ght
thee the truth and nation. (25: 33).
The Bahais argue the world has advanced to such a high degree, under the constant process of evolution, that the guidance vouchsafed to them through the agency of human prophets, is no longer of any avail, and the Divine Being, therefore, has himself incarnated in the flesh of Bahaullah to give the world a new law that will solve all their riddles. The Holy Prophet Muhammad, they Si1Y, was the Last Prophet, and no prophet will appear after him, the Adamic cycle of teachers having c rme to a close, yielding place to the age of Divine Manifestation. The doctrine of Incarnation and Manifestation which squeezes the infinite and illimitable Supreme Being into the confines of a limited, perishable human body, is a relic of the Pagan past. The Hindus of India worshipped and adored Krishna, as an avatar (incarnation) of the Divine Being. The Greek, Roman and Persian mythologies had Dionysus, Hercules and Mithra as personifications of God in the Highest. The Christian Church borrowed these feathers from the Pagan mythology, and adorned Jesus therewith. Bahaullah, in order to get 3 foothold for himself on the soil of religious
thought, endorsed the Christian belief that Jesus was an incarnation of the Most High God. ·'The advent of the Lord of Hosts, the Creator and Saviour of the world," Bahaullah said with reference to his own appearance, "which is to take place in the last age according to the pronouncements of all the prophets, meant nothing else but that the Most High God will appear in human form on the stage of this world, much in the same way as he had manifested himself in the flesh of Jesus the Christ. Now he has appeared in the most perfect human form, for the reception of which Jesus and all the ancient. prophets had come to prepare and qualify the world." The Holy Quran threw this deleterious doctrine of the Union of Godhood with mortal manhood overboard, fourteen centuries ago, with a simple but strong argument: "Had there been in the earth angels walking about as settlers, ',Ve would have sent down to them angel from the heaven as an apostle" (17: 95). When even an angel cannot serve as a model for men, much less would God Himself serve that purpose, even though it were possible that He should come in the form
of human flesh. Man has to face temptatione at every step of his life; but there is no temptation for God. So, the simple truth is that God-incarnate would not serve any purpose in the reformation of man. But, fdr the impartial consideration of our American Bahai, we reporduce the verdict of modern scientific research and investigation with regard to the Divinity of Jesus Christ which Bahaul1ah, as shown in the foregoing lines, had assumed as a drop to stay him up in his preposterous claim. The compilers of wellknown book Encyclopaedia Biblica who are the accredited scholars and divines of the Christian faith, have stated (Art. son of God) in quite unmistakeable terms: "We must infer that Jesus had indeed communion with God but nothing beyond it; but this connection was under such limitations that the attribute of Godness as well as absolute knowledge belonged to God, and hence the boundary line between the Divine and human was strictly preserved." Yet another Christian scholar, J. Hastings, writes in his book, Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, p. 808 : "All the be1ieving Jews and all the rest of the Nazarene Jews esteemed Jesus
with one consent as a mere son of Joseph and Mary." Bahaullah mortal man. man, the
was, likewise, a mere From a study of his book, Kitab al-Aqdas, it appears that either he suffered from a mental kink, or was so much disgusted with his lamentable lot in the prisoncell that he sometimes cursed his adversaries, the Babis, and invoked evil upon them, and sometimes he held high glittering hopes to his friends; yet in all his sullen gloom and melancholy he was so much arrogant and presumptuous that he claimed to be the Mighty Manifestation of the Most High God the Creator of the heavens and the earth. That his mental faculties had suffered some s