Age of Justice unprecedented rewards may be gained by the truly faithful, the standards by which faith is judged are likewise heightened and the believer is bidden to strive that his deeds may be cleansed from the dust of self and hypocracy and find favor at the court of glory, since the Assayers of Mankind will now in the holy prescence of the Adored One accept naught but absolute virtue and deeds of stainless purity.
The quelling of this ego, the severance from selfish desires is indeed the essential task that confronts the aspiring soul. The final challenge to the faithful with which
Bahá’u’lláh closes this ethical work is: “Let it now be seen what your endeavors in the path of detachment will reveal”. The Creator has left this imperfection in man’s constitution and given him freedom of will to strive against it in order that man may, through his own endeavor, “become worthy to meet Me (God) and to mirror forth My Beauty”. Were not the ego there man could not earn praise and reward; he might be spared test and trial but he would be a mere automaton. This demand for effort, this privilege of free choice, may make this planet a place of torment but it makes earth-life a field of possible victory, an arena where moral attainment is really a man’s own deed, won under the beneficient law of justice by his own knowledge, determination, and action. In the “next world” this opportunity for achieving worthiness is not given. Man, for his advancement there depends not on self-effort and justice but on God’s mercy. Therefore Bahá’u’lláh counsels man to seize the opportunity here and now, for it will come to him no more. The fires of hell, it is explained elsewhere, are the sense of priceless opportunities thrown away and now lost forever.