There is another aspect of religion, which is what is forbidden and what is allowed, the moral and ethical conception. One religion says, this is forbidden and this is allowed; another religion says another thing and another religion still another thing. But what is this law? Where does it come from? This law comes from the conception of the Prophets or law-givers which they have gotten from the need of the community. And therefore, perhaps, one law-giver was born in Syria, another in Arabia, another in India, another in China, and each one saw a different need for the people of that time.

And therefore if we gather together the laws the religious inspirers have given, they naturally will differ if we dispute over them, saying that my religion is better and yours is worse because its laws are better and yours are worse. It is a foolish thing to do. If one nation says, "Our law is better than your law and your law is worse than ours," there is no meaning in it, because nations make their laws according to their needs. The needs of every race and community and nation, sometimes, are different.

Nevertheless, the fundamental principle is one and the same. To have consideration for another is the root of all the religious laws. To feel, "I am in the same position as another; if I act unjustly to another, the other is also entitled to act unjustly to me. I am exposed to the same thing." When this thought is awakened in man and sympathy is awakened for his fellow men, he need not trouble and argue and discuss about the different laws.

Friends, love is a great inspirer of law, and the one who has not love, he may read a thousand books of law, he will always accuse others of their faults and he will never know his own faults. But if love has wakened in your heart, then you do not need to study law, for you know the best law, for all law has come from love and still love stands above law.

People say that there will be justice in the hereafter and we shall all have to show the accounts of our deeds. In the first place, we ourselves do not know the account of our deeds. Besides, if God is so exacting as to ask you of every little evil everyone has committed, then God must be worse than man, because even a fine man overlooks his friend's faults, a kind man forgives a person's faults. If God is so exacting as that, He must be an autocratic God. It is not true; God is not Law, God is Love. Law is the law of nature, but God's Being is not Law, God's Being is Love. And therefore the right conception of life and insight into right and wrong, good and bad, is not learned and taught by book-study. As the Sufi says: all virtues manifest by themselves once the heart is wakened to love and kindness.