It is incumbent upon human society to expend all its forces
on the education of the people, and to copiously water men's hearts with the
sacred streams that pour down from the Realm of the All-Merciful, and to teach
them the manners of Heaven and spiritual ways of life, until every member of
the community of man will be schooled, refined, and exalted to such a degree of
perfection that the very committing of a shameful act will seem in itself the
direst infliction and most agonizing of punishments, and man will fly in terror
and seek refuge in his God from the very idea of crime, as something far harsher
and more grievous than the punishment assigned to it.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a
Tablet; included in a Memorandum from the Research Department of the Universal
House of Justice dated 23 May 1991, forwarded to an individual believer by the
Department of the Secretariat of the Universal House of Justice)
