proclamations and the words of his heralds may make known to his subjects his gracious edicts, and show them how merciful and how just he is: but, before these subjects can recognize and truly know him personally, they require to behold him and hear his voice. Even then their knowledge of their Sovereign will not be perfect, but in its own degree it will be real. So it is also with regard to the King of all Kings, the Lord of the Worlds, the Almighty Creator and Preserver of all things. His messengers (مُرْسَلوُنَ), who bring us His edicts and declare His Attributes, cannot reveal Him to His creatures in such a way as to enable them to attain to a real, personal acquaintance with Him who is invisible. Besides all that the Prophets can teach him, man needs a visible Manifestation of the Divine, a personal Manifestation (مَظْهَر) of God, a link with God, One who is Himself perfectly human and perfectly Divine, whom men can come to know as well as they know their own friends, or even better, and who can gain the love of their hearts, and thus lead them to serve God, not for the sake of reward, not through fear of punishment, but through true and sincere love, which is unselfish, and is therefore the highest of human attributes. The true Revelation will therefore tell men beforehand of this Manifestation, leading them before His appearance to expect Him, telling them by what signs to recognize Him, and after His Advent recording His words and works so clearly that in all after ages men may be able with the eye of faith to see Him reflected therein as in a mirror, and may thus come to know Him, and in Him to know God Most High.

That Revelation which fulfils all these six conditions has alone the right to be called God's True and Final Revelation to His creatures.

It is very possible that the Revelation which satisfies these six conditions may contain certain Divine Mysteries far beyond the compass and grasp of human reason, so that through his feeble and finite intellect

man may be unable to fathom their depth. For it is granted that the Creator's knowledge and wisdom are immeasurably greater and deeper than man's, who is earthborn and shortsighted, and his life but of yesterday. It has well been said

In¹ traversing the plain of the glory of God
The steed of man's thought e'er grows weary and lame:
In the ocean of Union with God the Most High
All thought of our knowledge sinks covered with shame.

How then can man's intellect become acquainted with the Essence of His Nature (كُنْةُ ذاتِهِ تعالى)? And as man cannot fully understand his own finite nature, and cannot explain how the eye sees and the ear hears, or rather how by means of these material instruments his inner self, which is immaterial, is brought into contact with the visible and material things which surround him, how then can he understand all the mysteries of the Nature of the Infinite God, who is Invisible? Moreover, it is possible that in the Nature of God there may exist Attributes so lofty that among created beings there may be none possessed of any attributes at all similar to them. How then can man by his reason discover that God possesses only such and such Attributes, and that He cannot possess any other good and perfect Attributes? How can anyone dare to set bounds to Him who is Infinite and Incomprehensible? A man who does this really claims Deity for himself. Of those Attributes only which are in themselves base and evil, and contrary to the Moral Law written in our hearts (which law is the reflexion of God's Nature in the mirror of our spirit), can we say with certainty that they do not exist in God. Thus if a book which claims to be a Divine Revelation states that God is possessed of evil attributes, then we declare that such a book cannot be Divinely inspired.