Vol. 31 No. 4 (2021): Human utterance is an essence which aspireth to exert its influence
This issue of the Journal of Bahá’í Studies provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the power of words. Each of us can find ample evidence from our own experience that speech, “this activity which so distinguishes human beings from other forms of life” (Universal House of Justice), has power—to persuade and inspire, instruct and illuminate, fragment and wound. In the religious context, of course, words take on a particular significance. The Bahá’í Faith, like many of the revelations whose work it continues, is centered on the Revealed Word, the tangible expression in letters and phrases, “syllables and sounds,” of that ineffable spiritual reality that is the Word of God—“God’s all-pervasive grace, from which all grace doth emanate.”
