Baha-'ullah may no doubt be invoked on the other side. This is the absolutely correct statement of his son Abdul Baha. 'He (Baha-'ullah) entered into a Covenant and Testament with the people. He appointed a Centre of the Covenant, He wrote with his own pen … appointing him the Expounder of the Book.' [Footnote: Star of the West, 1913, p. 238.] But Baha-'ullah is as little to be followed on questions of philology as Jesus Christ, who is not a manifester of science but of heavenly lore. The question of Sinlessness I postpone.
GREAT MANIFESTATION; WHEN?
I do not myself think that the interval of nineteen years for the Great Manifestation was meant by the Bāb to be taken literally. The number 19 may be merely a conventional sacred number and have no historical significance. I am therefore not to be shaken by a reference to these words of the Bāb, quoted in substance by Mirza Abu'l Fazl, that after nine years all good will come to his followers, or by the Mirza's comment that it was nine years after the Bāb's Declaration that Baha-'ullah gathered together the Bābīs at Baghdad, and began to teach them, and that at the end of the nineteenth year from the Declaration of the Bāb, Baha-'ullah declared his Manifestation.
Another difficulty arises. The Bāb does not always say the same thing. There are passages of the Persian Bayan which imply an interval between his own theophany and the next parallel to that which separated his own theophany from Muḥammad's. He says, for instance, in Waḥid II. Bāb 17, according to Professor Browne,
'If he [whom God shall manifest] shall appear in the number of Ghiyath (1511) and all shall enter in, not one shall remain in the Fire. If He tarry [until the number of] Mustaghath (2001), all shall enter in, not one shall remain in the Fire.' [Footnote: _History of the Bābīs, edited by E. G. Browne; Introd. p. xxvi. Traveller's Narrative (Browne), Introd. p. xvii. ]
I quote next from Waḥid III. Bāb 15:—
'None knoweth [the time of] the Manifestation save God: whenever it takes place, all must believe and must render thanks to God, although it is hoped of His Grace that He will come ere [the number of] Mustaghath, and will raise up the Word of God on his part. And the Proof is only a sign [or verse], and His very Existence proves Him, since all also is known by Him, while He cannot be known by what is below Him. Glorious is God above that which they ascribe to Him.' [Footnote: History of the Bābīs, Introd. p. xxx.]
Elsewhere (vii. 9), we are told vaguely that the Advent of the Promised One will be sudden, like that of the Point or Bāb (iv. 10); it is an element of the great Oriental myth of the winding-up of the old cycle and the opening of a new. [Footnote: Cheyne, Mines of Isaiah Re-explored, Index, 'Myth.']
A Bahai scholar furnishes me with another passage—
'God knoweth in what age He will manifest him. But from the springing (beginning) of the manifestation to its head (perfection) are nineteen years.' [Footnote: Bayan, Waḥid, III., chap. iii.]