upon the bed of heedlessness fast asleep.”
Wait a minute.
Didn't we just see someone else asleep when a breeze came?
Baha'u'llah just described the beginning of His own Revelation. “I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been.”
Now we have another person asleep, and another breeze passing over him. But the results couldn't be more different.
Baha'u'llah is asleep upon His couch when the breezes come, and He awakens to His Revelation. His voice is raised between earth and heaven. Here the “bond slave of the world” is asleep upon the “bed of heedlessness”, the breeze of God's loving-kindness passes over him, and he remains asleep.
The contrast is striking, especially when Baha'u'llah has spent so much of this Epistle talking about listening. “Give ear.” The ear was created to hear the Divine Voice. Muhammad-Taqi has been told to ponder, to recite, to listen to the meaning of the words. Perhaps the breeze can pass over us and we can still sleep through it.
And then we have the counterpoint.
“Those divines, however, 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.”
However.
So this isn't a condemnation of the divines simply because they're divines. Baha'u'llah has spent several paragraphs showing us what false religious leadership can look like, and now He shows us the other possibility.
And notice the clothing. At the beginning of this section there were those who “outwardly attire themselves with the raiment of knowledge”. The false shepherds wear a “guise”. Now these other divines are “truly adorned with the ornament of knowledge”.
But there's something else added here. They are adorned with knowledge and a goodly character. Perhaps that's part of how we tell whether the spring is sweet.
And look what these true divines become: “a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations”.
Eyes.
We've seen those before, too. Baha'u'llah has already spoken of those “whose sight is keen”, and He has been asking Muhammad-Taqi to look again at things he thinks he already knows. Now the true divine isn't merely someone who can see. He can somehow become an eye for the nation.
Which takes me back to those first two words again.
Outwardly and inwardly.
Apparently the difference between the false divine and the true one isn't whether he looks religious. Both may possess the outward appearance of knowledge. The difference seems to lie somewhere deeper, in what that knowledge has made of him, in what it produces, and perhaps in what others receive when they drink from his spring.
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