Early Writings — Page 40
40 THE [A Reply from the Pundit] Respected Mirza Sahib, I am in receipt of the reply you wrote to me in the fifth month of the current year. I am extremely saddened to know that you have not been satisfied by what I had written in my reply to you regarding the nature of revelation. My regret grows even more when I see that you have not put forward any clear and logical rea- son for your dissatisfaction with what I had written to you. This shows that in reading and understanding my response you have not reflected and contemplated fully. Then, another interesting aspect in your reply is that you do not appear consistent in your own point of view. In the first place, you sought to prove the need for revelation by arguing that since the human intellect is unable to find truth on its own, and since it is prone to error in its investigations; therefore, it is necessary for man to receive revelation from God. When I proved that your argument regarding this 'need' was based on a mere assumption, and when I clearly demonstrated that divine wisdom does not acknowledge this 'need to be a genuine one, you turned away from your initial stance and adopted a new one. Instead of either acknowledging the soundness of what I had written to you or then presenting a reasonable argument if you had any objection, confused the discussion with the issue of salvation. In other words, you put aside the actual subject of debate, which is the nature of revelation, and have begun to discuss the issue of salva- tion. Having done so, you have now made a new claim and have begun a completely new discussion. And then the real marvel is that towards the end of your letter you have written: you