 in the sea of cleanliness and purity. This is my grace which encompasses all the worlds." Abdul Baha, when beseeched by the Bahais of America to give them a law regarding food, said in simple, plain language~ olL;.!...l. _ ~
lyJi ~L.. .... iL...l, ):. oI.L:.I.J. .. l.. ~
..::....! ~b. _,) it....1):.
"We interfere not in your physical food; our concern is only with your spiritual sustenance. " That the Western world may not be offend. ed and displeased, Bahaullah avoided scrupulously to interdict the use of intoxicants and
pork. The taking of opium, however, has been forbidden twice. It sounds like swallowing a -camel and straining at a gnat. (5) The Holy Quran, for the purpose of calculation, had divided a year into twelve months: Surely the number of months with Allah is twelve months by Allah's ordinance since the day when He created the heavens and the earth (9: 36). This natural division Bahaullah changed vindictively into nineteen months, and wrote in his law:
Jf )~.;;, ?
HThe number of months in the Book of Allah (i.e., Kitab al-Aqdas) is nineteen." This division which is neither in accerdance with the solar system nor with that of the moon, is incongruous and absurd. The Bahai month, according to this ingenious computation, will have 19 days only, and the five days that will, thus be left over, have not been taken into any consideration. Bahaullah's ruling on this point states:
J_,~.!.lI .J :i;-ll ~J~ ~J.:i. L.
"These days will not be counted in year .and months." What a perfect Arithmetic it is that the Bahai God Incarnate has conferred
upon the human race in supersession of the eimple, natural Quranic calculation. It is what Shakespeare has said "confusion worse confounded." (6) Usury is forbidden in the Law of Islam in very strict terms; for, it annihilates .all sympathetic affection and leads to the extreme of miserliness. It allows the rich to .grow richer by reducing the poor to still greater poverty. It is indeed a great social -evil. "Those who swallow usury", warned the Most High God in the Holy Quran (2 : 275), "cannot arise except as he arises whom the devil prostrates by his touch"; and again "0 you who believe, devour not usury, doubling and redoubling" (3: 129). But Europe and America, in the present age, have come to consider usury as a very profitable practice. It enhances one's wealth and riches without .any risk or effort. Trading and big-scale wars, they argue, cannot be carried on without the help of usury. Now the great God clothed in Bahaullahs flesh and skins realized the mistake which he had committed in interdicting usury and rectified it in his new law, proclaiming:
s ~~ ~
50 "Now he has usury just before." permitted the taking as he had forbidden of it
But the Western thinkers have now begun to realize the disastrous consequences of "swallowing usury", appearing in the form of cruel capitalism and the great wars which would not have been possible if the Quranic prohibition of usury had been in force in those countries. And if Bahaullah had been living at this time, he would have rectified his mistake a. second time, and withdrawn his permission. Instances can be multiplied to show that there is not a single commandment in the Law of Bahaullah that may be better than and superior to the Law of Islam from any point of view, social, moral and spiritual. Jesus, as reported in the sixteenth Chapter of the Gospel according to John, had foretold the advent of another Prophet after him, described as Paraclete: "Nevertheless I tell you the truth; it is expedient for you that I go not away, the Paraclete will not come unto you ..... and when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment" (verses 7 and 8). Paraclete is a Greek term. In the English translation of the Bible, it has been rendered as comforter, and
51 spirit of truth. But says the Encyclopaedia Biblica in this connection = There is no exact equivalent in English for the paraclete ; comforter, helper miss the legal sense, whilst advocate does not cover varied offices predicated in the Gospel of whic