Evangelist would be easier to defend if he held this theory. The
Johannine Jesus ought to have belonged to a different aeon.


ANOTHER IMAGE OF GOD

Well, then, it is reasonable to turn for guidance and help to the
East. There was living quite lately a human being of such consummate
excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even
to identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead. Let us admit,
such persons say, that Jesus was the very image of God. But he lived
for his own age and his own people; the Jesus of the critics has but
little to say, and no redemptive virtue issues from him to us. But the
'Blessed Perfection,' as Baha'ullah used to be called, lives for our
age, and offers his spiritual feast to men of all peoples. His story,
too, is liable to no diminution at the hands of the critics, simply
because the facts of his life are certain. He has now passed from
sight, but he is still in the ideal world, a true image of God and a
true lover of man, and helps forward the reform of all those manifold
abuses which hinder the firm establishment of the kingdom of God. I
shall return to this presently. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that
though I entertain the highest reverence and love for Baha'ullah's
son, Abdul Baha, whom I regard as a Mahatma--'a great-souled one'--and
look up to as one of the highest examples in the spiritual firmament,
I hold no brief for the Bahai community, and can be as impartial in
dealing with facts relating to the Bahais as with facts which happen
to concern my own beloved mother-church, the Church of England.

I shall first of all ask, how it came to pass that so many of us are
now seeking help and guidance from the East, some from India, some