Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 11
11 plagiarism would say that the object of Jesus' mission was not to teach morality but to offer his blood as an atonement for the im- moralities of the world and to be subjected to curse. This is however a serious error into which they have fallen. They think that the Law was consumated in th Mosaic Law and that there- fore, the Law revealed in the Quran was not needed. The truth is that since men are apt to forget and be remiss in acting upon moral injunctions which are revealed to them through a prophet, a new prophet is required after some time to re-establish the Bailie principles and make men act upon them. Every new age stands in need of new reformer and a new magnetiser. But the Quran was nofc needed only to satisfy these two needs; it was also needed to bring the teachings of the earlier books to comple- tion and perfection. To take one instance only, the Mosaic Law laid stress upon vengeance only in all cases, while Jesus taught of unconditional forbearance and non-resistance. Both these teachings were required by the special circumstances of the time when they were taught but being onesided they could not furnish rules for all ages. As the teaching of the extreme vengeance of Mosaic Law was abrogated by the Gospel, the Gospel-teaching of extreme forbearance itself required to be modified. Hence the need of the Holy Quran which teaches the middle path iri which the punishment of the offender or forbearance ought to be resorted to as the occasion requires. Thus both the Mosaic Law and the Gospels take the extreme course while the Quran teaches the golden mean in all cases. The essence of the teaching in all three books is the same, but the first two laid stress only upon once side of the question owing to the peculiar requirements of the time and the circumstances when and under which they were revealed, and the third, meant as it was for the whole future, led men into the mean path to which they could