Chapter 11: Various Ordinances and Teachings
Know thou that in every age and dispensation all divine ordinances are changed and transformed according to the requirement of the time, except the law of love, which, like a fountain, always flows and is never overtaken by change. - Baha'u'llah (113:1)

Monastic Life
Baha'u'llah, like Muhammad, forbids His followers to lead lives of monastic seclusion (113:3)

In the Tablet to Napoleon III we read: - Say: O concourse of monks! Seclude not yourselves in your churches and cloisters. Come ye out of them by My leave, and busy, then, yourselves with what will profit you and others... Enter ye into wedlock, that after you another may arise in your stead. We, verily, have forbidden you lechery, and not that which is conducive to fidelity. Have ye clung unto the promptings of your nature, and cast behind your backs the statutes of God? Fear ye God, and be not of the foolish. But for man, who, on My earth, would remember Me, and how could My attributes and My names be revealed? Reflect, and be not of them that have shut themselves out as by a veil from Him, and were of those that are fast asleep. He that married not could find no place wherein to abide, nor where to lay His head, by reason of what the hands of the treacherous had wrought. His holiness consisted not in the things ye have believed and imagined, but rather in the things which belong unto Us. Ask, that ye may be made aware of His station which hath been exalted above the vain imaginings of all the peoples of the earth. Blessed are they that understand (113:4)

Does it not seem strange that Christian sects should have instituted the monastic life and celibacy for the clergy, in view of the facts that Christ chose married men for His disciples, and both He Himself and His apostles lived lives of active beneficence, in close association and familiar intercourse with the people? (113:6)

In the Muhammadan Qur'an we read:
To Jesus the son of Mary We gave the Gospel, and We put into the hearts of those who followed Him kindness and compassion: but as to the monastic life, they invented it themselves. The desire only of pleasing God did We prescribe to them, and this they observed not as it ought to have been observed. - Qur'an, Súrih lvii. 27 (113:7)

Whatever justification there may have been for the monastic life in ancient times and bygone circumstances, Baha'u'llah declares that such justification no longer exists; and, indeed, it seems obvious that the withdrawal of a large number of the most pious and God- fearing of the population from association with their fellows, and from the duties and responsibilities of parenthood, must result in the spiritual impoverishment of the race (113:8)

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