Page 115 - Demo

1. In the first place, we must well understand that the111Messenger is a man, a creature of human body and soul, and that he is not an Angel or a superhuman being. In the second place, we should open our eyes of wisdom and judgment to see that he is not despatched to prepare the way before another Messenger called “Adon” and the “Messenger of the Promise,” but he is commissioned to found and establish a straight, safe, and good Religion. He is commissioned to remove all the obstacles in the way between God and his creatures; and to fill up all the gaps and chasms in this grand path, so that it may be smooth, easy to walk on, well lighted, and protected from all danger. The Hebrew phrase, “u pinna derekh,” means to say that the Messenger “will put straight and clear the worship or the religion.” The verb “dārākh” of the same root as the Arabic “dărăka,” means “to walk, reach and comprehend;” and the substantive “derekh” signifies, “road, way, step,” and metaphorically “worship and religion.” It is used in this spiritual sense all through the Psalms and the Prophets. Surely this high Messenger of God was not coming to repair or reform a way, a religion for the benefit of a handful of Jews, but to establish a universal and an unchangeable religion for all men.Though the Jewish religion inculcates the existence of one true God, still their conception of Him as a national Deity of Israel, their priesthood, sacrificial rites and ceremonies, and then the non-existence of any positive articles of belief in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the eternal life in heaven or hell, and many other deficient points, make it absolutely unfit and insufficient for the peoples of diverse languages, races, climates, temperaments, and habits. As regards Christianity, it, with its meaningless seven sacraments, its beliefs in original sin, the incarnation of a god -unknown to all previous religious and mythological literature- and in a trinity of individual gods, and finally because it does not possess a single line