This point is the beginning of the year and the end of the past year. So you see it is the beginning and at the same time it is the end of all past and coming years, for it has no beginning nor ending. It was and shall be a beginning which has no beginning and an end which has no ending. This is a scientific fact, practiced every day from 12 o'clock at noon until 12 o'clock next noon. All planets, suns, moons, and stars of the universe continually revolve on their orbits from a fixed point which is a beginning having no beginning to an end having no ending. This scientific and practicable fact embraces all material substances in their various changes, modifications, and reconstructions.

For instance, take an iron atom which becomes a part of the sap of an apple tree, then a part of a ripe apple, which is eaten and becomes part of a man's body which died, and said iron atom returns into the mineral kingdom from which it started. That same atom sooner or later will undergo the same aforementioned process in its changes, modifications and reconstructions; and then it will return again to the mineral kingdom from which it

came.

The creation reflects the nature and the attributes of the Creator. He is the Causer and the Center point from which everything was caused since the beginning which has no beginning until the end which has no ending. Indeed, God, Almighty is the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." He created the universe and devised it in such wise as to be a finger-post directing us to know Him through His powers, attributes, and manifestations.

Also intelligent essences or rather souls go and return through their process of development and evolution according to the same law which governs the material.

Dr. Wilson mocked at the knowledge of Beha 'U'llah in science. On page 48, he said: "His (Beha's) science decides the purity of water by three points-colour, taste and smell'-but knows nothing of analysis." Should Dr. Wilson ponder over that which Beha 'U'llah uttered at the end of the above mentioned paragraph, and comprehend the depths of his knowledge in chemistry and science, he (Dr. Wilson) will discover his error and regret what he stated and censured. The end of said paragraph is: "And that which is existing was produced by the heat which emanated from the mixture of the modifier and the modified, which is the same one, yet, it is something else."

CHAPTER X.

THE HEREAFTER.

The statements concerning the Behai teachings on personal immortality, hereafter, heaven and hell, are muddled and indistinct like all the accusations and attacks of Dr. Wilson. In order to make it clear and comprehensible, some of Beha 'U'llah's revelations regarding these subjects are herein inserted. Likewise my views on personal immortality are given. Dr. Wilson wrote on p. 112, as follows:

"As to the doctrine of personal immortality, there has been much confusion of thought. Some have understood the doctrine of 'rijat' or "Return" as teaching transmigration of souls. Others have understood their allegorizing about heaven as a rejection of the future life. Others, as Phelps, affirm the absorption of the soul in the Infinite. My language teacher in Persian, a fervent Behai, said: 'We believe in a future state so unthinkably ecstatic that if its joys were now revealed to men, they would commit suicide to hasten their entrance into it.' Beha 'U'llah wrote a "Tablet of the Spiritual World," of which it is said: 'All who read it are filled with an anxious desire to leave this world and enter the next condition, so wonderful are the glories of the spiritual kingdom. In

Persia one man who read the tablet killed himself. He could not wait for the happiness it promised him. Another, a youth of Ispahan, could not stand it and lost his reason.'

"Mrs. Grundy and Mr. Phelps understood Abdul Baha to teach the annihilation of the wicked, but he denied this and affirms their conscious existence. Heaven and hell are affirmed in some places, denied in others."

The above mentioned muddled and false accusations and misrepresentations concerning the teachings of the Behai religion as to personal immortality and the transmigration of souls, etc., etc., are marked with a veil of injustice which is pulled to pieces by the following utterances of Beha 'U'llah.

...

In a tablet revealed for Abdul-Wah-hab, Beha taught personal immortality, hereafter, and an unchangeable spiritual body, he said: "Concerning the immortality of the soul, this Oppressed One beareth witness that it is immortal.” . . . “It "It shall exist eternally, inasmuch as the Kingdom of God, His Authority, His Might and His Power are eternal." "After the ascension she cometh to the Presence of God clothed with a garment suited for eternal life and fitted for those realms. This immortality of the soul is in time and not everlasting self-existent, because, it was preceded by a cause. The everlasting self-existent is not preceded by a cause, therefore, it belongs only to God, glory be to Him. Blessed are those who know."

...

In regard to the condition in heaven Beha 'U'llah said: "Blessed is the soul which leaves the body purified from the misdeeds of the world. It shall