A certain portion of a man's income must be devoted to charity. The administration of charitable funds, the provision for widows and for the sick and disabled, the education and care of orphans, will be arranged and managed by elected Councils.
THE NEW DISPENSATION
The contrast between the Old and the New is well exemplified in the contrasting lives of Rammohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, and Keshab Chandra Sen. As an Indian writer says: 'The sweep of the New Dispensation is broader than the Brahmo Samaj. The whole religious world is in the grasp of a great purpose which, in its fresh unfolding of the new age, we call the New Dispensation. The New Dispensation is not a local phenomenon; it is not confined to Calcutta or to India; our Brotherhood is but one body whose thought it functions to-day; it is not topographical, it is operative in all the world-religions.' [Footnote: Cp. Auguste Sabatier on the Religion of the Spirit, and Mozoomdar's work on the same subject.]
'No full account has yet been given to the New Brotherhood's work and experiences during that period. Men of various ranks came, drawn together by the magnetic personality of the man they loved, knowing he loved them all with a larger love; his leadership was one of love, and they caught the contagion of his conviction…. And so, if I were to write at length, I could cite one illustration after another of transformed lives—lives charged with a new spirit shown in the work achieved, the sufferings borne, the persecutions accepted, deep spiritual gladness experienced in the midst of pain, the fellowship with God realized day after day' (Benoyendra Nath Sen, The Spirit of the New Dispensation). The test of a religion is its capacity for producing noble men and women.
MANIFESTATION
God Himself in His inmost essence cannot be either imagined or comprehended, cannot be named. But in some measure He can be known by His Manifestations, chief among whom is that Heavenly Being known variously as Michael, the Son of man, the Logos, and Sofia. These names are only concessions to the weakness of the people. This Heavenly Being is sometimes spoken of allusively as the Face or Name, the Gate and the Point (of Knowledge). See p. 174.
The Manifestations may also be called Manifesters or Revealers. They make God known to the human folk so far as this can be done by Mirrors, and especially (as Tagore has most beautifully shown) in His inexhaustible love. They need not have the learning of the schools. They would mistake their office if they ever interfered with discoveries or problems of criticism or of science.
The Bāb announced that he himself owed nothing to any earthly teacher. A heavenly teacher, however, if he touched the subject, would surely have taught the Bāb better Arabic. It is a psychological problem how the Bāb can lay so much stress on his 'signs' (ayât) or verses as decisive of the claims of a prophet. One is tempted to surmise that in the Bāb's Arabic work there has been collaboration.
What constitutes 'signs' or verses? Prof. Browne gives this answer: [Footnote: E. G. Browne, JRAS, 1889, p. 155.] 'Eloquence of diction, rapidity of utterance, knowledge unacquired by study, claim to divine origin, power to affect and control the minds of men.' I do not myself see how the possession of an Arabic which some people think very poor and others put down to the help of an amanuensis, can be brought within the range of Messianic lore. It is spiritual truth that we look for from the Bāb. Secular wisdom, including the knowledge of languages, we turn over to the company of trained scholars.
Spiritual truth, then, is the domain of the prophets of Bahaism. A prophet who steps aside from the region in which he is at home is fallible like other men. Even in the sphere of exposition of sacred texts the greatest of prophets is liable to err. In this way I am bound to say that Baha-'ullah himself has made mistakes, and can we be surprised that the almost equally venerated Abdul Baha has made many slips? It is necessary to make this pronouncement, lest possible friends should be converted into seeming enemies. The claim of infallibility has done harm enough already in the Roman Church!