# The Religion of the Bab

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Robert E. Speer, The Religion of the Bab, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> MISSIONS AND
> MODERN HISTORY
> 
> A Study of the Missionary Aspects of Some
> Great Movements of the Nineteenth Century
> 
> By
> ROBERT E. SPEER
> 
> Secretary of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian
> Church in the United States of America.
> 
> In two volumes
> 
> VOL. I
> 
> 1904
> 
> III
> 
> THE RELIGION OF THE BAB
> 
> IT is a difficult task to form a just judgment of contemporaneous events. Time is required
> in the study of history to supply perspective, to reveal relationships and to disclose the real
> dimensions alike of movements and of men. It is not surprising, accordingly, that the
> movement to be discussed in this chapter is practically unknown, and that though it has
> shaped the lives of thousands and been sobered by many martyrdoms it has found no place
> as yet in our interest. Perhaps within the past three years, however, many who had never
> heard of the religion of the Bab in Persia, have at least been made aware of the existence of
> such a faith somewhere in the world, by reports of its spread in our own land, and have
> come thus, because it interested a few hundred of our own people, to take an interest in a
> movement which had already shaken a whole nation, and was slowly undermining there
> one branch of the most bitter and fanatical foe which Christianity confronts. Babism should
> be familiar to us because it is the chief concern in the lives of increasing multitudes in
> Persia. It is one of the most remarkable movements of our day, beside, because its object,
> however concealed and even unrecognized by Babis themselves, is “nothing less than the
> complete overthrow of Islam and the abrogation of its ordinances.”1 The external attacks on
> Islam, both Sunni and Shiah, have as yet accomplished but a little part of what they desire.
> Babism is a convulsive upheaval from within the Shiah wing of the faith.2
> 
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 187.
> The Rev. P. Z. Easton, formerly of Tabriz, takes a less unfavourable view of the Bab and his
> religion than is set forth in this chapter. He kindly writes in comment:
> "All that is essential in Babism is old. Browne says that 'Persia is, and always has been, a very
> hotbed of systems from the time of Manes and Mazdak in the old Sassanian days, down to the
> present age, which has brought into being the Babis and the Sheikhies' (A Year Among the Persians,
> p. 122). We may go still further back to the Avesta and to those pre-Zoroastrian sages, out of which
> the Yashts are formed. Outside of a certain admixture of Occidental science and philanthropy,
> introduced largely for foreign consumption and in order to give an up to date stamp or colouring to
> the movement, there is scarcely anything that distinguishes Babism from its predecessors. The
> subject is one that is inextricably interwoven with the whole course of Persian history in all its
> departments, political, religious, social and philosophical. The materials are exceedingly rich and
> abundant, and time has pronounced its verdict again and again in the most unmistakable manner. So
> deep a hold have the ideas, which lie at the foundation of Babism and similar sects, taken of the
> minds and hearts of the people, that it may be said that as every American is a possible president, so
> every Persian is a possible murshid. For every sect that comes out to the light of day and makes its
> appearance on the page of history, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of embryo sects, of
> whose existence no one knows outside of a very limited circle."
> He adds that Babism is not content with the overthrow of Islam:
> "More than this. It is to be classed with the Assassins which Von Hammer calls 'the union of
> impostors and dupes which, under the mask of a more austere creed and severer morals,
> undermined all religion and morality' (Von Hammer, History of the Assassins, p. 2). 'To believe
> nothing and to dare all, was, in two words, the sum of this system, which annihilated every
> principle of religion and morality, and had no other object than to execute ambitious designs with
> suitable ministers, who, daring all and honouring nothing, since they consider everything a cheat
> and nothing forbidden, are the best tools of an infernal policy. A system, which, with no other aim
> than the gratification of an insatiable lust of dominion, instead of seeking the highest of human
> objects, precipitates itself into the abyss, and mangling itself, is buried amidst the ruins of thrones
> and altars, the horrors of anarchy, the wreck of national happiness, and the universal execration of
> mankind, (Ibid, pp. 36, 37).
> “At length, with fiendish laugh, like that which broke
> From Iblis at the Fall of Man, he spoke;
> ‘Yes, ye vile race, for hell's amusement given,
> Too mean for earth, yet claiming kin with heaven:
> God's images, forsooth! such Gods as he,
> Whom India serves, the monkey deity;
> Ye creatures of a breath, proud things of clay,
> To whom if Lucifer, as grandams say,
> Refused, though at the forfeit of heaven's light,
> To bend in worship, Lucifer was light!
> Soon shall I plant this foot upon the neck
> Of your foul race, and without fear or check,
> Luxuriating in hate, avenge my shame,
> My deep-felt, long-nurst loathing of man's name.
> Soon at the head of myriads, blind and fierce,
> As hooded falcons, through the universe,
> I'll sweep my darkening, desolating way,
> Weak man my instrument, curst man my prey!'
> — Mokanna's soliloquy in Lalla Rookh.
> [page 122]
> 
> Mirza Ali Mohammed, later called the Bab, the founder of this religion, was born at
> Shiraz, in southern Persia, on October 9, 1820. He was a Sayid, or descendant of
> Mohammed. His father, who was a grocer, died while his son was yet a lad, and the boy
> was placed
> 
> [page 123]
> 
> under the care of an uncle, and at the age of fifteen was sent to Bushire, to help in his
> uncle’s business, and subsequently he engaged in business alone. “He was noted for
> godliness, devoutness, virtue and piety,” says one of the Babi books, “and was regarded in
> the sight of men as so characterized.”3 An earlier book, however, is not content with this
> temperate statement, but deals in more remarkable evidences of his exceptional character.
> Thus the Tarikh-I-Jadid or New History, states:
> 
> “At the moment of his birth he exclaimed ‘The kingdom is God’s!’ And in his boyhood
> they sent him to be taught his lessons by Sheikh Alid, an accomplished scholar and a godly
> man, who was one of the disciples of Sheikh Ahmad of Ahsa, and subsequently became an
> ardent believer in His Holiness. Amongst other anecdotes of the Bab’s boyhood which he
> used to relate, one was as follows: The first day that they brought him to me at school, I
> wrote down the alphabet for him to learn, as is customary with children. After a while I
> went out on business. On my return I heard, as I approached the room, some one reading
> the Koran in a sweet and plaintive voice. Filled with astonishment, I entered the room and
> inquired who had been reading the Koran. The other children answered, pointing to His
> Holiness, ‘He was.’ ‘Have you read the Koran’ I asked. He was silent. ‘It is best for you to
> read Persian books,’ said I, putting the Hakku’l-Yakin before him, ‘read from this.’ At
> whatever page I opened it I saw that he could read it easily. ‘You have read Persian,’ I said.
> ‘Come read some Arabic, that will be better.’ So saying, I placed before him the Sharh-i-
> amthila. When I began to explain the meaning of the Bismi’llah to the pupils in the
> customary manner, he asked, ‘Why does the word Rahman in-
> 
> [page 124]
> 
> "'Its tone (Wady Mirza Jani's History) towards all beyond the pale of the church, and more
> especially towards the Shah of Persia, and his Government, was irreconcilably hostile, (Tarikh I
> Jadid, xxviii).”
> With reference to the alleged wonders in connection with Babism, Mr. Easton says:
> “Persian flattery, Persian imagination and Persian falsehood easily account for the wonders
> mentioned. I was present one day at the Foreign Agent’s office in Tabriz, when some farashes, who
> had been sent to bring certain individuals, came back and reported that a mob of 500 people had
> resisted them. I looked into the matter and found that the 500 were five.”
> Of this last view of Mr. Easton’s, Dr. George W. Holmes, who knows Babism as well as any
> man, says — “This view is, I believe a correct one, except that it takes no account of the personality
> of Beha Ullah. What Luther, Cromwell, Washington or Lincoln were to the cause each of these men
> represented, the person of Beha Ullah is to the religion which bears his name.
> “With regard to the alleged wonders, it must be borne in mind that the Persians of to-day are
> ready to believe the most incredible reports of miraculous performances by dead or living saints,
> and it is really to the credit of Behaism that it has so few alleged miracles to offer, when it would be
> so easy to impose a much larger number on the credulity of its votaries.”
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 2.
> clude both believers and infidels, while the word Rahim applies only to believers?’‘ I
> replied, ‘Wise men have a rule to the effect that extension of form implies extension of
> meaning, and Rahman contains one letter more than Rahim.’ He answered, ‘Either their
> rule is a mistake or else that tradition which you refer to Ali is a lie.’ ‘What tradition?’ I
> asked. ‘The tradition,’ replied he, ‘which declares that King of Holiness to have said —
> “The meanings of all the Sacred Books are in the Koran, and the meanings of the whole
> Suratu’l Fatiha are in the Bismi’llah, and the whole meaning of the Bismi’llah is in the
> initial letter B, and the meaning of the B is in the point under the B, and the point is
> inexplicable.”’ On hearing him reason thus subtilly, I was speechless with amazement, and
> led him back to his home. His venerable grandmother came to the door. I said to her, ‘I
> cannot undertake the instruction of this young gentleman,’ and told her all that had passed.
> Addressing him, she said, ‘Will you not cease to speak after this fashion? What business
> have you with such matters? Go and learn your lessons.’ ‘Very well,’ he answered, and
> came and began to learn his lessons like the other boys. He even began with the alphabet,
> though I urged him not to do so. One day I saw him talking in a whisper to the boy who sat
> next him, but when I would have listened, he was silent. Then I pretended to pay no heed to
> what he was saying, though in reality I listened attentively, and I heard him say to the other
> boy, ‘I am so light that, if I liked, I could fly up beyond the Throne (i.e., the throne of God,
> situated above the highest heaven); would you like me to go?’ So saying, he made a
> movement from the ground. As he said, ‘Would you like me to go?’ and made this
> movement, I smiled in wonder and bewilderment, and as I did so, he suddenly ceased
> speaking. So likewise, before he had begun to practice writing, I observed that every day he
> used to bring with him a pen-case, and engage in writing something. I thought to myself,
> ‘He sees the other boys writing, and wishing to write too, draws lines like them and
> scribbles on the paper.’ For several days he continued to act thus, until one day I took the
> paper from him to see what he was doing. On glancing at it I saw that he had actually
> written something. Wondering how, without having practiced he could write, I proceeded
> to examine what he had written, and found it to be a dissertation on the mystery and
> knowledge of the Divine Unity, written in the finest and most eloquent style, and so
> profound that the keenest intellect would fail to penetrate its whole meaning. . . . Thus even
> in his childhood signs of the Bab’s holiness, majesty and lofty rank were apparent, so that
> for instance, as a boy he used to predict of pregnant women whether they would bring forth
> a male or a female infant, besides foretelling many chance occurrences, such as earthquakes
> and the ruin of certain places as they actually took place.”4
> 
> It is not strange that such a youth as this was unable to remain contented in business,
> and before he was twenty-three he journeyed
> 
> [page 125]
> 
> from Bushire to Kerbela, one of the great shrines of the Persian Mohammedans, and studied
> there under Haji Sayid Kazim, one of the great teachers of the Sheikhie sect, and the
> immediate and only successor to its founder Sheikh Ahmad. To understand the origin of the
> Babi movement, its growth and its significance, it is necessary to recall here the religious
> situation in Persia out of which Babism sprang, and to which it ministers.
> The Persian Mohammedans are Shiahs, while the rest of the Mohammedan world
> belongs to the orthodox party called the Sunnis. The enmity between the two sections of the
> Moslem world is implacable. It arose with the murder of Ali, the fourth caliph, and his two
> sons, the Shiahs holding that the supreme authority in Islam belongs to Ali and his
> descendants, and denying the legitimacy of the succession of caliphs recognized by the
> Sunnis, and, of course, denying the title of the Sultan as head of the Moslem Church. But in
> another direction the chief point of difference is found — the Shiah doctrine of the Imam,
> 
> Browne, The New History of the Bab, pp. 263ff.
> “The Imam is the successor of the Prophet, adorned with all the qualities which he
> possessed.”5 Ali was the first Imam, and there have been, according to the Imamites, eleven
> successors. “They are believed to be immaculate, infallible and perfect guides to men. . . .
> As mediums between God and man, they hold a far higher position than the prophets, for
> ‘the grace of God without their intervention reaches to no created being.’”6 The Isma’ilians
> are the other sect of the Shiahs, who differ from the Imamites as to the number but not the
> character of the Imams, and both sects agree that “there never could be a time when there
> should be no Imam. ‘The earth is never without a living Imam though concealed.’ ‘He who
> dies without knowing the Imam, or who is not his disciple, dies ignorant.’”7
> The last of the Imams according to the orthodox Shiahs, was Abul Kazim (Al-Mahdi),
> who disappeared just one thousand years ago. The Shiahs believe that in due time he will
> reappear, that Jesus Himself will be his forerunner, that wrong and wretchedness will then
> be destroyed, and the Shiah millennium introduced. In the meantime the Imam Mahdi is
> “invisible and inaccessible to the great mass of his followers.” At first, intercourse between
> the unseen Imam and
> 
> [page 126]
> 
> his people was maintained through a few select intermediaries called Babs or “Gates.” This
> period lasting sixty-nine years, is called the “Lesser Occultation.” When the last, the fourth
> of these Gates, came to die, he was entreated to nominate a successor, as the earlier Gates
> had done, but refused, saying, “God hath a purpose which He will accomplish.” The
> dreaded catastrophe had come, and intercourse with the Imam was cut off. The dark
> centuries which followed have been called the “Greater Occultation.” The orthodox Shiahs
> still sit in this darkness. How hopeless it is, in the absence of any Gate to God, one of the
> great Babi books, the Beyan, declares: “For God hath associated refuge in Himself with
> refuge in His Apostle, and refuge in His Apostle with refuge in His Imams, and refuge in
> the Imams with refuge in the Gates of the Imams. For refuge in the Apostle is the same as
> refuge with God, and refuge in the Imams the same as refuge in the Apostle, and refuge in
> the Gates is identical with refuge in the Imams.”
> Devout souls could not be content to sit in such darkness without great longings of
> heart after fellowship with the living but unseen guide. And his visit to Kerbela brought
> Mirza Ali Mohammed, a young man of spiritual earnestness and aspiration himself into
> contact with one of the strongest impulses the Shiahs had yet felt towards a rediscovery of
> the hidden Imam, and communion with him by some new gate of access. This impulse
> sprang from Sheikh Ahmad of Ahsa, one of whose scholars was Mirza Ali’s teacher, whose
> testimony to the strange character of his pupil has been quoted, and to whose immediate
> successor Mirza Ali came to study at Kerbela. Sheikh Ahmad had himself nominated Haji
> Sayid Kazim as his successor. The doctrines of the Sheikhies, as Ahmad’s followers were
> called, differed from those of orthodox Shiahism. The latter holds that the essential
> principles, or the “Supports” of religion are five, (1) Belief in the Unity of God, (2) Belief
> in the Justice of God, (3) Belief in the Prophethood, (4) Belief in the Imamate, (5) Belief in
> the Resurrection. Of these the Sheikhies accepted the first, third and fourth, and added to
> these three what they called the “Fourth Support,” viz., “That there must always be
> amongst the Shiahs some one perfect man, capable of serving as a channel of grace
> between the absent Imam and his Church.” The Sheikhies were at first and are now
> 
> [page 127]
> 
> Sell, The Faith of Islam, p. 78.
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 3.
> Ibid, p. 4.
> viewed with suspicion by the orthodox Shiahs, although there must be many thousands of
> them scattered through Persia.8
> Into this school of thought the young inquirer from Bushire came, and learned in it that
> there ought to be somewhere the “Fourth Support” of faithful hearts, the Gate of God. In a
> measure, doubtless, Sheikh Ahmad and Haji Sayid Kazim met this want in their disciples;
> but when the latter came to die he named no successor, declaring that the time was near
> when the promised Support would come, the “Master of the Dispensation,” asserting that
> he would be a youth, and that he would not be versed in the learning of men, and as the end
> drew near he would say, “I see him as the rising sun,” “The time of my sojourn in the world
> has come to an end, and this is my last journey. Why are ye grieved and troubled because of
> my death? Do ye not then desire that I should go and the True One should appear?”9
> Mirza Ali Mohammed did not study long under the Sheikhie leader at Kerbela, and had
> returned to Shiraz before his death. There one of his former fellow-students named Mollah
> Hosayn, who had been greatly troubled after Sayid Kazim’s death, came to visit him. “As I
> approached the door,” said he, “I desired inwardly to tarry there some days. So I knocked at
> the door. Before he had opened it or seen me, I heard his voice exclaiming, ‘Is it you,
> Mollah Hosayn?’” As the friends sat together and talked over the last words of their revered
> teacher and the general expectation of the Sheikhies, Mirza Ali Mohammed suddenly
> astonished his companion by declaring himself to be the promised guide, the way for men
> to intercourse with Imam Mahdi, the unseen. Mollah Hosayn was incredulous, but as day
> after day they talked together, Hosayn’s faith grew, until at last he says, “I looked up and
> saw him sitting in a most dignified and majestic attitude, the left hand laid on the left knee,
> and the right hand over it; and even as I looked, he began to utter most wondrous verses
> containing answers to every thought which passed through my mind, until seventy or eighty
> verses had been revealed.” Then Hosayn rose to flee in terror, but Mirza Ali restrained him,
> persuaded his mind, won his heart, and then sent him out, the first missionary of the new
> faith. The “Proof,” the
> 
> [page 128]
> 
> “True One,” the “Son of Truth,” the “Illuminated One had come. The date of the
> Manifestation and of the first disciple’s conversion was May 23, 1844, almost exactly 1,000
> years after the end of the Lesser Occultation.
> The new teaching at once spread over Persia. The Sheikhies were split by it, one
> faction going over bodily to Mirza Ali Mohammed, the New Gate or Bab, the religion
> thence deriving its name. Orthodox Shiahs who believed that the Bab’s teaching was a
> fulfillment of the Koran, mystics to whom the character of the new religion was quite
> congenial, Persian pantheists, of whom there are legion, some rejoicing in the destruction of
> morality, which pantheism involves, and men and women who believed the time had come
> for some reforms which Babism rendered possible, also embraced the new faith; and
> undoubtedly here and there some hearts must have turned to it in the hope that at last the
> irrepressible thirst of the human soul was to be satisfied; for what Mirza Ali Mohammed
> “intended by the term Bab,” as the Babi writings say, “was this, that he was the channel of
> grace from some great Person still behind the veil of glory, who was the possessor of
> countless and boundless perfections, by whose will he moved, and to the hand of whose
> love he clung.”10 As the new religion spread it aroused the bitter opposition of the
> 
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 243f.
> Ibid, p. 239.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 3.
> ecclesiastics of the established Church, and the alarm of the Government. Just what the
> attitude of Babism was towards the Church and State will be seen presently. It is enough to
> say now that the Church had every reason for desiring to suppress it, and the State
> theoretically no ground for fear, but practically not a little, if Babism as it later developed,
> should prevail.11 The authority of the Mollahs
> 
> [page 129]
> 
> was sufficient, even though Church and State are separate in Persia, to control the action of
> the civil authorities, and these, on their side were terrified as all Moslem governments ever
> will be, at any evidence of free thought or liberal movement among the people. The Babis
> began at once, accordingly, to feel the enmity of the established order, and were driven in
> some places to organization for self-defence. Ultimately defeated they would accept the
> pledged word of the government troops only to be butchered mercilessly when they had
> given up their arms. Prince Mahdi Kuli Mirza gave assurances of safety to some Babis
> against whom he was arrayed, and on their surrender smeared 300 of them with naphtha
> and burned them alive.12 In 1850 and 1851 the Babis say “more than four thousand of their
> number were slain, and a great multitude of women and children left without protector or
> helper, distracted and confounded, were trodden down and destroyed.”13 During the war in
> Mazandaran, 1,500 Babis were slain. In 1850 seven martyrs were publicly beheaded in
> Teheran, among them the Bab’s uncle. They died with the utmost firmness, refusing to save
> their lives by any compromise, crying to the people who reviled them on their way to
> execution, “O people, it is for your awakening and your enlightenment that we have
> foregone life, warmth, wife and child, and have shut our eyes to the world and its citizens,
> that perchance ye may be warned and may escape from uncertainty and error, that ye may
> fall to making inquiry, that ye may recognize the Truth as is meet, and that ye may no
> longer be veiled therefrom.” Haji Mollah Isma’il when entreated to recant, drew himself up
> and said,
> 
> With reference to the relation of Babism to the State, the Rev. P. Z. Easton says that he believes it
> to be equally subversive of State and Church. “Babis follow in the footsteps of their predecessors.
> The first blood was shed by Babis, — Mollah Mohammed Taki, Kurratu’l-Ayn’s uncle,
> assassinated by Babis in 1848. The haughty tone in letter to Nasr-ed-Din on his accession to the
> throne broke out in open rebellion. Beha claimed the allegiance of all sovereigns, and placed
> himself outside of law by assassinating his enemies. His semi-captivity explains why he has not
> done more of this. As teachers and preachers of assassination, the Babis richly deserve all they have
> suffered. All past history goes to show that these pantheistic sects are far more merciless and
> sanguinary than orthodox Moslems.” I think this is too severe.
> The late Dr. Shedd, of Urumia, in a paper on Babism, read at the Hamadan Conference, in
> 1894, speaking of the doctrine of the Beyan, said:
> “There is the strongest assurance given of the ultimate triumph of the new faith. The empires
> of the future are to be Babi. Church and State are combined, and there is no place for unbelievers,
> but they are not placed under the hard condition imposed by Islam upon subject races. The central
> provinces, of the Utopia that floated before the Bab’s mind, are in Persia, and each province is
> given a peculiar place and name. It is a scheme that might satisfy the aspirations of socialism. There
> is a community of brotherly love; dignity combined with courtesy; leisure with labour; the
> cultivation of all useful arts and the prohibition of all that is useless; elevation of woman; general
> elementary education; provision for the poor; strict prohibition of mendicancy and tramps; children
> to be treated with gentleness, animals with kindness; no persecution for conscience’ sake. Such are
> the leading features of the Beyan.”
> “Behaism,” says Dr. Holmes, “certainly does contemplate an earthly dominion which shall
> eventually subvert all existing governments.”
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 22, quoting Mirza Kazim Beg.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 47f.
> [page 130]
> 
> “O zephyr! Say from me to Isma’il destined for sacrifice,
> To return alive from the street of the Friend is not the condition of love.”14
> 
> In 1852 an attempt on the Shah’s life made by some Babis was followed by terrible
> punishments. Twenty-eight victims were tortured and slain. Tow steeped in oil was inserted
> between their fingers and behind their shoulder blades, leaving portions hanging down
> which were lighted, and in this condition the unhappy wretches were led, as long as they
> could walk, through the principal streets of the capital. Some were sawn asunder. “Children
> and women with lighted candles stuck into the wounds were driven along by whips, and as
> they went along they sang, ‘We come from God, to Him we return.’ When the children
> expired, as many of them did, the executioners threw the corpses beneath the feet of their
> fathers. Life was offered if they would recant. An executioner told one father that if he did
> not recant, his two sons, the elder of whom was fourteen years old, should be slain upon his
> breast. The father, lying down, said that he was ready, and the elder boy claimed by right of
> birth to be the first to have his throat cut. At last night fell on a mass of shapeless flesh, and
> the dogs of the suburbs came in troops to the place.”15
> As might have been expected persecutions like these did not extinguish the flame of
> devotion to the Bab and his doctrine. They but intensified it. “To interfere with matters of
> the conscience,” says the Babi account of these days, “is simply to give them greater
> currency and strength; the more you strive to extinguish the more will the flame be kindled,
> more especially in matters of faith and religion, which spread and acquire influence so soon
> as blood is shed, and strongly affect men’s hearts.”16
> 
> [page 131]
> 
> And as Babism spread outwardly, so during these years of trial it developed its
> significance and claim. The Bab claimed at first to be simply the Gate to the hidden Imam.
> His earlier works looked forward to the “appearance of that Person,” and the Babis
> themselves, or the great majority of them, now say that he made no claim to the highest
> forms of revelation at that time. But soon he moved beyond this, and at Tabriz at his
> examination advanced the claim of Mahdihood.17 The assembled doctors demanded proof.
> 
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 213.
> Gobineau, Les Religions et les Philosophies dans I’Asie Centrale, quoted in Sell, The Bab and the
> Babis, p. 31. “It is well,” says Dr. Holmes, “while giving the Babi martyrs all the credit they
> deserve for their constancy in persecution, to remember that their claims to so far surpass
> Christianity in this respect, are without foundation; that not only when, like Behaism, Christianity
> was young and full of enthusiasm, it vastly outdid all that the Behais have claimed to do in
> furnishing martyrs for their faith, but that now, when, if the doctrines of Behaism are true,
> Christianity ought to be dying or dead, a mere relic of an obsolete phase of Behaism, it has utterly
> distanced Babism and repeated its earlier performance, in the hecatombs it has offered up in
> sacrifice for its faith. Instance Madagascar, Armenia, and China. The Behais are constantly boasting
> of their martyrdoms as a proof of their superiority to present day Christians.”
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 33.
> According to the Babi view deity is transferable, or it may be imparted gradually or even
> withdrawn from its one time possessor {New History, p. 336f.; Introd., p. xxiii). “Persia never lacks
> for an incarnation or two. One of these, of the Ali-Allahi sect, arrived in Tabriz some years ago, and
> made an appointment to visit me at three o’clock in the afternoon. My samovar was set to boiling,
> and I awaited his arrival. But he failed to keep his engagement because the governor-general, the
> Amir-i-Nizam, heard of his presence in the city, and this God fled, forgetting to send word that he
> “Without hesitation he recited texts saying, ‘This is the permanent and most mighty proof.’
> They criticised his grammar. He adduced arguments from the Koran, setting forth
> therefrom instances of similar infractions of the rules of grammar. So the Assembly broke
> up.”18 This type of evidence the Bab declared to be quite sufficient to accredit him. As he
> himself wrote in the Beyan, “If any one should reflect on the appearance of this Tree (i.e.,
> the Bab, who repeatedly calls himself the ‘Tree of Truth’) he will without doubt admit the
> loftiness of God’s religion. For in one from whose life only twenty-four years had passed,
> who was devoid of those sciences wherein all are learned, who now recites verses after
> such fashion without thought or hesitation, who in the course of five hours writes a
> thousand verses of supplication without pause of the pen, who produces commentaries and
> learned treatises of so high a degree of wisdom and understanding of the Divine Unity that
> doctors and philosophers confess their inability to comprehend those passages, there is no
> doubt that all this is from God.”19 But before he came to his end the Bab had gone even
> beyond this. He became an incarnation20 of the Primal Will, as
> 
> [page 132]
> 
> Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed had done in the Bab’s view. This Primal Will is a
> sort of intermediary between Man and God. “It can be known by man and It knows God;
> indeed in one sense It is identical with God, wherefore it is said in a tradition, ‘Whosoever
> visiteth Hosayn in his tomb is as one who hath visited God on His throne.’ So likewise the
> Bab said, ‘O Ali! None hath known God save I and thou; and none hath known me save
> God and thou; and none hath known thee save God and I.’”21
> The Bab did not escape or seek to escape from the lot of suffering which had fallen to
> his people. He was imprisoned and carried from place to place until on July 9, 1850, he was
> executed at Tabriz. The accounts of his friends are touched with unnecessary miracle. All
> the accounts have an Oriental tinge of hyperbole. Mirza Kazim Beg, who did not believe in
> him, draws a noble picture. “The Bab kept perfectly silent. His pale and beautiful face
> surrounded by a black beard, his white and delicate hands, his figure and distinguished
> manner, everything in his person and in his dress aroused the sympathy and compassion of
> the spectators.”22 The bodies of the Bab and Agha Mohammed Ali, who died with him,
> were cast out of the city to be devoured by dogs, but friends got possession of them,
> wrapped them in white silk, placed them in one coffin, and sent them to Teheran.23 So the
> Manifestation of God passed away willing to die, as he might have willed not to die, as his
> followers declared, leaving behind him the memory of a good life, even an unbeliever like
> Mirza Kazim Beg admitting, “He had some characteristics truly great and noble, and was a
> man of firm and settled convictions. His moral character was high, and he aimed in his
> preaching to bring all his countrymen into a community, united by intellectual and moral
> ties. He spoke with much earnestness on the necessity for a religious and social reform in
> 
> could not fulfill his engagement” {Missionary Review of the World, Feb., 1904, Art. “Babism: A
> Failure,” by the Rev. S. G. Wilson).
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 20.
> Ibid, p. 219.
> The pantheistic conception of the Incarnation is different from the Christian idea of the God-man.
> The Behai idea is that God is incarnate in the world all the time, but at the periods of the “Major
> Manifestation,” most of all, which wax and wane in cycles of not less than a thousand years, giving
> place to the “minor manifestation,” then the “occultations “ minor and major, etc.
> Browne, The New History of the Bab, p. 331.
> Quoted in Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 23.
> Browne, A Year Among the Persians, p. 64.
> Persia, the cessation of religious persecution and the amelioration of the lot of women. It is
> said that much of what he preached on these points had an esoteric meaning, known only to
> his disciples; but whether this is the case or not, the veneration they felt for him was
> profound, and there can be no doubt
> 
> [page 133]
> 
> that the teaching of the Bab was in favour of reform.”24 A Western writer goes even further
> and says: “His wonderful life needs no comment. If ever a life spoke for itself, it is the
> Bab’s, with its simplicity, integrity and unswerving devotion to the Truth that was born in
> him. Though we of the West may not appreciate many details of his teaching, and though
> we may fail to be attracted by a faith in which the niceties of language, the mysteries of
> numbers and the like play so important a part, yet none of us can help admiring the life of
> the founder of this religion, for in it there is neither flaw nor blemish. He felt the Truth in
> him, and in the proclamation of that Truth, he moved neither hand nor foot to spare himself,
> but unflinchingly submitted to all manner of injustice and persecution, and finally, to an
> ignominious death. That he should have attracted thousands to his cause is perhaps not a
> matter of such great surprise in a country like Persia, where all are naturally disposed
> towards religious speculation, and ever ready to examine a ‘new thing’; but his influence
> penetrated deeper than their curiosity and their minds, it reached their hearts and inspired
> them with a spirit of self-sacrifice, renunciation and devotion as remarkable and as
> admirable as his own.”25 Among friends and foes alike the Bab has been generally
> acknowledged to have been a man of unselfish life, upright and true.26 It is fortunate that so
> many of the great religious leaders have erred in speculative opinion rather than in personal
> character or moral doctrine.
> 
> [page 134]
> 
> Babism did not die with the Bab. It entered upon new development. After the Bab’s
> death, Bagdad became the headquarters of the movement, and the head of the community
> was Mirza Yahya, who had been fourth in order in the organization of the new faith, but
> was now first through the death of the two who stood between him and the Bab. Mirza
> Yahya is better known by the title Subh-i-Ezel, or “Dawn of Eternity.” In 1853 an elder
> half-brother of his, named Beha, joined the community in Bagdad. Beha recognized the
> supremacy of Subh-i-Ezel, who preserved a comparative seclusion of life, leaving the work
> of direction and correspondence to Beha. The Persian Government objecting to the
> continuance of the Babi propaganda at Bagdad, so near the Persian borders, the Turkish
> 
> Journal Asiatique, Sixieme Série, tome viii, p. 384, quoted in Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 27.
> Professor Ross, of University College, London, in North American Review, April, 1901, Vol. 72,
> No. 4, pp. 614f.
> “An amazing statement!” comments Mr. Easton. “Babism is a form of pantheism, and like all other
> Persian pantheistic sects, is fundamentally atheistic, anarchistic and immoral. This fact, however, is
> carefully concealed not only from the outside world, but from the multitudes of disciples, ‘under the
> mask,’ as Von Hammer says, ‘of a more austere creed, and severer morals.’ In the case of the
> Assassins seventy years elapsed before the true character of the sect was known. The true doctrine
> is known only to the adepts, among whom the Bab himself must be classed. The Bab planned to
> exclude all unbelievers from five of the chief provinces of Persia, and, save in the case of merchants
> and others following a useful profession, from all lands in which the Babi faith prevailed (New
> History p. xxvi). It was during his life that the doctrine of the community of women was broached
> at the Badasht Conference. That he was a weak man is shown by the way in which he allowed
> himself to be eclipsed by Mirza Moli Ali of Mazandaran. In his death he compares unfavorably, as
> regards courage, with Babek, who, ‘when his hands and feet were struck off, by order of the caliph,
> laughed, and smilingly sealed with his blood the criminal gaiety of his tenets’” (Von Hammer,
> History of the Assassins, p. 27).
> Government removed the exiles first to Constantinople, and then in 1864 to Adrianople.
> Here there was a rupture between the brothers, Beha usurping the place of leadership which
> by direct assignment of the Bab and by long recognition during fourteen years had
> belonged to Subh-i-Ezel. Because of the dissensions which at once developed between the
> factions of the brothers, and also because of the detection of fresh attempts at
> propagandism, the Turkish Government separated the parties, and removed Beha to Acre
> and Subh-i-Ezel to Famagusta in Cyprus, sending, however, some Behais as Beha’s faction
> have come to be called, with Subh-i-Ezel, and some Ezelis, or followers of the latter, to
> Acre. This schism has never been healed. The great majority of the Babis, however,
> nineteen-twentieths probably, are followers of Beha.
> Beha not only gained the support of the Babis as a whole. He also advanced beyond the
> Bab in his claims, and completely interpreted away much of the supposed glory of the Bab.
> The writings of the sect indicate this process.27 The New History is full of the Bab and
> declarations of his greatness. The later book, A Travel-
> 
> In his paper on “Babism — Its Doctrines and Relations to Mission Work,” read at the Hamadan
> Conference in 1894 and published in The Missionary Review of the World, December, 1894, the
> late Dr. Shedd writes of the Babi books:
> “The writings of the Bab are said to number more than a hundred treatises, including many
> thousand stanzas of poetry.
> “The books that specially claim attention are:
> “1. Ziyaret Name, written before he claimed to be the Bab. It gives instructions as to the mode
> of worship at the shrines. Besides this, it is the expression of an ardent enthusiast who pours out his
> longings for the Imam Mahdi. ‘Where are the days of your empire that I may struggle for you?
> Where are the days of your glory that I may obtain the blessing of seeing your face? Where are the
> days of your Kingdom that I may take revenge for you on your enemies? Where are the days of
> your manifestation that I may be free from all except thee (absorbed in thee )?’ etc. The young man
> soon believes that he has the special favour and fellowship of the Imams.
> “2. A commentary or treatise on the Sura of the Koran called Joseph, written in Shiraz. In this
> Ali Mohammed declares himself to be inspired, to be the Bab. He does not renounce Islam, but
> claims that a true knowledge of Islam must come through the Bab. He says that God has placed
> within his grasp the kingdoms of heaven and earth. He presents himself as a prophet, and appeals to
> the book he is writing as proof of prophetic inspiration, that he is able to write hour after hour,
> composing the most exalted verses by the thousand and on the most exalted themes, the Divine
> being and attributes. He also directs his followers to rules of life very different from Moslem
> practice. Divorce and smoking are forbidden. The food of Jews and Christians is counted pure, etc.
> “3. The Beyan or Exposition written in Maku. It is the ultimate doctrine of the Bab. His title
> now is Nukhta U’la, first point, or Nukhta i Beyan, point of revelation or exposition. A positive
> system of doctrine and precept is set forth. The doctrine of God is explained at length. The essence
> of God has existed from all eternity in unapproachable glory and purity. No one has known it as it
> should be known. No one has praised it as it should be praised. From it has proceeded creation,
> which has no beginning and which shall have no end that we can express. Eternal in duration, the
> creation is subordinate in causation, is the emanation of the Divine Essence. As the Divine Essence
> is beyond our knowledge, the primal will has incarnated itself from time to time to suit the
> understanding of mankind. These incarnations are the prophets, an unknown number in the past,
> and it speaks now through the Nukhta — i.e., the Bab, and will speak again through ‘him whom
> God shall manifest.’ The primal will is like the sun, which rises and sets, but is in reality the same
> sun, not a different sun to-day from the sun of yesterday. So each prophet is a new day or
> manifestation of the same essence, the undivided unit of being. The evidence of a prophet is not
> miracles so much as the efficiency of his words. ‘When God wishes to create anything. He says
> “Be” and it is. The word of a prophet has the same quality: what he says comes to pass. Mohammed
> said, “Make a pilgrimage to Mecca,” and each year brings thousands flocking thither. He said “Fast
> in Ramazan,” and millions obey him year by year. The word of the Nukhta is as powerful to change
> and construction as the word of Mohammed.’
> “The doctrine that no revelation is final is strongly enforced. One great mistake of Christians
> and Moslems, it is alleged, has been this, that there is no more to follow. Each prophet is fitted to
> reveal the primal will for a time, to be followed by another with a fuller utterance. In the childhood
> of the race, all truth was taught by parables and figures. Good is shown to be pleasant and evil,
> bitter in their results by comparisons. Good men after death are to enter beautiful gardens with all
> possible delights. The wicked are to enter the torments of consuming fire. But the world has now
> reached a stage when the true meaning of paradise and hell can be disclosed. Paradise is the joy of
> belief in the manifestation of God and attaining the perfection of one’s being. The perfection of a
> thing is its paradise. Hell is unbelief and the state of imperfection which it imposes.
> “The doctrine as to the future life is obscure and transcendental. The worship of God is to be
> freed from all hope of reward. Perfection will follow, but how this perfection is reached, whether by
> stages of transmigration or by absorption in the primal good or in some other way, is not made
> plain. It is certain that the Bab and his followers had no fear of death. They went to martyrdom
> singing and exulting, but it is hard to see what it was sustained them in such trials. It was allegiance
> to the Bab, but just what hopes did he offer them that gave them exultation in death? It was not the
> hope of the Christian martyr nor the Paradise of Islam, but rather a pantheistic disregard of life.
> “In the Beyan, the prophecy is prevalent of another to follow the Bab, called ‘Him whom God
> shall manifest.’ The ordinances and precepts of the new faith all have reference to this coming
> personage, and prayers are offered that he may not suffer as the Bab suffered. There is a humility
> and self-renunciation displayed, which reminds one of John the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ.
> “The whole round of religious duties is changed to suit a new calendar. A cabalistic power is
> given to the Arabic letters somewhat after the teaching of Sheikh Ahmad. The chapters of the
> Beyan are in groups of nineteen, and this is made the sacred number. Alif stands for one. The
> Arabic name for one is Vahid. The numerical values of the letters in Vahid make the sum nineteen,
> and several other formulas are worked out to the same result. The number 1 denotes the uncreated
> and unknowable essence of God, and this one added to the sum of the letter of Hayz (the living)
> gives the sacred number 19. Multiply 19 by 19 and 361 is the result, which again equals the Arabic
> formula for all things plus the initial one. The Bab is the point, the initial one, and eighteen of his
> followers are made apostles to complete the sacred number. The year has nineteen months of
> nineteen days each, with four days thrown in, just before the vernal equinox, as feast days.
> Chronology and religion are readjusted on this plan. . . .
> “4. Another work is ascribed to the Bab called the Seven Proofs, afterwards enlarged by Beha
> and called Ikan or ‘Assurance.’ It is the only book of the Babis which they have printed. The copies
> are brought from India, not for public sale, but kept in the hands of leading men to be given to
> inquirers as may be safe for a proscribed religion. Mr. Browne has given the line of argument as
> follows. After stating the doctrines of God as to His essence, of His Creation, and of the prophets or
> manifestations of the primal will, a passage is quoted from the Koran in which Mohammed says:
> ‘As to the prophets, I (am they),’ — that is, Mohammed was the same in essence as the preceding
> incarnations of the primal will.
> “In each manifestation, word was given of the following one. The Jews were told to expect a
> Messiah, but when He came as Jesus, they rejected Him, because they had all imagined His coming
> in a different way. So the followers of Christ were told to expect His return; yet when he returned as
> Mohammed, they failed to recognize him, and are to this day expecting His coming. So the
> Mohammedans are expecting the coming of Imam Mahdi, yet when he has come, they refuse to
> recognize him, because the manner of his coming does not correspond with their own vain
> imaginings of how he ought to come.
> “Then he says to the Moslems: ‘You blame the Jews because they did not accept Christ as the
> promised Messiah. You also condemn the Christians because they did not recognize Mohammed as
> the promised comforter or paraclete,’ although Christ had clearly said, ‘One shall come after Me
> whose name is Ahmad.’”
> (These words are based on the promise of Christ as to the Comforter, the Paraclete. For this
> word the Moslems would substitute Periklutos, which corresponds in meaning with Ahmad or
> Mohammed, i.e., praised, lauded.)
> “The prodigies expected at the return of the promised one are explained figuratively. By the
> sun, for example, is meant the primal will manifesting itself in the prophet of the age; by the moon
> and stars are meant his companions and the teachers of his religion. The end of the world is the
> manifestation when the cycle is completed, and the sun shall be darkened and the stars shall fall
> from heaven — that is, the last manifestation is abrogated, the last sacred book is closed, the priests
> [page 135]
> 
> ler’s Narrative which Browne has issued, as The Episode of the Bab sets the Bab in the
> background, and exalts Beha to the first place. “It was then (i.e., at first) supposed,” says
> the later book, “that he (i.e., the Bab) claimed to be the medium of grace from His
> Highness, the Lord of the Age (upon him be peace); but after-
> 
> [page 136]
> 
> wards it became known and evident that his meaning was the Gatehood of another city, and
> the mediumship of the graces of another person whose qualities and attributes were
> contained in his books and treatises.”28 Until Beha arose the Babis undoubtedly did regard
> the Bab as the medium of grace from His Highness, “the Lord of the
> 
> or mollahs who expounded this book fall from their high places, because the new revelation is
> given. This is the meaning of the verse in the Koran, ‘when the sun shall be folded up and the stars
> shall fall,’ and of similar passages.
> “Now the Moslems blame the Jews and Christians, yet act in precisely the same way
> themselves, urging as a reason for not accepting the new manifestation that the expected signs of
> the Imam’s coming have not appeared.
> “Then follows an argument to prove that the claims of the Bab are as strong as those of
> Mohammed as to style of composition and power and excellence of doctrine. The line of reasoning
> is very strong and convincing in the view of the Babis, and its cogency is felt by the Moslems. Few
> of the latter are ready to meet a Babi missionary in fair discussion. The same line of argument
> adopted is used in dealing with Jews, Christians or Zoroastrians. The new faith is broad enough to
> include Zoroaster among the prophets, for his words were words of power to his followers.
> “After the death of the Bab in 1850, there are no extant writings of importance, till 1865 the
> announcement of Beha was made claiming to be the one whom God shall manifest. He had
> expanded the Seven Proofs into the Ikan before this, but there is no positive proof of it. After this,
> he became a very voluminous writer of epistles to his followers in Persia. He became in their eyes
> and claimed to be, the incarnation of the Deity, the Lord of the attributes or centre of the revelation
> of the Divine Essence, perfect in humanity, the One whom God shall manifest, Christ and the
> Paraclete returned, God the Father in short, the fullness of God manifest in the flesh. He also
> identified himself with previous prophets, especially with the Bab, that he himself suffered in
> Tabriz, and his spirit returned to the supreme associate.
> “Besides these epistles to his followers, he addressed to kings and rulers various documents.
> His appeal to the Shah of Persia in behalf of toleration for his followers is a well-reasoned and
> cogent plea. He sent letters to the Grand Vizier of the Sultan, to the Pope, to Napoleon III, to the
> Emperor of Russia, and to Queen Victoria. For some reason, he was displeased with the Emperor of
> Germany, and ventured to predict that dire calamities will fall upon the capital beyond the Rhine.
> “The only systematic work is called The Most Holy Tablet. This prescribes more fully the rules
> of the new religion, but adds no new doctrine to the system of Bab. The times of prayers and of
> fasts and feasts are given, places of worship are to have no images or pictures, the dead are to be
> buried with much ceremonial pomp, pilgrimages are few, very elaborate rules for inheritance are
> laid down, slavery forbidden, the civilization of the West enjoined in many particulars, the kings of
> the earth are exhorted. The claim is made that the treatise is not one of scientific production, it is
> beyond the power of science, the revelation of God Himself, and hence, above all criticism.
> “For one whose pretensions are so superlative, the performance is very meagre. There is no
> transcendent excellence apparent to mark the advance of revelation. Possibly if the Son of God had
> not appeared in Jesus Christ, and become the Alpha and Omega of human hopes and salvation, such
> a system might become another ‘Light of Asia,’ but since Christ has come, the same yesterday, to-
> day and forever, there can be no comparison between Babism and Christianity.”
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 7.
> [page 137]
> 
> Age (upon him be peace),” but the very grounds on which they believed this made them
> ready to receive and acknowledge the claims of Beha to succeed and supersede the Bab,
> who now came to be called His Highness the Evangelist, and to be regarded as sustaining to
> Beha the relation of John the Baptist to Christ. And both by and
> 
> [page 138]
> 
> for Beha more has been claimed than was ever claimed for the Bab. Mr. Kheiralla in his
> recent book, declares it to be his purpose to prove “that the Everlasting Father, the Prince of
> Peace, has appeared in the human form as Beha Ullah, and established His Kingdom upon
> earth.”29 And Mr. Phelps speaks with a smaller measure of definiteness but in a note
> characteristically Behaistic: “It was necessary for the Essence Itself of God to become
> manifest, and this It did through the person of Beha Ullah. This is not saying that Beha
> Ullah was not a man like other men; for all manifestations are men like other men; but he
> was also, and as a man, the crowning glory of a period, in whom the perfect Divine Image
> was reflected.
> “Now that Beha Ullah, the man, is no more, the drop has become the ocean. That
> which was manifested is withdrawn to God, the pure Essence — to that which is both Spirit
> and its Source.
> “‘All religions,’ says Abbas Effendi, ‘are written symbolically. This is the only way in
> which Truth can be written to withstand time and its changes. Languages change, the
> meaning of words is lost; for these are but the expressions of periods. Symbols never
> change, since they are the expression of men’s spirit. The realities encased in them are
> handed down as long as the symbols are preserved. These realities, the spirit reawakens.’”30
> It is difficult to conceive of a man living in these times and sus-
> 
> [page 139]
> 
> taining the weight of such claims in his behalf, but all who saw Beha Ullah during his life
> agree that he bore himself with dignity and commanded respect. Mr. Browne who visited
> him at Acre in 1890, says of that experience: “The face of him on whom I gazed I can never
> forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to read one’s very soul;
> power and authority sat on that ample brow; while the deep lines on the forehead and face
> implied an age which the jet black hair and beard flowing down in indistinguishable
> luxuriance almost to the waist, seemed to belie. No need to ask in whose presence I stood,
> as I bowed myself before one who is the object of a devotion and love which kings might
> envy and emperors sigh for in vain! A mild, dignified voice bade me be seated, and then
> continued: ‘Praise be to God that thou hast attained.’ Thou hast come to see a prisoner and
> exile. . . . We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of the nations; yet they
> deem us a stirrer up of strife and sedition worthy of bondage and banishment. . . . That all
> nations should become one in faith and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and
> unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should
> cease, and differences of race be annulled — what harm is there in this? Yet so it shall be;
> these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars, shall pass away ; and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall
> come. . . . Do not you in Europe need this also? Is not this that which Christ foretold? Yet
> do we see your kings and rulers lavishing their treasures more freely on means for the
> destruction of the human race than on that which would conduce to the happiness of
> 
> Kheiralla, Beha Ullah, the Glory of God.
> Phelps, Abbas Effendi, p. 149f.
> mankind. . . . These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as
> one kindred and one family. . . . Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let
> him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.”31
> It is hard to believe that such a personage should indulge in the claims Mr. Kheiralla
> makes for him, and that are both made and acknowledged by thousands of the faithful, who
> regard him, as Professor Ross says, “as God Almighty Himself,” or it would be hard to
> believe this if it were not for the fact that Behaism specifically de-
> 
> [page 140]
> 
> nies the personality of God. Mr. Phelps in his book, which he tells us was submitted to
> Abbas Effendi and approved by him, unequivocally sets forth this position. God is an
> essence, not a person. The terms of Beha’s letter to the Shah of Persia must be interpreted
> thus, even though he seems to speak of God as distinct from himself in the sharpest
> language: “That Real King is in Himself sufficient unto Himself and independent of all;
> neither doth any advantage accrue to Him from the love of contingent beings, nor doth any
> hurt befall Him from their hatred. All earthly places appear through Him, and unto Him
> return, and God singly and alone abideth in His own place, which is both above space and
> time, mention and utterance, sign, description and definition, height and depth. And none
> knoweth this save Him and whosoever hath knowledge of the Book. There is no God but
> Him, the Mighty, the Bountiful.”32
> Such recognition of the separate personality of God, one of the great truths of Islam, is
> only apparent and is buried in Babi thought under indefinite, mystical forms.33 “Thus
> Kumeyl ibn Ziyad, one of Ali’s chosen disciples, once demanded of his Master, behind
> whom he was seated on a dromedary, ‘What is Truth?’” This story is cited in the Bab’s
> Seven Proofs and is made much of by the Babis. “‘What hast thou to do with the Truth?’
> answered Ali, ‘for verily it is one of God’s mysteries and a jewel out of His treasure house.’
> Then said Kumeyl when Ali had spoken for some time after this fashion, ‘O my Master, am
> I not worthy to share thy secret?’ ‘Yes,’ answered Ali, ‘but the matter is a great one.’ ‘O
> my Master,’ said Kumeyl, ‘dost thou desire those who beg at the door of thy bounty to be
> turned away?’ ‘Nay, verily!’ answered Ali, ‘I will answer the call of such as are troubled,
> and will sprinkle upon thee somewhat of the overflowing fullness of the station of the
> 
> [page 141]
> 
> Truth. Receive it from me according to thy capacity and conceal it from such as are
> unworthy to share it. O Kumeyl, the Truth is the revelation of the splendours of Divine
> Majesty without a sign.’ ‘O my Master,’ said Kumeyl, ‘I understand not thy meaning.
> Explain it to me further.’ ‘The effacement of the conjectured and the learning of the
> known,’ answered Ali. ‘Explain more fully,’ demanded Kumeyl. ‘The rending of the veil
> 
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. xxxixf. But see for a more matter of fact representation the
> account of Dr. Jessup’s interview reprinted, with the kind permission of The Outlook, on pp. 174-
> l80 of this volume.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 115f.
> “The Behai conception of the Supreme Being is not a personality, but an Essence, an all-pervading
> Force or Power, frequently referred to as Love, or Truth, or Life. ‘God,’ says Alphas Effendi, ‘is
> pure essence and cannot be said to be anywhere or in any place.’ God is infinite, and, as terms are
> finite, the nature of God cannot be expressed in terms. But as man must form and express a
> conception of God in some way, he calls God ‘Love,’ or ‘Truth,’ because these are the highest
> things he knows. Life is eternal; so man, to express God’s infinity, says that God is ‘Life.’ But these
> things in themselves are not God, God is the source of all things that are made, and all things that
> are, are mirrors reflecting His Glory” (Phelps, Abbas Effendi, p. 114).
> by the triumph of the mystery,’ answered Ali. ‘O my beloved Master,’ rejoined Kumeyl,
> ‘tell me more.’ ‘The attraction of the Divine Unity through the nature of the apprehension
> of its oneness,’ added Ali. ‘Tell me more clearly,’ repeated Kumeyl. Then said Ali, ‘A light
> shining forth from the Morning of Eternity and irradiating the temples of the Unity.”34 The
> story ends here, and I suspect Kumeyl gave it up at this point. And it is impossible to read
> the Babi books without feeling this atmosphere of Oriental imagery and speculation, and
> without becoming conscious of the vapours of the old Sufi pantheism which for centuries
> has tinged the thoughts of the Mohammedans of Persia, to such an extent that one historian
> declares that “the whole country has been so undermined by this insidious heresy that it can
> almost be said that Persia throughout its extent contains no real Moslem.”35 The Bab had
> little external connection with the Sufis or mystics,36 but this doctrine of the Primal Will
> manifested in chosen men is practically the same as the Primal element of the Sufi, a divine
> emanation, from
> 
> [page 142]
> 
> which proceeds all manifestation of the divine essence.37 It is in this atmosphere that the
> Bab and Beha have conceived their relations to God, and not in terms of our Western
> conception of personality, and save when Babism is being presented apologetically in the
> West, it falls back into its setting in the indefinite mystical dreamings and out-reachings of
> the Persian mind.
> 
> “Though with sword in hand my Darling stand, with intent to slay, though I sinless be,
> If it pleases him, this tyrant’s whim, I am well content with his tyranny.
> The country of ‘I’ and ‘ We’ forsake; thy home in annihilation make.
> Since fearing not this step to take, thou shalt gain the highest felicity.”
> 
> That bit of Sufi poetry is by one of the most famous characters of Babism, Kurratu’l
> Ayn, a woman of whom we shall say more presently. It is as truly Sufi as this outcropping
> Sufiism in the sceptic Omar Khayam:
> 
> “There was a Door to which I found no Key;
> There was a Veil past which I could not see;
> Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
> 
> Browne, The New History, p. 329.
> Haines, Islam as a Missionary Religion, p. 76.
> “Sufiism,” says Browne, “by reason of that quietism, eclecticism and latitudinarianism which are
> amongst its most characteristic features, is the very antithesis, in many ways, to such definite
> doctrines as the Manichaean, the Isma’ili and others, and would be more justly described as an
> indefinite immobility than as a definite movement. This point is often overlooked and even scholars
> — especially such as have never visited the East — often speak of such sects as the Isma’ilis or the
> Babis of to-day as though they were akin to the Sufis, whereas a great hostility usually exists
> between them, the natural antagonism between dogmatism and eclecticism. The Babis in particular
> equal their Shiite foes in their hatred of the Sufis, whose point of view is quite incompatible with
> the exclusive claims of a positive and dogmatic creed” (Browne, A Literary History of Persia, p.
> 422f.).
> One of the last things that can be said about Babism, however, in the form which it has taken
> under Abbas Eftendi, its present head, is that it is a “positive and dogmatic creed.” Mr. Phelps’
> authorized representation of it (Phelps, Abbas Effendi) makes it a loose mystical eclecticism. An
> “indefinite mobility” would be an apt description.
> Sell, The Bah and the Babis, p. 36.
> There seem’d — and then no more of Thee and Me?.”
> 
> It was this mystical answer of Babism and later of Behaism to the craving of the
> human soul for some intercourse with God, the unseen God, which undoubtedly accounts
> for some of its power. “Its principles,” as the Babis claimed, “are the withdrawal of veils,
> the verification of signs, the education of souls, the reformation of characters, the
> purification of hearts, and illumination with the gleams of enlightenment.”38 And it lays
> especial emphasis on spiritual discernment, on freedom from “slavishly following literalist
> devices,”39 and on the unfailing presence in the world of “silent manifestations of the Spirit,
> intrinsically not less perfect than the speaking manifestations whom we call prophets.”40
> “The gales of the All-glorious passed by me,” said Beha to the King of Persia, “and taught
> me the knowledge of what hath been. . . . This is a leaf which the breezes of the Will of thy
> Lord the Mighty, the Extolled, have stirred,”41
> 
> [page 143]
> 
> While this esoteric pantheism of Babism has been one secret of its strength, its
> accompaniment, an absolutely unlimited allegorizing, is to our Western minds one of its
> weaknesses. The Mohammedan doctors at once objected to its method of dealing with the
> Koran, and to its metaphorizing away the prodigies and signs which were to usher in the
> advent of the Imam Mahdi.42 “The Mohammedan doctrines of the examination of the dead
> in the graves, the Resurrection, Sirat, Heaven, Hell, are all treated allegorically” by the
> Babis.43 And the Babis are difficult people to discuss religion with because words may or
> may not mean to them what they mean to others. “These people,” writes one of the
> missionaries in Persia, “find grist in whatever comes to their mill, being the extremest of
> literalists when it suits their purpose, and outdoing the father of the allegorists when that
> method suits their purpose better.”44 It is doubtless this mystical, allegorical character of
> Babism that attracts a certain type of mind in America, in the main, probably, the same type
> which follows after spiritualism, esoteric Buddhism, Swamis from India, theosophy, and
> other movements which play around the edges of the occult and the magical, and help to
> dull the edge of present realities with the things that are neither present nor real.
> But Babism in Persia under the Bab and under Beha embraced real and practical
> elements, and was full of worthy teaching. “As for those who commit sin and cling to the
> world, they are assuredly not of the people of Beha.”45 “What is well pleasing is that the
> cities of men’s hearts which are under the dominion of the hosts of selfishness and lust,
> should be subdued by the sword of the Word, of Wisdom and of Exhortation. Every one,
> then, who desireth ‘victory’ must first subdue the city of his own heart with the sword of
> spiritual truth and of the Word, and must protect it from remembering aught beside God.”46
> 
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 156.
> Browne, The New History, p. 236.
> Browne, A Year Afnong the Persians, p. 327.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 395.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 25.
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 42.
> “I had a very interesting visit from some of the Babis of this place (Ilkachee), who spoke very
> freely of their faith and seemed very firm in it. They quote Scripture, but spiritualize everything that
> does not suit their tenets, and so finally make language mean anything and nothing” (From a letter
> from Miss Grettie Y. Holliday, Tabriz, Persia).
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 70.
> Ibid., pp. 114f.
> “No stranger must find his way into the city of the heart, so that the Incomparable Friend
> (i.e., God) may come into
> 
> [page 144]
> 
> His own place — that is, the effulgence of His names and authority, not His essence, for
> that Peerless King hath been and will be holy for everlasting above ascent or descent.”47 “O
> saints of God,” cried Beha, “at the end of our discourse we enjoin on you once again
> chastity, faithfulness, godliness, sincerity and purity. Lay aside the evil and adopt the good.
> Regard the horizon of uprightness and be quiet, severed and free from what is beside this.
> There is no strength and no power save in God.”48 Among the injunctions of the new
> religion as set forth by the Bab and Beha, were purity of life, freedom of conscience,
> cessation of religious warfare, friendship and intercourse between races and religions, the
> abdication of that curse of Mohammedan lands, mendicancy; “the most hateful of mankind
> before God,” it is declared, “is he who sits and begs; take hold of the robe of means, relying
> on God, the Cause of causes;” enemies were to be forgiven and evil not to be met with evil;
> rulers were to be obeyed, and the laws observed; confession of sin to fellow men was
> prohibited. All must learn some trade or follow some occupation, and pilgrimages were no
> longer necessary. Opium and wine are forbidden, the injunction of the Koran against the
> use of wine being notoriously disregarded in Moslem lands. The Bab even forbade the use
> of tobacco, but Beha has released the pressure here. Surely these are worthy precepts, and
> the religion that can lead men to practice them, if Babism can do this, will render a useful
> service to those men who embrace it.
> And the Babi movement is distinctly a sign of life and progress. Such a superb
> personal devotion as has been displayed by their followers towards both the Bab and Beha
> is itself a worthy thing which we should expect to uplift character and accomplish good. In
> this devotion they have cheerfully met death in the most terrible forms. Even if there have
> been those who turned back, as in the case of thirty-one who decided that it was not their
> duty to avoid saving their lives by renunciation when the Seven Martyrs died in Teheran in
> 1850,49 there have yet been thousands who gave to their faith the good testimony of
> martyrs’ deaths. If it is a beautiful thing to die for one’s country, it is not less beautiful to
> die for one’s friend and one’s faith;
> 
> [page 145]
> 
> and it must be admitted and without reluctance, that at least by their death the Babis of
> Persia have borne witness in support of the contention of that historian of this religion who
> declares “that the fundamental intentions and ideas of their sect were things spiritual, and
> such as are connected with pure hearts; that their true and essential principles were to
> reform the morals and to beautify the conduct of the human race.”50
> On the other hand, the zeal of Babism turned almost immediately to the use of the
> weapons of its persecutors. It was unlike the early Christian Church in the Roman Empire
> in this, though not unlike the early Christian Church in some other lands. Not content with
> defending itself in open battle when assailed, it resorted to the tactics of assassination and
> torture.51 And when later the two factions of the Babis arose, some of the Ezelis who were
> 
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, pp. 45f.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 81.
> Ibid., p. 213.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 66.
> Ibid., pp. 36, 181, 198.
> sent to Acre with Beha from Adrianople were murdered by Beha’s followers, and Beha
> “regarded the event with some complaisance,” while his son, the present head of the
> religion, interceded for the murderers. When summoned to court to testify in the case, Beha
> was asked who and what he was, and replied, “I will begin by telling you who I am not. I
> am not a camel-driver (alluding to Mohammed), nor am I the son of a carpenter (alluding to
> Christ). This is as much as I can tell you to-day. If you will now let me retire, I will tell you
> to-morrow who I am.” “Upon this promise,” says Mr. Oliphant, “he was let go; but the
> morrow never came. With an enormous bribe, he had in the interval purchased an
> exemption from all further attendance at court.”52 And some call the man who did this the
> Everlasting Father. How long will they be able to save his moral teaching if bribery is
> divine, and assassination allowable? And we must press questions like these against such
> claims of Deity, even in the face of Mr. Browne’s defence: “The idea of secret
> assassination is so repugnant to us and so incompatible with our notions of virtue and moral
> rectitude, that we naturally shrink from imputing it without the clearest evidence to a man
> or a body of men of whose character and qualities we have otherwise formed a high
> opinion. But in
> 
> [page 146]
> 
> Asia where human life is held cheap and religious fervour runs high, a different standard of
> morality prevails in this matter; and we must beware of being unduly influenced in our
> judgment by our own sentiments.”53
> The moral possibility of combining with a religion like Babism elements of evil like
> assassination may be laid to the Oriental character or it might not improperly be charged in
> part to the influence of Mohammedanism. The Prophet was his own moral law, and the life
> and rights of men were trifles in the way of his purposes. The historic and racial
> relationship of Babism to Islam brought the same idea into the new religion. Mr. Brown
> reports a Babi Sayid in Shiraz to have said in answer to some remark of his about the
> bloodshed caused by Mohammed and his followers, “Surely you cannot pretend to deny
> that a prophet, who is an incarnation of the Universal Intelligence, has as much right to
> remove any one whom he perceives to be an enemy to religion and a danger to the welfare
> of mankind, as a surgeon has to amputate a gangrened limb!” To charge the burden of such
> views on Babism and the Bab would be, however, as wrong as to charge the Inquisition
> upon Christianity and Christ. And although Babism does show in this and much else, the
> powerful influence of Islam, it represents, as has been already pointed out, — and herein
> lies a part of its significance to the missionary movement, — a radical departure from the
> old faith. The ecclesiastics in Persia acted on a sure instinct when they denounced it, and
> urged the State to annihilate it, for in simple terms it was, as Sell says, “a religious revolt
> against orthodox Islam, so far as that is represented by the Shiah sect.”54 It was even more
> hostile to the Sunni system. “It was probably in the Holy City itself,” Professor Ross says,
> that the Bab on his one pilgrimage thither, “once and for all freed himself from the
> Prophet’s Faith, and conceived the thought of ‘ruining this faith, in order to establish in its
> place something altogether differing from it.’”55 In The New History, however, the Bab is
> said to have gone to Mecca to proclaim his religion there. At any rate, on returning to
> 
> Oliphant, Haifa, pp. 209, 210. This story is contradicted in Phelps, Abbas Effendi, p. 75f.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 373. This would be just enough in the case of a man but we
> cannot tolerate iniquity in God or in one claiming to be God and we cannot conceive of God
> incarnate subject to the limitations of racial moral ideal.
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 50.
> North American Review, April, 1901, p. 600.
> [page 147]
> 
> Shiraz, he made an alteration in the Azan, or call to prayer used by the Moslem world,
> inserting the words “I bear witness that Ali Mohammed His Servant is the remnant of
> God,” and the Muezzin so uttered the call from the mosque near the Bab’s house and was
> arrested, punished and expelled from the city on this account.56 This one presumptuous
> blasphemy, as it seemed to faithful Moslems, illustrates how radical the breach was.
> The new religion cut across the whole field of Mohammedan opinion and practice.
> Moslem law makes the pilgrimage obligatory. He who denies that this is an obvious duty
> enjoined by the Koran, which says, “The pilgrimage to the temple is a service due to God
> from those who are able to journey thither,”57 is considered to be an infidel.58 Babism
> abrogated the pilgrimage. The Moslems regard the Koran as absolutely inviolate, and final,
> divinely inspired without human admixture. “Mohammed’s idea was that it should be a
> complete and final code of directions in every matter for all mankind.”59 The Bab produced
> a new Koran, and as he claimed a better one. At first he merely asserted that his Koran was
> as good as Mohammed’s. “Then the Lord of the world thus revealed: ‘That Word is by the
> tongue of Mohammed the Apostle of God, and this is my Word by the tongue of the Person
> of the Seven Letters, the Gate of God.’” But soon he advanced beyond this. When under
> arrest at Shiraz, the governor suggested that he should demonstrate that his doctrines were
> superior to those of Mohammed. The Bab answered, “Take my Koran, compare it with that
> of your prophet, and you will be convinced that my religion is the preferable one.”60 The
> Bab, furthermore, flatly contradicted the Mohammedan idea, advanced by Mohammed
> himself, that Islam was a final revelation. “They are to remember,” he said, “that no
> revelation is final, but only represents the measure of truth which the state of human
> progress has rendered mankind capable of receiving.” The world comes to revelation in
> other words, rather than revelation to the world. The Mollahs truly denounced this as
> departure from orthodox opinion: “This person, without regarding the fact that he is at
> variance with the Perspicuous
> 
> [page 148]
> 
> Religion, is a meddler with custom and creed, and a troubler of kings and emperors.
> Therefore to eradicate, subdue, repress, and repel this sect is one of the requirements of the
> Well-established Path (i.e., the religion of Islam), and indeed the chief of obligations.”61
> And again they exclaim, “What an evidently false assertion is this! By God, this is a thing
> to break the back! O people, extinguish this fire and forget these words! Alas! woe to our
> Faith, woe to our Law!”62
> One very practical evidence of the difference between the new religion and the old was
> at once presented in its attitude towards the place and rights of woman. Islam made a fatal
> mistake in this matter. It condemned one-half of society, and the half on which most
> depends in the shaping of a nation’s character, to lives worse than simple slavery because
> of necessity so full of the conditions which develop what is basest in life and pollute it at its
> 
> Browne, The New History, p. 200f.
> Sura iii, 91.
> Sell, The Faith of Islam p. 223.
> Ibid., p. 38.
> Sell, The Bab and the Babis, p. 15.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 106.
> Ibid., p. 27.
> springs. “Even those of us who have spent long years in this country,” writes an
> experienced and temperate missionary in Persia, “are constantly receiving new and
> shocking revelations of the corruption, indecency and insecurity of their family life.”63
> Travellers or other apologists for Islam who gloss over its degradation of woman, simply
> do not know what they are talking about. As against all this, the Bab and Beha “enjoined
> the disuse of the veil, the abolition of divorce, polygamy and concubinage, in other words,
> of the harem; and greater liberty of action for the female sex.”64 The Koran allowed both
> polygamy and concubinage and practically unlimited divorce. Babism provided that if
> quarrels arose between husband and wife, he was not at once to divorce her, but to wait a
> year in the hope of reconciliation. This aspect of the religion naturally made powerful
> appeal to women, and Mirza Kazim Beg attributes its extraordinary spread to the zeal of
> women among others in its propagation.65 The
> 
> [page 149]
> 
> most famous of these was Kurratu’1-Ayn, or Lustre of ihe Eye, some of whose verses have
> been already quoted as illustrating the Sufi mysticism in Babism. She was a daughter of a
> learned mollah of Kazvin, and was early converted to Babism. For a while she lived at
> Kerbela, and gave addresses to the Sheikhies. This displeased the governor, and she
> removed to Bagdad, then to Kermanshah and Hamadan. Some Babis disapproved of a
> woman’s preaching, but the Bab supported her, and called her “Her Excellency the Pure.”
> She moved from place to place exerting everywhere a great influence by her eloquence, her
> wisdom, and her high character. As the Babis say, “She discussed and disputed with the
> doctors and sages, and loosed her tongue to establish her doctrine. Such fame did she
> acquire that most people who were scholars or sages sought to hear her speak, and were
> eager to become acquainted with her powers of speculation and deduction. She had a brain
> full of tumultuous ideas, and thoughts vehement and restless. . . . In short, in elocution she
> was the calamity of the age, and in ratiocination the trouble of the world.”66 She was
> executed at last in Teheran in the persecution which followed the attempt upon the life of
> the Shah. As Mr. Browne says, “The appearance of such a woman as Kurratu’1-Ayn is in
> any country and any age a rare phenomenon, but in such a country as Persia it is a prodigy
> — nay, almost a miracle. Alike in virtue of her marvellous beauty, her rare intellectual
> gifts, her fervid eloquence, her fearless devotion and her glorious martyrdom, she stands
> forth incomparable and immortal amidst her countrywomen. Had the Babi religion no other
> claim to greatness, this was sufficient — that it produced a heroine like Kurratu’1-Ayn.”67
> Kurratu’1-Ayn had had an unfortunate marriage experience of her own, and she preached to
> a nation of women who had drunk from the same cup. I heard a missionary once explain to
> a curious group of Moslem women in a Persian village, the teaching of Christianity, and the
> customs of Christians regarding women. They listened with wonder, and exclaimed
> together, “That is the religion for us, may we be its sacrifice!” The Babi women
> missionaries had this deep longing
> 
> Miss Holliday of Tabriz, in Woman’s Work for Woman, August, 1901, p.221.
> Curzon, Persia, Vol. I, p. 502.
> On the Doctrine of Babism as to the position of woman, Mr. Easton comments, too adversely I
> think: “‘The ordinances of the religion of the Kaim (i.e., the Bab) are the ordinances of unity; all
> goods are his goods; all men are his servants; and all women his handmaidens, whom he giveth to
> whomsoever he pleaseth.’ ‘A tradition . . . that His Holiness will change wives and husbands’ (The
> New History, p. 358). Kurratu’1-Ayn was not a model woman. Gifted but vile. Not free from
> suspicion in the case of the assassination of her uncle. Belongs to the same order of women as
> Aspasia, Catherine II, and Madame De Pompadour.”
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 31.
> Ibid., p. 309.
> [page 150]
> 
> and discontent to appeal to. “Her speeches,” says Mirza Kazim, speaking of Kurratu’1-Ayn,
> “stigmatized that gross tyranny which for so many centuries had imprisoned liberty. She
> preached not, as some have said, to abolish the laws of modesty, but to sustain the cause of
> liberty. The eloquent words which fell from her mouth captivated the hearts of her hearers,
> who became enthusiastic in her praise;” and who, it may be added, turned to a religion
> which could do for women what it had done for her. At the same time it must be admitted
> that there is a touch of oriental luxury of admiration in some of these estimates of
> Kurratu’1-Ayn, who in important moral characteristics did not rise above the level of her
> time and place. And in its results Babism has not exalted woman.68
> The Babis attacked the motives exalted in the Koran. “So worship God,” wrote the
> Bab, “that if the recompense of thy worship of Him were to be the fire,69 no alteration in
> thy worship of Him
> 
> [page 151]
> 
> would be produced. If you worship from fear, that is unworthy of the threshold of the
> holiness of God, nor will you be accounted a believer; so also if your gaze is on Paradise,
> and if you worship in hope of that; for then, you have made God’s creation a partner with
> 
> “Let us pass to the test question of how Babism treats women. It is not great praise to say that in
> this there is an advance on Mohammedanism, though it is far behind Christianity. I have seen no
> evidence that Babi doctrine teaches communism of wives. Incidents leading to this conclusion may
> doubtless be credited to the sinners among the Babis. Babism forbids temporary marriage and
> concubinage and polygamy, which are allowed by Shiahs. It allows bigamy, however.
> “Beha had two wives at one time, by each of which he had children. When Abbas’ mother
> died, he again joined a ‘partner’ to his remaining wife, thus being a bigamist twice over. The
> ‘branches’ (brothers) who are now quarrelling are from different mothers. Marriage among Behais
> is on a low Oriental plane. Divorce is allowed at the option of the husband, even for frivolous
> causes, such as a quarrel. The parties are recommended not to marry inside of a year, that, if
> possible, their hearts may be reconciled. The dowry of the divorced wife is a mere pittance of
> nineteen miscals of gold (about $50) in the city, and nineteen miscals of silver {$2) in villages. If
> the husband leaves home and neglects to send word or means of support to his wife for one year,
> she is free to marry another man. Early marriages are discountenanced.
> “Women are secluded in the harems and from the society of men, as among ordinary Moslems.
> The historic case of Kurratu’1-Ayn, of Kazvin, is a solitary exception. She has had no successors.
> Even she ordinarily delivered her lectures from behind a screen, and only occasionally let her veil
> fall aside in the presence of men when carried away by her enthusiasm. Behais do not seem to
> approve of her conduct. Several Behai families with whom I am acquainted are allowing their
> daughters to grow up without learning to read, though the fathers are teachers and are educating
> their sons” (Missionary Review of the World, February, 1904, Art. “Babism: A Failure,” by the Rev.
> S. G. Wilson).
> “The phraseology, the symbols and the pantheistic conceptions of the Sufis are constantly cropping
> out in Bahai literature as well as in their conversation,” says Dr. Holmes. “This teaching of the Báb
> is an expression of a familiar sentiment of the Sufis. Thus Altar quotes Rabi’a al-Adawiyya as
> praying, ‘O God! If I worship Thee for fear of Hell, send me to Hell; and if I worship Thee in hopes
> of Paradise, withhold Paradise from me; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, then withhold
> not from me the Divine Beauty’ (Browne, Literary History of Persia, p. 426).
> “There is also the familiar story of Al-Hallaj, (or was it Al-Ghazzali?) who went about with a
> pitcher of water and a torch, and when asked what he intended doing said, ‘I am going to quench
> Hell fire, and burn up Heaven.’
> “The Behais disclaim all affiliation with the Sufis, and yet theirs is but a modified form of the
> same pantheistic creed.”
> Him.” This was far removed from the sensual eschatology of the Prophet of seven wives.
> And most bitterly of all, the Babis attacked the ecclesiastics of the established religion.
> They denounced them for their self-interest, their injustice, their greed for gain, their
> bartering of religion for gold and silver, their pride and love of human glory, accused them
> of being devoid of the very rudiments of wisdom, knowing no method but conjecture and
> imagination, full of irrational belief, absurd traditions and the grossest ignorance.70 They
> charged them with being responsible for the stagnation and decay of Persia, of preventing
> the introduction of railways, of opposing the study of Western sciences, and speculating in
> food supplies in times of famine, and letting people starve that their grain might await a
> higher market price. “Shame on the people of Persia for their lack of spirit!” they
> exclaimed. “By God, they have not a spark of patriotic or manly feeling; they have grown
> habituated to cowardice, falsehood and flattery; they acquiesce in tyranny and oppression,
> and relinquishing the position of free agents, have become mere passive instruments in the
> hands of the clergy.” While these clergy “think themselves entitled to set their feet on the
> necks of all mankind. They become dead men’s heirs, consumers of endowments, and
> collectors of tithes and ‘thirds.’ And usurp the station of ‘the One, the Dominant,’ ‘to whom
> belongeth dominion.’” Well says Hafiz:
> “These preachers who, when in their pulpits, of virtue
> make such a display,
> Behave, I assure you, in private in quite a dissimilar way,
> 
> [page 152]
> 
> That they put any faith in the judgment they preach
> one can scarcely believe.
> When Him who shall judge them they daily attempt to
> outwit and deceive.”
> 
> “O people of the earth,” said the Bab, “give thanks to God, for verily we have delivered you
> from the doctors of doubt.”71
> Not content with thus pillorying the ecclesiastics of Islam, the Babis, upon the death of
> the Bab, cursed the people of Islam, too,72 and even prior to the Bab’s murder had
> renounced Mohammed himself. The Seven Martyrs of Teheran “received an offer of
> pardon, on condition of reciting the Kelema or creed, that Mohammed is the Prophet of
> God. It was rejected, and these missionaries,” says Lady Shiel, “died stedfast in their
> faith.”73
> The time for such a revolt from Islam as this had fully come. It was demanded by the
> sterility and immobility of the old faith. Men erroneously credit to Mohammedanism the
> science and philosophy which the Saracens kept alive during the dark ages of Europe; but
> as G. H. Lewes says, “All the Philosophy and Science of the Mohammedans was Greek,
> Jewish and Persian.”74 For four centuries the contest between the movements of life and
> thought and the rigidity and stolid conservatism of Islam was waged, and the “great effort
> to bring it into accordance with the main stream of human thought, to introduce into it some
> 
> Browne, The New History, pp. 76, 77, 175.
> Browne, The New History, pp. 76, 77, 175, 181ff.
> Ibid., p. 307.
> Life and Manners in Persia, pp. 180, 181.
> History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p, 34.
> element of progress utterly failed. The lesson is plain. . . . Revolution not reform is the only
> hope.”75 And while in a sense Babism was a reform, in a truer sense it was a revolution. It
> deliberately denied the fundamental principle of the finality of Islam. In doing this it made
> way for progress, for liberty, for life; but it also affronted the dominant faith from which it
> sprang. Innovation in the Moslem view “is worse than a mistake. It is a crime, a sin. This
> completeness, this finality of his system of religion and polity is the very pride and glory of
> a true Moslem. To look for an increase of light in the knowledge of his relation to God and
> the unseen world, in the laws which regulate Islam on earth, is
> 
> [page 153]
> 
> to admit that Mohammed’s revelation was incomplete, and that admission no Moslem will
> make.”76 This seemed to the Shiah ecclesiastics a sufficient answer to make to the Babis.
> “This person’s disagreement with the most luminous law,” said the doctors of Ispahan, “is
> clearer than the sun, therefore the best possible thing is to put in practice the sentence of the
> law.”77 There was no room in Islam for a man with a forward gaze. The golden age was
> past, and life was to be chained to it forever. Babism broke with the past.
> This attitude of Babism is of course the very foundation assumption of Christian
> missions in a Moslem land, or in any land. Among Mohammedans, to be sure, Christianity
> calls men back from their Prophet six centuries to Christ, but it does this only to point out
> that Christ’s religion is totally different from theirs, and superior to theirs in that while it
> has historic antecedents, it is a religion of life, of human movement under a Divine Spirit,
> of hope and perpetual advancement. Babism has rendered the real service of dealing a
> powerful blow at the bondage of orthodox Mohammedan opinion in Persia.
> It has rendered another great service in its plea for toleration and liberty of conscience.
> It professes to deny the unity of Church and State, which is another fundamental
> Mohammedan conviction, but a conviction nevertheless, which is ineffective in Persia. In
> matter of fact, however, the Persian Government, though independent of the Moslem
> Church, is powerfully influenced by it, and the Bab, though in reality a religious teacher,
> was killed by the State. The experience which the Babis gained of the evil of State support
> of religion doubtless sharpened their original opinions on the question of religious
> toleration.
> The Babi movement was not a political movement. It certainly did aim at the
> reformation of abuses, but this was by the improvement of individual character. If the Bab
> felt himself “appointed of heaven to regenerate his country,” it was not by political means
> that he felt called to do it, but by the inward working of a great spirit of quickening and
> transformation. His followers were enjoined to obey their rulers and submit to the laws.
> “The persecution of the Government very early drove the adherents of the new creed into
> an attitude of rebellion; and in the exasperation produced by the struggle
> 
> [page 154]
> 
> and by the ferocious brutality with which the rights of conquest were exercised by the
> victors, it was not surprising if fanatical hands were found ready to strike the sovereign
> down,” and to destroy those who, the Babis felt, were but tools in the hands of the
> ecclesiastics. But Beha himself denied all responsibility for the attempt upon the Shah’s
> life, and although the movement might have become political if it had triumphed or may yet
> 
> Sell, The Faith of Islam, p. 186.
> Sell, The Faith of Islam, p. 24.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 12.
> become so if it controls the majority in Persia, we may accept as sincere, under existing
> conditions and while they last, the disavowals of its leaders and believe “that with things
> material they had absolutely no concern.” It is further indication of their feelings, though
> not to be taken wholly without qualification, that the Babis exculpate the Shah himself from
> blame for their persecutions, and acknowledge just treatment from many officials, but
> accuse chiefly those governors and ministers who through fanaticism or fear lent
> themselves to execute the will of the Church.78
> The very fact that it had no political designs and concerned itself only with “things
> connected with pure hearts,” and yet suffered so from persecution led, as has been said, to a
> peculiar emphasis on the rights of men to religious liberty. The Babis point out to their
> persecutors that the best way to make a movement harmless is to let it alone. “Up to the
> present moment,” they said, “of movements pertaining to religion many have appeared in
> the countries of Europe but non-interference and absence of bigotry having deprived them
> of importance, in a little while they became effaced and dispelled.”79 “Interference is not
> destruction, but edification when thou regardest the truth, which will not, thereby become
> quenched and forgotten, but rather stimulated and advertised.”80 But apart from this, Beha
> constantly declared that men had a right to be free in conscience and belief. “A just
> government,” he said, “can find no excuse and possesses no pretext for further persecuting
> this sect except a claim to the right of interference in thought and conscience, which are the
> private possessions of the heart and soul.”81 And he appeals to the example of Great Britain
> and her progress, points out that the times are changed, and that principles and institutions
> have under-
> 
> [page 155]
> 
> gone alteration, and that “government should no longer persecute this one or that one or
> disturb itself about the ideas and consciences of its subjects and people. All are the subjects
> of the King, and are under the shadow of the royal protection.” This was very different
> from the old Mohammedan spirit. “Him who changes his religion,” says the Moslem
> Tradition as declared by Imams Malik, Shafa’i and Hanbal, “kill.” “From its first
> appearance,” wrote Mirza Kazim Beg in 1866, “the teaching of the Bab has been
> distinguished from all other reforms which have hitherto been produced in Persia or the
> East generally, by a well marked aspiration towards truth and towards liberty of
> conscience.”
> Even though the views of Babism have not been accepted in Persia, it is certainly true
> that their dissemination has influenced the Persian character, already much more tolerant
> than the Turkish, and has made a wider preaching of Christianity through the country
> increasingly practicable. “Everywhere in our field,” writes a missionary from Tabriz, “the
> Moslems seem in a restless state of mind, and are seeking for some remedy in a religious
> change. The sect of Babis are making large gains in the rural districts. All their leaders are
> enlightened men intellectually at least. I hope they may prepare the way for religious
> freedom in Persia.”82 Where the Babis prevail there is a spirit of hospitality and toleration
> towards Christians unless they are forced to cover over these natural feelings in order to
> avoid the enmity and escape the suspicion of their Moslem neighbours.83 “Consort with
> 
> Browne, The New History, p. 189; The Episode of the Bab, p. xlv.
> Browne, Ihe Episode of the Bab, p. 49.
> Ibid., p. 67.
> Ibid., p. 157.
> Letter from the Rev. J. N. Wright, D.D., June 24, 1901.
> “We fear the Babis will get hold of some of our young men. Many of the Jews in Teheran have
> become Babis, and some of our Moslem friends we believe to be such — but as they allow the
> people of all religions with spirituality and fragrance,” Beha bade his followers. “Beware
> lest the zeal of ignorance possesses you amongst mankind. All originated from God and
> return-
> 
> [page 156]
> 
> eth unto Him; verily He is the Source of Creation and the Goal of the worlds.”84 And in
> their dealings with others in propagating their faith, the Babis were forbidden to use
> violence. “Show forth that which ye have; if it be accepted the object is attained; if not,
> interference is vain; leave him to himself, while advancing towards God, the Protecting, the
> Self-subsistent.”85
> The question which the knowledge of this movement first suggests to us, namely, Has
> not a religion so full of good teaching, so hopeful in its rupture with Islam, done much to
> prepare the way for Christianity? may then be answered by saying, “Yes, it has done a great
> deal. It has weakened the foundations in Persia of the most intolerant and immobile faith
> which has ever held the wills of men. It has preached freedom of conscience and brotherly
> charity, and the effect of this preaching has been real even upon those who have not
> accepted the religion which produced it. It has spoken a word for woman, and so hinted at
> least of what is to be found in greater fullness in Christianity. It has held up higher moral
> standards than Islam’s. It has shown that Persians are ready to die for a religious faith
> whose essential character is spiritual even though mystical, and which does not draw men
> by the promise of spoils and sensuality here, or visions of bright-eyed houris in the paradise
> beyond. Some would add that it has introduced and made room for larger and freer
> conceptions of God, conceptions dangerous and untrue often, but in advance of the
> mechanical, dominant Deity of Islam, who “is the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act
> existing throughout the universe, and leaves to all beings else, matter or spirit, instinct or
> intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure unconditional passiveness, alike in
> movement or in quiescence, in action or in capacity.”86 But to this Dr. Holmes replies, “I
> would not be prepared to admit that pantheism gives room for a larger conception of God
> than even the narrowest monotheistic faith. Islam has been saturated with these pantheistic
> conceptions, at least in Persia, for ages, but it has wrought no regeneration in the life, either
> of individuals or of the nation. But the presence in the midst of the Persians of a Deliverer,
> who claims divine power with which to carry into ultimate
> 
> [page 157]
> 
> execution a scheme of reform so largely based on the principles of the Gospel of Christ, —
> an idea such as this, whether or not its premises are true, must have an enormous
> quickening power, and cannot fail to stir men’s minds to action for a time, in spite of an
> 
> denial of their faith, one cannot believe them. It is difficult to make any impression on them.
> Perhaps the greatest advantage to be expected from them is in their demand for religious toleration”
> (Letter from the Rev. J. L. Potter, D.D., of Teheran, Sept. 9, 1901).
> “I do think that the Babis are doing a work in preparing the people for religious inquiry and
> their existence testifies to a longing after God and a deep dissatisfaction with Islam. Their history,
> full of error though it may be, is extremely touching to me, and in this last false Christ, though he
> may be produced by Satan, we see ‘imitation is the sincerest flattery,’ and the enemy has tried his
> best to present a suffering Christ, such a counterfeit as can only be detected when compared with
> the genuine coin” (Letter from Miss Grettie Y. Holliday of Tabriz, January II, 1902).
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 151f.
> Ibid, p. 153.
> Palgrave, Arabia, I, p. 309.
> utterly false conception of God, a conception, I believe, far more hurtful in itself than that
> of the Koran.”
> Babism has refused to acknowledge that humanity’s one end is to be bound in the
> chains of the Arabian institutions and ideas of the seventh century. It has taught that God,
> — albeit He is not the Christian God and the Babis do not call Him Father — has a mind
> towards men, and has not left and will not leave Himself without a witness among them.
> The Rev. James W. Hawkes of Hamadan, has called attention to the fact that only Moslems
> and Jews have attached themselves to Babism. None of the members of the Syrian or
> Gregorian Churches in Persia have done so, for the reason, he feels, that Babism has had
> nothing to offer even to these decayed Christian Churches. Their members have already,
> even in their present degeneracy, as much spiritual freedom as Babism offers, and as has
> proved so attractive to those bound under the burden of Islam and Judaism. Mr. Hawkes
> states that his observation leads him to regard the strength of Babism as lying in its offer of
> some freedom coupled with its compromise with old forms which the believer can maintain
> though disbelieving in them, and thus save himself from annoyance or persecution.
> It should be added that Babism has rendered a service which scarcely needed to be
> rendered, but which is not without its use. It has shown once more that Mohammedanism is
> utterly unadaptive. Hinduism absorbs the movements that grow up in hostility to it or revolt
> against it. Christian doctrine has embraced school after school of thought that has arisen;
> but Islam is unbending, incapable of expanse. Behaism teaches to-day what all the centuries
> have taught since Mohammed arose, that there is death for man in Islam but not life, and
> that all who believe in a living world must work and pray for the release from the throats of
> all Moslems of the stiffened clutch of the hands of the dead Prophet, “the great Arabian.”
> But not all has been said when we have pointed out the service rendered to Christian
> missions by the religion of the Bab and Beha. There is a balance on the other side. For
> Babism is not so much a
> 
> [page 158]
> 
> preparation for Christianity as a supersession of it. It knows of Christ and supplants Him. It
> has weighed His claims and seeks to advance stronger ones.87
> Of course the Bab himself knew as much of the Christian Scriptures and the Christian
> religion as he would learn from the Koran, and although that information is very
> unsatisfactory, it is considerable. But he knew more than this. At Shiraz he had
> opportunities for intercourse with Jews, and “through Protestant missionary translations he
> became acquainted with the Gospels.”88 And the influence of his acquaintance with
> Christianity is evident both in his own words and in what is related of his life. Thus he is
> reported to have healed a child with a diseased head by drawing a handkerchief over it.89
> He was transfigured before his followers, although a muleteer who was along observed
> 
> See the paper by Dr. Geo. W. Holmes, formerly of Persia, printed on pp. 169-174.
> North American Review, April, 1901, p. 608.
> “Garabed has been able to be out in the villages and small towns most of the time and has had
> some good work. He has met with Babis who at first welcomed him gladly but when he preached,
> refused to have anything more to do with him. ‘We supposed you were come to build us up, but you
> tear us down; we have no use for you and your Gospel.’ Babism is spreading rapidly; they work
> like beavers both day and night and boast of their zeal and sacrifice. I think the elements which give
> it strength are all stolen from Christianity” (Letter from Miss Grettie Y. Holliday of Tabriz, March
> 7, 1902).
> Browne, The New History, p. 221.
> nothing.90 He anticipated martyrdom “that all may know the extent of my patience, and
> contentment and self-sacrifice in the way of God.”91 And he said to his companion in death,
> “Verily Mohammed Ali shall be with us in Paradise.” It was said of him by his disciples
> that the prophecy of the signs which should mark the appearance of the Imam Mahdi were
> fulfilled in him — “In him shall be the perfection of Moses, the preciousness of Jesus and
> the patience of Job,”92 and again of those who would not seek the truth in the Bab,
> “The physician of Love hath the healing breath of
> Christ, and is prone to heal,
> But how can He undertake the cure of a pain
> Which thou dost not feel.”93
> 
> [page 159]
> 
> And not only did the Babis know of Christianity, but they got their doctrine by a long
> inheritance from the early Christian heresies. “I trace their doctrines back,” says Dr.
> Holmes lately of Hamadan, who knows the actual views of the Persian Behais as well as
> any man, “through the Druses, the Ansairiyeh or Nusairiyeh, and the Assassins to the
> Hakemites (the followers of the Fatimite Caliph of Egypt, Hakem B’amr Ullah), to the
> Isma’ilis, and thence back to the Gnostics, Neo-Platonists, etc.”94 And Mirza Kazim Beg
> says of the Bab in summing up his reflections, “We neither consider him as an adventurer
> nor a fanatic, but an eminently moral man, a dreamer brought up in the school of the
> Sheikhies, and possessing some touch of Christianity.” It is possible, too, as Haines
> suggests, that the Sufi influences which shaped Babism run back to some contact with
> Christianity.95 The idea of the Primal Will intermediate between God and man, which the
> Babis got from the Sufis, the Sufis in their turn had got from the Gnostic notion of the
> aeons emanating from the Incomprehensible and Ineffable God.
> 
> Ibid., p. 207.
> Ibid., p. 235.
> Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. 259.
> Ibid., p. 106.
> Browne suggests the heredity of some of the Bab’s ideas and also their occultation in the latest
> development of the faith:
> “These ultra Shiite sects, then, which we have now to consider, and which under the leadership
> of Sinbadh the Magian, al-Muqunna, ‘the Veiled Prophet of Khurasan,’ Babak, and others, caused
> such a commotion in Persia during this period, do but reassert, like the later Isma’ilis, Batinis,
> Carmathians, Assassins, and Hurufis, the same essential doctrines of Anthropomorphism,
> Incarnation, Re-incarnation or ‘Return,’ and Metempsychosis; which doctrines appear to be
> endemic in Persia, and always ready to become epidemic under a suitable stimulus. In our own days
> they appeared again in the Babi movement, of which especially in its earlier form (A.D. 1844- 1852)
> they constituted the essential kernel; though in later time, under the guidance of Beha Ullah (A.D.
> 1892) and now of his son ‘Abbas Effendi, The Most Great Branch’ (who appears to be regarded by
> his followers as a ‘Return’ of Jesus Christ, and is so considered by the now fairly numerous
> adherents of this doctrine in America) they have been relegated to a subordinate, or at least a less
> conspicuous position. The resemblance between these numerous sects, whose history can be clearly
> traced through the last eleven centuries and a half, is most remarkable and extends even to minute
> details of terminology, and to the choice of particular colours (especially red and white) as badges.
> Thus the early Babis like the Mubayyida of the period now under discussion, wore white apparel,
> while they imitated the Muhammira in their fondness for red by their choice of ink of that colour in
> transcribing their books” (Browne, A Literary History of Persia, p. 311f.).
> Haines, Islam as a Missionary Religion, p. 75.
> But the relations of Babism to Christianity go far beyond this. The new religion claims
> to include and supersede the old.96 Accord-
> 
> [page 160]
> 
> “One summer morning last year, at Lake Hopatcong, N. J., one of the children returned to the
> cottage exclaiming, ‘O papa, there is a man here who wants to see you, he has a religion from
> Persia.’ I accordingly went over to the man’s place of business, and found a German, who actually
> professed to be a Babi. His knowledge of the Persian religion was not extensive, but his enthusiasm
> was abundant, and he declared that though the religion was so new, they already had thirty million
> followers! Last winter while I was in Kazvin, the Babis received a letter from the United States,
> telling of the success of their missionary operations in America; at which they rejoiced greatly.
> “Last week one of this sect requested permission to call and talk with us on their religion. We
> sent around for him to come and see us, thinking to get acquainted, and make an appointment for
> the discussion. Thereupon a young man came and from 5 until 10 o’clock P.M., talked a stream of
> parables and figurative illustrations in exposition of their religion. It takes in all the ‘124,000
> prophets,’ accepts equally the sacred books of the Jews, Christians, Moslems and the Bab. When
> properly understood they all agree. The sun sets and it rises again. It is the same sun — Moses set
> and Christ rose — Christ set and Mohammedan rose — Mohammedan set and the Bab rose. They
> are all one, though they appear in a different garb. The rose-bush goes to sleep in the autumn; we
> gather the rose leaves, and preserve somewhat of their fragrance; but in the spring the bush revives
> and we have a fresh rose. When we fail to see that it is the same rose, it is because we do not
> understand aright. On one occasion a Babi opened his discussion with the question: ‘Who
> understood the Old Testament better, the Jews, or the Christians?’ To which I replied the Christians,
> for we understand the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament. The next question was: ‘Who then
> understand the New Testament better, the Christians or the Moslems?’ He was quite put out
> because I would by no means admit that, by parity of reason, the Moslems, because of their later
> book had the advantage of us.
> “The young man, only an artisan (maker of glazed tiles), was so full of talk, that we could
> hardly get a chance to say anything. We, however, insisted that in the later book there was an
> absolute contradiction of the death of Jesus, which is one of the central doctrines of Christianity, but
> he would not admit that there was such a verse in the Koran. He said he was only an ordinary
> workman, and requested permission to bring one of their leaders to see us and talk with us, so we
> set a time.
> “On the day appointed the young man and the leader came, but more than an hour late, for
> which they apologized. This shortened the time for the allotted conference, and it was mutually
> agreed that each side should have half the time. We had thought out a line of discussion. They
> usually begin with a series of examples to show that the language of Scripture is figurative, and thus
> to firmly establish a foundation upon which to base their free use of this means to explain away
> anything that seems to be against their views. They commonly claim that it takes a whole series of
> meetings to show the correctness of their faith.
> “On this occasion, we asked their leader to kindly explain to us their interpretation of certain
> passages relating to the second coming of Christ, which according to their position must have been
> fulfilled by the coming of Mohammed, e.g., I Thess. 4:14-17. He forthwith launched out in a long
> talk to show how the Jews understood their Old Testament. Once or twice we tried to call him back
> to the point before us, but he only approached it near enough to say that clouds, according to
> figurative usage, mean darkness and obscurity. Finding it impossible to bring him to a definite and
> concise statement of their interpretation of this one first passage proposed, we gave up the attempt,
> and let him run on his own way for half an hour. Then we asked him to please state briefly what
> benefits and blessings his religion offers over and above what we already enjoy in Christianity and
> how such benefits and blessings are to be obtained. These questions seemed to take him somewhat
> by surprise, and after some irrelevant remarks about the Jews, he wanted to know what benefit we
> had in religion that the Jews do not have? He did once come near enough to the point to say, that
> the benefits of their religion can only be understood by those who have accepted it. His time being
> up we claimed ours” (Letter from the Rev. J. L. Potter, D.D., of Teheran, Sept., 1901).
> ing to the Behais there have been seven manifestations of the Primal Will, Adam, Noah,
> Abraham, Moses, Christ, Mohammed and Beha, and each manifestation has revealed more
> of the godhead than his predecessor, Beha, revealing the Father Himself, being the supreme
> and final one, the mystery of God referred to in Revelation 10:7. In this the Behais, have
> gone beyond the original teaching of the Bab, and in reality have made out of Babism a
> new religion, the first and absolute requirement of which is faith in Beha as God.
> 
> [page l6l]
> 
> As his followers say “Beha is Christ returned again.”97 “Christ returns to you as Beha with
> angels, with clouds, with the sound of trumpets. His angels are His messengers, the clouds
> are the doubts which prevent your recognizing Him; the sound of the trumpets is the sound
> of the proclamation which you now hear.”98
> This allegorical interpretation of the signs which were to accompany Christ’s return,
> betrays the whole Behai method, and illustrates the difficulty met in endeavouring to
> present historical Christianity to them. Every manifestation of God, such as Beha claimed
> to be, is the final authority in interpreting the texts of the Koran, the Babi books and the
> Scriptures relating to himself. “He therefore,” says
> 
> [page 162]
> 
> Dr. Holmes, “has only to disclose a given text as referring to himself, and then to give its
> exegesis. This is often directly at variance with its apparent meaning, but this only displays
> more clearly the divine insight of their teacher, that he is able to recognize and appreciate
> words no one else can understand.” And the Rev. J. L. Potter, D.D., of Teheran, writes of
> some recent experiences in the city of Kazvin, “At one time there seemed a bright prospect
> of reaching the Babis, but the expectation was not realized. They seem in some respects to
> present a more hopeful field for mission labour than the Moslems, because of their ready
> acceptance of the Scriptures and certain Christian doctrines rejected by the Mohammedans.
> On the other hand, however, their fanciful interpretation of plain Scripture declarations
> renders it very difficult to make any impression on them by proof texts from the Bible
> whose authority they readily admit. They reply, ‘Yes, but we must break open the word and
> extract its meaning.’ Their hospitality, zeal, and earnestness in the propagation of their
> belief are worthy of praise and emulation; but their easy dissimulation of their faith, even to
> openly cursing the Babis, and the unreliability of their promises, are discouraging.”
> 
> As its followers have learned more of Christianity and Western thought, they have modified its
> statements increasingly and borrowed more and more of Christian tone and statement. The
> development of Beha’s thought is doubtless due not a little to the influence of Christianity (Public
> Opinion, February 21, 1901; Browne, The Episode of the Bab, p. xxxvi). Cf. The New History and
> The Traveller’s Narrative, the latter written under the influence of Beha, the former before his time.
> The latter gives the Bab a far less important place, is free from the miracles and extravagances of
> the former, and shows the pruning and adaptation which development rendered inevitable.
> Browne, A Year Among the Persians, p. 38. “What the Behais believe about the future life is a
> puzzle. I have asked several men who have known the Behai manifestations, and who have read
> their revelations, and one said: ‘In the last analysis they reject the future life.’ Another said: ‘They
> believe in the transmigration of souls.’ A fervent Behai of the old school 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.’ The subject remains obscure to European investigators.
> After twenty years of questioning them, I believe they have no definite teachings on the subject.
> Some believe in a future paradise, others in ‘rijat,’ or return, to earth as men. Certain it is, however,
> that they reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and of the judgment” {Missionary
> Review of the World, February, 1 904, Art. “Babism: A Failure,” by the Rev. S, G. Wilson).
> This wide-spread dissembling of their faith among Babis is intelligible, but its
> influences are disastrous. It was the easiest way to escape from unrelenting persecution. So
> Beha issued a dispensation allowing it. In consequence it is often impossible to discover
> who are Behais in Persia.99 Yet this legality of deception is not new. It was an old Shiah
> doctrine, and it has eaten into the very vitals of the Persian people. “With such phrases as ‘I
> compromise,’ ‘I agree,’ which have now become universal technicalities, do they defame
> God and man, trampling under foot the rights of their fellows, and shutting their eyes to
> equity and justice.”100 The Shiah system of religious reservation and compromise, or
> “takia,” furnished the
> 
> [page 163]
> 
> atmosphere in which Babism has had to live, and it is not strange that it has been affected
> by it from the beginning,101 however nobly many tempted men and women rose above it.
> Indeed the Babis relate that a third man was to have been slain with the Bab and
> Mohammed Ali, but recanted in accordance with a command of the Bab, “the object of this
> command being the preservation of the words and writings of the Bab.” Later, two years
> after this deliverance, Sayid Hosayn, whose opinion had never changed, met a martyr’s
> death in Teheran. The Bab’s character has suffered under this idea of the legality of
> deception and falsehood. And indeed there could be no more fatal point than this in the
> collapse of a religion. Truth, absolute truth, is the first thing, and that Babism has
> surrendered. There are fewer martyrdoms now because there are more liars. A system of
> justified compromise and deceit cannot be a satisfactory preparation for Christianity,
> though it is better than Shiah Mohammedanism, which has the vice of legal compromise
> minus the virtues of Babism. These aspects of Babism are of course suppressed in the
> American version.
> This radical defect and the essential claim of Behaism to supersede Christianity
> constitute vital difficulties in the way of the conversion of the Babis to Christianity. At the
> same time the movement represents a real advance over Shiahism, and an approach to
> Christianity. “They seem to correspond,” writes one of the missionaries, “to the Brahma
> Samaj of India, in trying to hold on to their old faith while drawing largely on the Bible for
> their teachings. At the same time it makes one sad to see them approach so near the truth in
> 
> “The month which I passed in Akka,” says Mr. Phelps, “was the Mohammedan fast of Ramazan,
> which, as all other Mohammedan observances, was scrupulously kept by Abbas Effendi and his
> followers, for the sake of peace, and to avoid the reputation of social innovation” (Phelps, Abbas
> Effendi, p. l01).
> Mr. Phelps says that the Behais in Acre confine their small school to boys. “Girls are excluded
> by Mohammedan custom” (Ibid, p. 110). These easy adaptations to conditions condemned in
> principle but adopted “for the sake of peace” is thoroughly characteristic. Indeed it is probably this
> soft compliance with anything and the absence of the robustness of definite truth and solid principle
> which make Babism attractive to many moral softlings in the West.
> Browne, The New History, p. l0.
> A missionary writes from a city in Persia, “I have had somewhat more opportunity to visit and
> receive Mussulmans in the city than for some years past. With one man of wealth who is related to
> mollahs I have exchanged four visits. He has long known the Gospel, and was greatly impressed
> with one of our missionaries he met years ago on a Black Sea steamer. He says he believes in
> Protestantism as the best religion, and that half the city would profess it were there liberty. (Here
> use the salt cellar.) He also desired me to write to our mujtahids or theological authorities, to get a
> legal decision, that it was lawful for him to be a Christian, without professing the faith publicly, ‘for
> that will mean to us,’ he said, ‘confiscation of my property and death.’ How far does Christianity
> allow takia?”
> many respects, and yet miss it.”102 And another missionary who travels constantly over the
> country says:
> 
> [page 164]
> 
> “Babis are found everywhere. They are zealous in propagating their faith and are
> increasing in numbers. In Mianduab, they enjoy considerable freedom and are now asking
> permission from the Government to build for themselves a house for worship. Because of
> the strength of Babism, there is unusual freedom for preaching the Gospel in Mianduab.
> Our evangelists could preach openly in the bazaars without molestation. The Babis told our
> evangelists that they were grateful to us for spreading the Gospel among Mohammedans for
> it aided their cause. They said that the preaching of the Gospel to Mohammedans resulted
> in making Babis of them and that it was through the reading of our Scriptures that they
> themselves became Babis. That is, Babism is the result of the influence of Christianity on
> Islam. I think there is a measure of truth in this. It is Christianity breaking down Islam. But
> it is too long a step from Islam to Christianity so they come part way and accept Babism. I
> am not hopeless concerning the Babis. They misinterpret Scripture and are self-conceited,
> telling us that we do not understand our own Scriptures. But they are out of the rut of Islam
> and there is some hope of their moving in the right direction. It is no longer unlawful for
> them to search our Scriptures and they are reading them though it be only to seek proofs for
> their preconceptions.”
> 
> It will be interesting to watch the future of the Babi movement. Before Beha died at
> Acre in 1892, he said, “Whosoever lays claim to a matter [i.e., a mission) ere one thousand
> full years have passed, verily he is a lying impostor.” Upon his death his eldest son, Abbas
> Effendi, became the spiritual head of the Behais, and he is now regarded by the vast
> majority of the Behais, in spite of his father’s words, with the same veneration accorded to
> his father. He did not succeed without rivalry to his father’s place, and one of his brothers
> withdrew into retirement, unable to approve of his course. Mr. Phelps in his book, Abbas
> Effendi, presents a different view. He says that Beha had chosen Abbas Effendi as his
> successor and that there is no fraternal disagreement. It was this Abbas Effendi regarding
> whom Mrs. Hearst, of California, after visiting him declared her faith in writing, “I believe
> with all my heart and soul that he is the Master, and I hope that all who call themselves be-
> 
> [page 165]
> 
> lievers will concede to him all the greatness, all the glory, for surely he is the Son of
> God.”103 The other faction of Babis, represented for a time here in America, by Mr.
> Kheiralla, holds that Beha Ullah is the only one who should be worshipped. There are now,
> accordingly, various factions, the largest by far being followers of Abbas Effendi, “Our
> 
> “At Assadabad,” writes Miss Annie Montgomery of Hamadan, regarding a missionary tour to
> Kermanshah, “it seemed as if not any women except those of the household, were coming near us;
> so I started out to look for my hearers. I had not gone far when a woman came running after me and
> saying, ‘Do you not know that one of your people is living here? And she rushed out and insisted on
> my going into her house. Her husband and several women came in, and I found she was a woman
> who had heard the Gospel. I had an hour of reading and prayer with them, though in spite of their
> profession of being Christians I fear they are all Behais.” This incident is proof of much that has
> been said. Babism had made these people friendly to Christianity, and given them a feeling of
> kinship to it.
> New York Sun, quoted in Public Opinion, February 21, 1901.
> Lord,” as Mr. Arthur P. Dodge, the founder of the New England Magazine, and a Behai
> convert, calls him.104
> 
> In reply to a recent request for information as to the progress and character of Behaism in
> America, Mr. Dodge writes telling where meetings were at the time held in New York City, and
> saying in addition:
> “First, permit me to say, Babism was so-called after the holy personage known as The Bab
> (signifying Gate or Door), who came as the forerunner of the Greatest Manifestation of God ever
> given to the world, in like manner as came John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of
> Jesus Christ. The Bab appeared and began his work of announcing the coming of Him whom God
> shall manifest, in 1844. In 1852, this great and bold manifestation of God was first proclaimed in
> the personage of Beha Ullah (Glory be to him!) the mission of the Bab having terminated, hence
> Behaism. The whole grand work is in fulfillment of prophecy in both the Old Testament and the
> New, and the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and now is The Day of The Father, while the preceding
> Day or Cycle was The Day of the Son (Jesus Christ, Glory be unto Him!). The seals upon the Holy
> Books, referred to in Daniel, have now been removed and all is being made clear. The Spiritual
> Kingdom has literally been established on earth, and now is the time when man is to be known by
> his works. Our believers hold to the Positive Reality of actual Christianity, and we pray God that
> we are sincere when we declare that we are striving to live the LIFE! Our aim is to love and serve
> God in Spirit and in Truth, and we know that we cannot do so unless we love and serve our fellow
> man. We believe that the glad tidings must be and always should have been given ‘without money
> and without price,’ as commanded by Jesus Christ.”
> This is a good illustration of the way such religions are metamorphosed in America.
> Behaism has already begun to hold its Summer Conferences in America. At the same time, it is
> not Persian Behaism, but rather a sort of easy interest in all religions and a feeling of geniality to
> all, ignoring the inconvenient teachings of the Bab and Beha and their followers. The prospectus of
> the Green Acre Conferences held at Eliot, Maine, in July and August, 1903, was as follows:
> “Believing that the Revelation of the Beha Ullah of Persia is the announcement of this great
> Day — the beginning of the Golden Age foretold by all seers, sung by poets — and finding that it
> provides a platform on which the Jew, the Christian (both Catholic and Protestant), the
> Mohammedan, as well as members of all other great religious bodies can stand together in love and
> harmony, each holding the form which best nourishes his individual life, an opportunity will be
> given to all who desire to study its message.”
> Dr. Potter gives an interesting account of the way stories of American acceptance of Babism
> are reported in Persia:
> “The Behais are at work in the United States and reports of their efforts are circulated in
> Persia. They announce that an ‘American Princess’ has accepted their faith, and can show the copy
> of an American paper with the picture of a lady and her declaration of belief. Her photograph is also
> shown here. They have also the photograph of a large group of their followers in front of a
> residence, said to be in Chicago. What they say of their work in Cincinnati may be of interest, so I
> translate part of the report which has come into my hands:
> “‘My spirit thy sacrifice. I wrote you an account of my arrival in Cincinnati; please God, it
> reached you.
> “‘Now I humbly submit that to-day is the seventh day since my arrival in this city. In these
> days, by night and by day, we have been busy in meeting friends and converts. When we saw the
> spirit of inquiry and devotion beyond description in the friends, we determined to remain here some
> weeks, and the friends gave notice to outside souls, that they might be drawn (to the faith).
> “‘This plan was accepted with completeness of devotion and some, whose houses were in
> distant sections, left their houses and took quarters in Laconda, which is the residence of this
> humble servant, that they might be present all the time to hear the new doctrine. They also rented a
> large place and hired furniture and held meetings every night; and by the action of the deliberative
> assembly, which I established for them, other matters were, by the grace of God, regulated and
> settled; that all the congregations which should be gathered in other cities might receive the desired
> writings and messages.
> [page l66]
> 
> That Babism will run a brief course and amount to little in America goes without saying,
> even in the metamorphosed form which it wears here. What makes it attractive to
> Americans is probably the loose eclecticism which it seems to have assumed in Abbas
> Effendi’s hands. The prevalent dislike of objective constraints, of exactness in truth, of the
> meaning of Christ’s words, “I came to set men at variance,” and the soft indiscriminateness
> of so many minds, coupled with a reaction against the historic, scientific spirit account for
> much of its currency here. “Another characteristic of Behaism,” says Mr. Phelps in his
> defence of Abbas Effendi and his system, “as refreshing and
> 
> [page 167]
> 
> attractive as it is striking to the mind accustomed to the dogmatic narrowness of the modern
> Christian Church, is its marvellous spirit of liberality. It recognizes every other religion as
> equally divine in origin with itself. It professes only to renew the message formerly given
> by the Divine Messengers who founded those religions, and which has been more or less
> forgotten by men. If revelations have differed it has only been in degree, determined in the
> several cases by the differing capacities of men in different stages of human development to
> receive them. No man is asked to desert his own faith; but only to look back to its fountain-
> head and discern, through the mists and accumulations of time, the true spirit of its
> founders.”105
> Again Mr. Phelps says:
> 
> “The characteristic of Abbas Effendi, regarded as a religious leader, which is at once
> the most striking, the most attractive, the most impressive, is his generous and tolerant
> liberality. It is disappointing to find that narrowness and intolerance have already shown
> themselves in the teachings of some of his followers — a perversion and degradation of
> true religion which is seen to be an almost inevitable tendency of human nature in all ages
> of the world, and which most religions have suffered in the hands of their adherents. The
> chief glory of Behaism is that its true spirit, as exemplified in its Great Apostle, is utterly
> free from it.
> 
> “‘But a telegram from Port Said arrived, that according to the blessed command, I must go to
> New York and the intention of remaining here was changed to that of journeying. At once I notified
> the friends that I must depart. On hearing this, they were much affected, but since it was the blessed
> command, they heartily accepted it. This humble servant promised to send them always the new
> messages and the deliverances, translated.
> “‘One of the converts, Mr. Tasun, a learned and eloquent man well informed in the customary
> history and sciences, and formerly a salaried officer of the Government, in order to receive
> instruction, gave up his office and went to Chicago for a time, and having gained some
> acquaintance with the new doctrine, is now teaching history, etc., in one of the churches to a
> congregation of about three hundred.’
> “This gentleman is reported as having introduced the Persian missionary as an Oriental
> philosopher, who desired to converse with them, wherefore they all rose and saluted him, and he
> spoke to them for an hour and a half. All present manifested their pleasure, delight, desire and
> progress, and requested that meetings be appointed that they might acquire further information of
> these wonderful matters and new doctrines.
> “As the missionary was under the necessity of leaving Cincinnati, he referred them to the
> gentleman above mentioned, who has some of the new books and teachings, and to whom
> additional matters are to be sent.”
> Phelps, Abbas Effendi, p. xxxvii.
> “I shall state at length his attitude in this respect in a subsequent chapter, here merely
> mentioning two incidents, illustrating it, which were related to me in Akka.
> “One was that of a gentleman who wrote to Abbas Effendi to this effect: That he
> recognized him as a man of great spiritual force, and who, in urging upon men the
> observance of the Law of Love, was doing much in the service of humanity; that he desired
> to work with him and for him; but that also he (Abbas Efifendi) had said some things with
> which he did not agree, and that he himself had some spiritual light, which he did not wish
> to surrender.
> “Abbas Effendi replied that he welcomed him as a co-worker; that he asked him to
> give up nothing; that he approved of his continuing to adhere to any religious faith with
> which he might be associated, and that the one thing necessary was to love God above all
> things and seek Him.
> “The other case was that of a lady who was visiting Abbas Effendi in Akka. She had
> accepted him as her religious teacher, and desired to assist in spreading his teachings. When
> about to return to her home, she told him that her associations were all in the orthodox
> Christian Church, and that her friends would be repelled by the idea of a new religion. He
> advised her to return as a Christian, to remain in the Christian Church, and to teach what
> she had learned as the true teaching of Christ.”106
> 
> [page l68]
> 
> The novelty of this will soon be over, and the people who did not have sufficient
> discernment to discover the truth that will satisfy them in Christianity, will not find it in
> Beha Ullah or Abbas Effendi. What the religion of the Bab, in this form or that, may
> accomplish in Persia and for Persia, cannot be foreseen.
> The question of more vital importance for us is, whether a great movement betraying a
> deep hunger in human hearts for the fellowship of a living, loving God, a movement
> embracing a million of our fellow men groping blindfold about the great altar stairs of
> heaven, shall be allowed to spend itself and disappear, or drop back to the level of life from
> which it sprang without receiving its answer from those who know that in Jesus Christ, the
> Eternal Word, the only begotten Son of the Father, there is life for all who are standing with
> the Bab, at the Gate.
> 
> Supplement to Chapter III
> 
> The Religion of the Bab
> 
> I
> 
> Dr. George W. Holmes, who was for more than twenty years one of the most
> successful and trusted missionaries in Persia and who is one of the best authorities on
> Babism has kindly answered the following questions:
> 
> 1. “Has Christianity anything to do with the origin of the Babi movement?”
> 
> Ibid., pp. 95-97.
> Christianity has much to do with it. Persia never accepted Islam from conviction, and
> educated Persians are, as a rule, quite indifferent to its claims upon their consciences,
> however ready they may be to yield to its claims as a political and social system. But the
> horde of mollahs and hereditary sayids are interested in keeping the faith pure and
> orthodox, and all attempts within the fold to soften the asperities of the orthodox faith have
> always been met by them with bitter opposition and there is now a reaction towards
> Christianity on the part of many who feel the need of a God less unapproachable than the
> God of Islam, one less exacting in points of ceremonial, and having more of human
> sympathy. Sufiism is too impersonal, Christianity makes too great demands upon the will
> and affections in working righteousness. But the need of a God manifest in the flesh is
> satisfied in Beha, who, claiming to be the Divine Essence, present in all preceding
> manifestations, now becomes the culmination of the progressive series by appearing
> Himself in Person, thus fulfilling all things written in the Law and the Prophets concerning
> the Messiah and His Kingdom and appearing as the God Man, the revealer of God to man
> and the mediator between man and the great abstraction whom Mohammedans are taught to
> adore and to obey, but whom they are not expected to love. And so it is that whenever a
> Mahdi arises in Mohammedan lands, he finds multitudes ready to welcome his message and
> to receive him as their deliverer. And so it is natural that in order to meet the need which all
> feel who have turned in disgust from the dry husks of Islam, the coming one should assume
> the garb and arrogate to himself the claims of and profess to dispense the blessings which
> pertain only to the Son of God. The whole Behai movement is in fact, whatever may have
> been in the mind of its originator the Bab, a counterfeit of the Messiahship of Christ. At
> least this is the side of it that is turned towards both Christians and Jews. The system
> 
> [page 170]
> 
> has a facet for each of the world religions, appealing with the Moslem to the Koran, with
> the Hindoo to the Vedas, with the Chinese to Confucius, etc. But the appeal is in fact to the
> original autographs, whenever there is anything found in any of these religious writings that
> fails to sustain or that antagonizes Beha’s claims. It is the true Torah and Injil, the true
> Koran and Zend Avesta and Vedas that so unequivocally indorse Beha. Some things appear
> in them now which seem to oppose his claims, but these are either spurious additions, or by
> proper interpretation are shown to sustain Beha even more strongly than the passages which
> are less obscurely worded. All that relates to the second coming of Christ in the Old
> Testament or the New, is bodily appropriated to himself by Beha and everything in our
> Scriptures relating to God is boldly applied to himself. The Behais charge upon the
> Christians the same spiritual blindness in their refusal to recognize and accept Beha as God
> as that which prevented the Jews from recognizing their Messiah when He came to them.
> So they charge upon the Moslem the same folly in their rejection of Beha as that which
> possessed Jews and Christians together in refusing to see in Mohammed the prophet like
> unto Moses whom the great lawgiver had so long ago foretold. They discover a very
> plausible analogy between their relations to the Christians now, and that of the early
> Christians to the Jews. As the failure of the Jews to see the Messiah then was due to
> spiritual blindness, and was to be overcome by yielding submission to the Holy Spirit, who
> would then lead them into all truth, so now, submission to the spirit of Beha is essential for
> one who would attain to a knowledge of the truth in him. Without faith it is impossible to
> please God. All that is taught in the New Testament about the fruits of the Spirit, about the
> necessity of the new birth, etc., is made prominent in their teachings also. The failure of the
> many attempts to reconcile Christianity with pagan cults by gnostic pretenders in the past,
> could in no wise deter Beha Ullah from making the attempt anew with the help of a cement
> of Islamic theology, for it is probable that in common with most Orientals, he knows
> nothing of the history either of nations or religions, except such meagre and distorted
> statements as could be obtained from Mohammedan authorities. Kheiralla with the aid of
> his American coadjutor, has worked into his book many western opinions, but he probably
> obtained most of these in America. He had abundant opportunity, however, of learning of
> the teachings of the Gnostics as Mohammedan writings abound in denunciations and
> refutations of the doctrines of the Manichaeans.
> 
> 2. “What effect will the movement have in influencing Persians in their attitude
> towards Christianity?”
> It will bring a few nearer to Christ. By far the greater number of its adherents will be
> brought into more active antagonism to Christianity than before. As Moslems it was
> possible for them to recognize grave defects in their religion as compared with Christianity.
> In Beha these defects are in their eyes remedied and they have, as they believe, secured all
> that was revealed to the Christian not only, but have gone far in advance and have that in
> hand for which the Church of Christ has watched and waited so long unsatisfied, the second
> coming of the Lord. To the Behai as to the early Christian, the Lord is at hand, for though
> Beha has “withdrawn his presence,” it is only for a short time when the fullness of the
> blessing will come in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the earth. His witnesses
> go out into the world speaking that they do know and testifying that they have seen, and
> their message and their testimony is received as gladly, they claim, as was that of the
> apostles by the people to whom they went. Though they have no resurrection other than a
> re-birth into the present world, and no heaven where there is no sin, the message comes to
> them in some sense as glad tidings, and they are zealous to go forth and make it known to
> the world. For they find relief from the burdensome exactions both of Islam and Judaism,
> and have not to meet the Christian demand for personal holiness, and
> 
> [page 171]
> 
> as they are taught to believe that Christianity is but an inferior stage of development of their
> own faith which has had its day and been abrogated, the Behai can see no philosophical
> reason for giving up his new-found faith and yielding obedience to Christ.
> But even Christ made not so unqualified a demand for the surrender to Himself of the
> will of His followers as Beha, for Christ offers testimony to His claims which does not
> suppress, but rather appeals to the reason, whereas Beha demands a blind faith, which
> independently of all testimony, accepts him as God. Christ says, “If any man will do His
> (the Father’s) will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of
> Myself.” Beha says, “If any man will do my will, he shall know of the doctrine.” Christ’s
> appeal is to the Father in His witness of the Word and the witness of the Spirit. Beha’s
> appeal is wholly to his own word, and to his own arbitrary and forced interpretations of the
> Word of God, which interpretations as he states, find their sanction solely in his own
> authority. Being God (an assumption so far offering no proof but his own word) he is the
> author of the Scriptures and therefore their infallible interpreter. It follows that whatever
> interpretation he chooses to give to any text is law and gospel to his fellow men, though it
> contradict the meaning of the simplest passages. Therefore whenever he makes the claim
> that a given prophecy relates to himself, there is no further room for argument. When he
> says that a given text has not a literal but a figurative interpretation (as for instance, that
> Jesus raised Lazarus and others from the dead), no man may question that deliverance, for
> he who inspired the writing is he who has given its meaning. He then offers all the Old and
> New Testament writings and equally the Koran, the Vedas and all other religious books as
> proofs of his claims. The neophyte sees that the conclusion is irresistible, not recognizing
> that the major premise on which it rests is a mere assumption. He has committed his will
> and reason as well to the keeping of his master, and must necessarily accept with full
> assurance of faith all his master’s teachings. Should he question in the slightest degree any
> of these conclusions, he is told that he is yet in darkness and that without faith no one can
> enter into the light. There must be absolute surrender of the will or no enlargement of the
> understanding. This is plainly the livery of heaven. The Behais talk as glibly of the gifts and
> grace of the Spirit, and as beautifully as any Christian saint could do. It is all counterfeit but
> a counterfeit which deceives the ones who put it forth as well as those who accept it, and is
> one very difficult to expose among a people deficient in the logical faculty and having the
> critical sense almost wholly undeveloped.
> Though there is an outward semblance of fellowship for Christians on the part of
> Behais, there can be little doubt from the intolerance they show to those who recant, that
> should they gain power enough they would be as ready to persecute Christians as was
> Mohammed to put to death the Jews of Medina. Nevertheless I believe that Behaism is
> destined to prove a solvent for Islam which will eventually assist materially in breaking
> down the resistance of that stubborn and unyielding system of error, itself then perishing
> also in the ruin it has helped to bring about. Indirectly it will thus hasten the triumph of the
> Cross of Christ, though only as the wrath of man is made to serve God’s purposes.
> 
> 3. “What should be its effect on our apologetic statements of Christianity to
> Mohammedans, Behais, etc.?”
> They must be re-stated. The traditional methods of exegesis as employed by many of
> our helpers, simply play into the hands of the Behais. Though he had probably encountered
> only the less well informed of Christian converts in Syria and Persia, I think it was not
> entirely an idle boast of one of the Behai missionaries at Hamadan when he told me that he
> had overthrown every Christian controversialist whom he had yet encountered. It is true
> that he later said the
> 
> [page 172]
> 
> same thing about me, but if so, he had to make new breaches in the wall before he gained
> entrance. If we are at liberty to interpret the Scriptures literally when it suits the
> convenience of our argument to do so, or figuratively at will, regardless of context or of
> historic setting or perspective, then we are compelled to allow them the same liberty: and
> they can easily discount us in such a contest, since they know nothing of history and care
> less, and they have a facility in basing a fanciful interpretation on the numerical value of a
> letter or a name, or on an assumed grammatical relation of the different parts of a sentence,
> to which a western expert in exegesis could never hope to attain.
> The missionary who is called upon to make apologetic statements of Christianity to
> Behais must make sure that he himself knows what Christianity is. He must have seen with
> his own eyes, and have heard with his own ears Him of whom he speaks. This is equally
> true in all Christian work. But in this kind of controversy it is necessary that one should see,
> not alone for one’s self but for one’s antagonist also, if he is to be convinced. The other has
> not my faith which makes all too clear to me that which is all mist to him. One must see
> with the other’s eyes as well as his own, or he cannot detect and expose the fallacies which
> have entangled him. When the reciprocal vision is exercised one will often find also that
> what he had thought to be a rock in his own foundation is just what the other had seen it to
> be, a mere bank of sand. Much of the current allegorical and figurative interpretations of
> prophecy are as beautiful and in such a discussion as unsubstantial as the rainbow. The
> undoubted value to the Christian of such interpretations as aids to faith and for edification
> rests on another basis.
> We must go down deeper than this if we expect to carry conviction to the hearts of
> those we wish to lead in the way of life. If I teach that the will must be absolutely
> surrendered to Christ before one can expect to attain to the knowledge of the truth, that if
> one wills to do His will he shall know of the doctrine, I must be prepared to show at the
> same time why the Behai should not apply the same principle to himself in his relation to
> him whom he supposes to be greater than Christ. This takes us back to the ultimate
> principles of evidence, to the psychological constitution of the human understanding, and
> the recognition of its needs which we find in the Bible. Does the Bible represent God as
> demanding of us a blind faith in His Word, unsupported by adequate evidence? Or does it
> represent Him as offering such evidence and constantly appealing to our reason to
> differentiate between the true and the false? Does Christ demand faith in His own
> unsupported Word or does He repeatedly appeal to the witnesses of the Father, of the
> Word, and of His own works? — the witness of the Father as it seems to me not in His
> audible words, which were not heard by the multitude, but in the witness of His spirit in the
> heart of each one who was willing to recognize His voice there, telling them that the Christ
> recognized by their understanding answered perfectly to the highest and holiest image of
> God which the Spirit had imprinted on their hearts, fulfilling their most perfect conceptions
> of what God ought to be and holding up Him whom they saw in life as a companion picture
> to their inward vision of Him. If I teach that Christianity consists in a body of doctrine, I
> must then be prepared to show, not alone to my own satisfaction but to that of my hearer,
> wherein it is so immeasurably superior to the body of doctrine which he has accepted that it
> must instantly claim his allegiance. Possibly I may not succeed at once in convincing him
> that it is not his own creed that I am offering him, that it is not a part of, and included in his
> own more comprehensive declaration of faith.
> If I teach that the Christian religion does not consist of dogma, but in allegiance to a
> Divine Person, I see him smile for his religion consists wholly in allegiance to a Divine
> Person spelled with a larger P. How shall I differentiate the True from the false? Easily
> enough for the satisfaction of my own heart
> 
> [page 173]
> 
> and my own understanding, but how shall I see what it really is that he sees and is deceived
> by, and how shall I clear away the mists which prevent his seeing with my vision? Surely
> nothing but the illumination of the Holy Spirit can enable him to see, but am I prepared to
> be used of the Spirit for that purpose? If so I must not only pray but labour to see true
> myself, so that I may see true for him also.
> The character of Christ is too marvellous a thing, too great in its quality and its
> complexity for any single generation or age to see it in its entirety. This proposition no
> Christian could think of questioning nor that all the ages past and future could not know
> Him perfectly. He can only be studied in detail, and what our fathers saw, though it helps us
> also to see, does not help us in the same degree as it did them. For we necessarily see Him
> from a somewhat different angle. We should take account of this and remember that
> however much we may be able to enter by reason of heredity or environment or sympathy
> into our fathers’ vision of God, we cannot accept their own point of view, and if we say we
> see just as they did, we are probably deceiving ourselves as well as others. For no two
> persons ever yet saw exactly the same mountain or the same grain of sand. No two have
> seen just the same Christ. To each believer is given the new name known only to himself
> and to Christ, and each one sustains a different relation to Him from every other individual.
> We are still less likely to make unbelievers see just as our fathers saw, since, if they are
> also Orientals, they are subjects of a different heredity and environment, which necessarily
> affect to some extent their visual field. Let us recognize this and let us make a worthy effort
> to discover the point of view of those we would teach, so that, when we talk with them of
> something we have both seen with the eyes of the understanding, we may make sure that
> we have both seen approximately the same thing, and that we are not each talking of a
> wholly different thing, supposing it to be the same. Do not many of our controversies arise
> from similar causes? How then are we to see our faith as it is, to get down to the foundation
> principles, to divest it of the things that are not essential to its integrity, but which may be
> accretions which obscure the clearness of its definition and mar its symmetry? I cannot
> answer the question but I am quite certain we shall not accomplish it unless we recognize
> the need, and make an honest effort to provide for it. For myself I have found some help in
> reverting to first principles, and in following them out, observing how Christ in His
> personality and in His teachings seems to fit in with and satisfy the nature of things, as no
> other human being has ever done. Surely the Christian who has once entered into vital
> personal relations of fellowship with his Lord, requires for himself no other evidence,
> sometimes feels indeed as though other evidence were an offence to his understanding. This
> will doubtless in the long run prove the most convincing also to others, through the
> influence of the life in Christ lived before the world, but another line of argument is also
> needed in apologetics. One great difficulty in dealing with the Behais is that whatever we
> say of Christ that commends itself to them, they immediately transfer to Beha so that we
> are in a sense placed in the attitude of ourselves indirectly glorifying him. May God give us
> all His wisdom that we may be able to confound the wisdom of this world with all its
> sophistries! But no statement of Christian doctrines can avail to draw any one to Christ so
> long as there is no sense of sin in the soul and this touches the weak spot in the experience
> of so many Orientals, converts and others. With Mohammedans and Jews alike sin is
> thought of rather as a violation of the ceremonial law than as an attitude of antagonism
> towards God, and in this respect Oriental Christians till their hearts have been touched by
> the Spirit of God, are not essentially different from the others. There can never be any
> evolution of Christian doctrine, nor any evolution of the natural man, which will do away
> with the necessity of repentance for, and re-
> 
> [page 174]
> 
> pudiation of sin as an essential condition of salvation, and it should be our aim, no less than
> it has been the aim of the fathers, though it may be by different lines of approach, to
> awaken in the heart a sense of the sinfulness of sin and the need of a Saviour.
> 
> II
> 
> THE BABITES107
> 
> BY HENRY HARRIS JESSUP, D.D.
> From the Outlook, June 22, 1901
> 
> In the summer of 1897 an aged Persian Sheikh came to the American Press in Beirut,
> bringing a large sheet of pasteboard on which he wished a map to be mounted. On one side
> it was glazed with black varnish, and had inscribed on it in elegant Persian script in gold
> letters the Arabic words “Ya Beha el Abha,” “O Glory of the most Glorious,” the Babite
> motto. Our clerk, perceiving this, asked the Sheikh for the card, and said he would mount
> the map on a new and better one.
> That Beha motto now hangs in my study. The old Sheikh said, in explanation of his
> scheme of mounting a map on the face of this beautiful motto, “I have had this hanging on
> the wall of my room and prayed to it for twelve years, and found it to be vanity and
> worthless. I now prefer to read the Bible.”
> Ever since the first Babite reform movement in Persia in 1845, the Christian world has
> hoped that some of its liberal tenets might lead the Persian people to Christianity. But thus
> far the hope has not been realized. Those who read the Bible seem to prefer to find an
> occult inner double meaning in the simplest language, and construct for themselves a kind
> of mystic religious philosophy in which the Persians delight.
> According to the best authorities, Babism arose as follows:
> Mirza Ali Mohammed appeared in Shiraz in 1845, a pupil of Sheikh Ahmed Zein ed
> Din, who taught a mixture of Sufiism, mystic philosophy, and Moslem Shiite law, and said
> 
> I have preserved Dr. Jessup’s spelling of proper names in this article.
> that the absent Mahdi, now in a spiritual world called Jabalka and Jabersa, would soon
> appear, and that he was the Bab or Door of the Mahdi. He then made up a system composed
> of Moslem, Nusairiyeh, Jewish, and heathen doctrines; and then claimed to be Bab ed Din,
> and afterwards the Nukta or Centre and Creator of truth, and then that he was Deity
> personified; then that he was the prophet Mohammed, and produced a new book called the
> Beyan, which is the Babite Bible, in twenty thousand verses, Arabic and Persian.
> Complaint was made of its bad grammar and that this is a sign of imperfection. He
> explained the ungrammatical Arabic by the fact that the words and letters rebelled and
> sinned in a previous world, then transmigrated to this world, and, as a punishment for sin in
> a previous existence, were put under grammatical rules; but he in mercy forgave all sinners,
> even to the letters of the alphabet, and released them, and now they can go as they please!
> He was followed by tens of thousands. In 1849 he was killed, with multitudes of his
> followers. Among his followers was a beautiful and eloquent woman named Selma, who
> divorced her husband and followed Ali Mohammed
> 
> [page 175]
> 
> the Bab, who styled her Kurret el Ain (light or refreshment to the eye). Ali Mohammed
> raised an army to fight the Persian troops, but was caught and strangled.
> Before Ali Mohammed’s death he said his successor would be a young disciple named
> Yahya. This Mirza Yahya succeeded him, taking the title of “Subh Azel” — morning of
> eternity.
> The Bab made the month nineteen days, answering to the nineteen members of the
> sacred hierarchy of which the Bab is the chief.
> Subh Azel was the fourth in the hierarchy, and on the death of the Bab Ali
> Mohammed, and the two others above him on the list, he became chief of the sect by
> regular promotion. Upon the outbreak of persecution against them, Subh Azel and his older
> brother Mirza Hassein Ali, who was styled Beha Allah, fled to Baghdad and remained from
> 1853 to 1864, then to Adrianople. Beha had persuaded Subh Azel to retire and conceal
> himself from human gaze, saying to the people that he was present but invisible. Beha then
> claimed the succession, and two hostile parties arose, Azelites and Behaites. They were
> both then exiled (1864) to Adrianople, where plots and poisoning among the two parties,
> and anonymous letters sent to the Sultan charging each other with political conspiracies, led
> the Sultan to exile (in 1866) Subh Azel to Famagusta in Cyprus, and Beha Allah to Acre.
> Four of the Azelites were sent with Beha, and their leader claimed that Beha was
> instrumental in having all of them assassinated in Acre.
> Subh Azel died before 1880, and Beha in 1892.
> Beha left three sons — Abbas Effendi, now sixty; Mohammed Ali, now forty-five; and
> Bedea, now aged thirty-five. Mohammed Ali claims that the father Beha appointed him
> spiritual head and Abbas secular head, but Abbas has usurped both. They are now divided,
> the two younger brothers being in a bitter lawsuit with Abbas, who has all the prestige of
> holding the funds, and the reputation among his followers of being a re-incarnation of
> Christ.
> To understand Babism, we should remember the sources from which it was derived.
> Jemal ed Din, the Afghani, says that its author borrowed from Hinduism, Pantheism,
> Sufiism, and the doctrines of Nusairiyeh. The Nusairiyeh of northern Syria believe in one
> God, self-existent and eternal. This God manifested himself seven times in human form,
> from Abel to Ali, son of Abi Talib, which last manifestation was the most perfect.
> At each of these manifestations the Diety made use of two other persons, the first
> created out of the light of his essence and by himself, and the second created by the first.
> The Diety is called the Maana — the meaning or reality of all things; the second, the
> Ism — name or veil, because by it the Maana conceals its glory, while, by it, it reveals itself
> to men. The third, the Bab — Door, because through it is the entrance to the knowledge of
> the two former.
> The following table shows the seven trinities of the Nusairiyeh:
> 
> Maana.                 Ism.                      Bab.
> 1.     Abel                       Adam             Gabriel
> 2.     Seth                       Noah             Yayeel
> 3.     Joseph                     Jacob            Ham ibn Cush
> 4.     Joshua                     Moses            Daw
> 5.     Asaph                      Solomon          Abdullad ibn Simaan
> 6.     Simon (Cephas)             Jesus            Rozabah
> 7.     Ali                        Mohammed         Salman el Farisee
> 
> After Ali, the Diety manifested himself in the Imams, in some of them totally and in others
> partially, but Ali is the eternal Maana, the divine essence, and the
> 
> [page 176]
> 
> three are inseparable trinity. Now add to this the mystic teaching of the Mohammedan
> system of Sufiism or Tusow-wof.
> Pure Sufiism teaches that only God exists. He is in all things and all things are in Him.
> All visible and invisible things are in emanation from Him and are not really distinct from
> Him. Religions are matters of indifference. There is no difference between good and evil,
> for all is reduced to Unity, and God is the real author of the acts of men. Man is not free in
> his action. By death the soul returns to the bosom of Divinity, and the great object of life is
> absorption into the divine nature.
> Bear in mind also the doctrine of the Persian or Shiah Moslems, that Ali was the first
> legitimate Imam, or Caliph of Mohammed, and that he existed before Adam, and that the
> twelfth Imam, Mohammed Abdal Kasim, was the Mahdi, and that he is now concealed in
> some secret place and will appear again on earth. Add to this the highly imaginative and
> mystic character of the Persian mind, its fondness for poetry and religious extravagance,
> and you have a preparation for the appearance of a man who had the intellect, strong will,
> and abhorrence of sham to make him a leader among his fellows.
> Abbas Effendi, the oldest son of Beha, is now living in Haifa, with about seventy or
> eighty of his Persian followers, who are called Behaites. Nothing is heard of Subh Azel or
> his followers.
> Some years since, Dr. Ibrahim Kheirulla, an educated Syrian of great mental acumen,
> conceived the idea of introducing Beha-Babism into the United States. He declared Beha to
> be the Messiah returned to earth and Abbas to be his reincarnation. He visited Abbas, and
> from time to time, as his accredited agent and promoter, has brought his disciples, chiefly
> American women, to visit Abbas, and some of them at least have bowed down and
> worshipped him as the Messiah.
> A cousin to Dr. Kheirulla who is clerk of the American Press in Beirut has given me
> the following statement:
> “The Doctor, after the death of his first wife in Egypt in 1882, married first a Coptic
> widow in El Fayum, whom he abandoned, and then married a Greek girl whom he also
> abandoned, and who was still living in 1897 in Cairo. He was at the World’s Parliament in
> Chicago, and tried to promote several mechanical inventions, as a rubber boot, envelopes,
> buttons, etc. At one time he was worth three thousand pounds. He then obtained the degree
> of Doctor, and taught mental philosophy. He then helped a Greek priest, Jebara, in
> publishing a book on the unity of Islam and Christianity, which fell flat and had no
> influence on the public mind. He then opened a medical clinic to cure nervous diseases by
> the laying on of hands and reading from Psalm 29:7, the words, ‘The voice of the Lord
> divideth the flames of fire,’ etc., etc. Then he went to Chicago and tried trade, and then
> teaching, and preaching, and pretty much everything else. He is a smart talker, full of
> plausible argument, and can make white appear black. Of late he has had little to do with
> religion. It can be said to his credit that, after receiving aid in the Beirut College, he paid
> back the money advanced to him.”
> Up to last summer he had the confidence of Abbas Effendi and represented him in the
> United States. The Egyptian Gazette of November, 1900, states that Dr. Kheirulla on his
> last visit to Haifa differed with Abbas, claiming that Beha Allah only was the true divinity,
> and Abbas is simply a teacher. Dr. and Mrs. Goetzinger, on the other hand, maintain that
> Abbas must be worshipped with divine homage, as he is the true Christ. Some of the
> American Babites now follow Dr. Kheirulla and some Dr. Goetzinger, but the latter has the
> official credentials, and thus the house is divided against itself.
> In Baghdad in 1860 the Babite house was divided into Behaites and Azelites. In Haifa
> it is divided between Abbas Effendi and his two brothers Mohammed and Bedea. In
> America it is between Dr. Kheirulla and Dr. Goetzinger.
> 
> [page 177]
> 
> The Egyptian Gazette states that Dr. Goetzinger expected two hundred pilgrims from
> America to visit and worship Abbas during the present season.
> On a recent visit to Haifa I called on Abbas Effendi and had a half-hour’s conversation
> with him. My companion was Chaplain Wells, of Tennessee, recently from the Philippines,
> who had met at Port Said an American lady on her way to Haifa to visit Abbas Effendi. We
> met her at the hotel and had a four hours’ conversation with her. She seemed fascinated or
> hypnotized by the Effendi. She had been converted four years ago under Mr. Moody’s
> preaching in New York, attended the Brick Church for a time, and in some way heard of
> Abbas Effendi as being an eminently holy man. Said she: “I feel in his presence, as I did in
> Mr. Moody’s presence, that he is a very holy man and brings me nearer to God than any
> other person.” She said that she was his guest, and that every morning he expounds the
> New Testament in Arabic. “His two daughters, who know English, take notes and then
> translate them to me.” We asked her if there were not scores of godly, learned ministers in
> America who could explain the New Testament in English without needing an interpreter.
> She said yes, but seemed to have a hazy idea that there was something different in Abbas.
> While we were conversing in the hotel parlour a tall man passed the door, clad in a long
> robe, and she whispered to us, “There goes that bad man Bedea Effendi, brother of Abbas,
> who wants to kill him. He is a spy.”
> I went out and addressed the man in Arabic, and he told me he was a younger brother
> of Abbas, and he had a room at this hotel. I sent word by this good lady to Abbas Effendi,
> and he appointed nine o’clock the next morning for an interview. Chaplain Wells went with
> me. The Effendi has two houses in Haifa, one for his family, in which the American lady
> pilgrims are entertained, and one down town, where he receives only men. Here his Persian
> followers meet him. They bow in worship when they meet him on the street or when they
> hear his voice. On Friday he prays with the Moslems in the mosque, as he is still reputed a
> good Mohammedan of the Shiite sect.
> We entered a large reception-room, at one end of which was a long divan covered, as
> usual in Syria, with a white cloth. In a moment he came in and saluted us cordially with the
> usual Arabic compliments, and then sat down on the end of the divan next to the wall and
> invited us to sit next to him.
> Beha Allah, the father of Abbas, used to wear a veil in the street and live secluded from
> the gaze of men, living in an atmosphere of mystery which greatly impressed his devout
> Persian followers. But Abbas Effendi, on succeeding his father, threw off this reserve, and
> is a man among men. He has been in Beirut often, and has a reputation of being a great
> scholar in Persian, Turkish, and Arabic, writing with equal ease and eloquence in all. He
> visits his friends in Haifa, and is a man of great affability and courtesy — traits which
> characterize many of the Mohammedan and Druze Sheikhs and Effendis whom I know in
> Beirut, Sidon, Damascus, and Mount Lebanon. After another round of salutations, I
> introduced- myself and Chaplain Wells, and told him that, although a resident of Syria for
> forty-five years, I had never visited Haifa before, and, having heard and read much of his
> father and himself, I was glad to meet him.
> He asked my profession. I told him I was an American missionary, and was connected
> with the American Press and Publishing House in Beirut.
> “Yes,” said he, “I know your Press and your books. I have been in Beirut, and knew
> Dr. van Dyke, who was a most genial, learned, and eloquent man, and I highly esteemed
> him.”
> I said his greatest work was the translation of the Bible into Arabic. He at once
> rejoined: “Very true. It is the best translation from the original made into any Eastern
> language. It is far superior to the Turkish and the Persian versions. The Persian especially is
> very defective. Nothing is more difficult than to translate the Bible from its original
> tongues. The translator
> 
> [page 178]
> 
> must fully understand the genius of both languages and grasp the inner spiritual meaning.
> For instance, Jesus the Christ said, ‘I am the bread which came down from heaven.’ Now,
> He did not mean that He was literally bread, but bread signifies grace and blessing; i.e., I
> came down from heaven as grace and blessing to men’s souls. But if you translate that into
> Persian literally, as bread, it would not be understood. The same difficulty exists,” he
> continued, “in translating the Koran into another language.”
> I said that I quite agreed with him, as the English translations of the Koran are in a
> great part dry and vapid, but that there is a difference between translating a text and
> explaining it. A translator must be faithful to the text itself.
> He then said that hundreds had tried to translate the Koran from Arabic into Persian,
> including the great Zamakhshari, and all had utterly failed.
> I remarked that it was a great comfort that the Bible was so well translated into Arabic,
> and had been so widely distributed, and that since 1865, when Dr. van Dyke completed the
> translation of the whole Bible, our Press had issued more than six hundred thousand copies,
> and this year would issue from thirty thousand to fifty thousand copies.
> I then remarked that the Mohammedans object to our use of the term “Son of God,”
> and asked him if he regarded Christ as the Son of God.
> He said: “Yes, I do; I believe in the Trinity. But the Trinity is a doctrine above human
> comprehension, and yet it can be understood.”
> He then asked me: “Did Christ understand the Trine personality of the Deity, i.e., the
> Trinity?”
> I said, “ Most certainly.”
> “Then,” said he, “it is understandable, yet we cannot understand it.”I replied, “There
> are many things in nature which we believe and yet cannot understand.” I told him the story
> of the old man who overheard a young man exclaim to a crowd of his companions, “I will
> never believe what I cannot understand.” The old man said to him, “Do you see those
> animals in the field — the cattle eating grass, and it turns into hair on their backs; sheep
> eating the same grass, and it turns into wool; and swine eating it, and it becomes bristles on
> their backs; do you believe this?” The youth said, “Yes.” “Do you understand it?” “No.”
> “Then,” said the old man, “never say you will not believe what you do not understand.”
> The Effendi remarked; “Yes, that is like a similar remark made once by a Persian to the
> famous Zamakhshari, ‘I cannot understand this doctrine of God’s Unity and Eternity, and I
> will not believe it.’ Zamakhshari replied, ‘Do you understand the watery secretions of your
> own body?’ ‘No.’ ‘But you believe they exist? Then say no more you will not believe what
> you do not understand.’”I then explained to the Effendi our view of salvation by faith in
> Christ; that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life, and that,
> being justified by faith, we have peace with God; that Christ has paid the ransom, and now
> God can be just, and yet the justifier of them who believe. “And does your Excellency
> believe this?” He replied promptly, “Yes.” “And do you accept the Christ as your Saviour?”
> He said, “Yes.” “And do you believe that Jesus the Christ will come again and judge the
> world?” He said, “Yes.”
> I then drew a little nearer to him and said: “My dear friend, I am more than sixty-eight
> years of age, and you are almost as old, and soon we shall stand together before the
> judgment seat of Christ. Now I want to ask you a very plain question. I have seen in an
> American paper (the Literary Digest), a statement that an American woman, evidently of
> sincere character, had stated that she came to Haifa and visited you, and that when she
> entered your room she felt that she was in the very presence of the Son of God, the Christ,
> and that she held out her arms, crying, ‘My Lord, my Lord,’ and rushed to you, kneeling at
> your
> 
> [page 179]
> 
> blessed feet, sobbing like a child. Now, I could not believe this, and thought it a newspaper
> invention. I wish to ask you whether this is true. Can it be right for the creature to accept
> the worship due only to the Creator?”
> He smiled and seemed somewhat disturbed, and said, “What is this sudden change of
> subject? Where were we? — discoursing on the high themes of the Trinity and redemption
> and divine mysteries, and now you suddenly open an entirely different subject. This is
> entirely different; let us keep to theological themes.”
> I replied: “It is a change of subject, but I am seriously anxious to know whether that
> statement is true.”
> He then said very calmly, “I am only the poorest and humblest of servants.”
> I saw that he was not disposed to answer such a point-blank question and seemed much
> embarrassed, and glanced towards an attendant or disciple, a young Persian, who sat in a
> chair facing us.
> So I took up another question. I said: “The Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit, the
> Paraclete. Now, the Mohammedans claim that Mohammed is the Paraclete. We claim and
> believe that He is the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity.”
> “Yes,” said he, “I know that you believe that. That is your doctrine; but that is a very
> profound subject and very important.”
> I saw from his manner that he was getting weary of talking, and told him who my
> companion was — the Rev. Captain Wells, a United States chaplain from the Philippines,
> who was a strong temperance advocate, and had made a report to President McKinley
> urging the prohibition of the use of liquor in the United States army. He expressed his
> approval of the total abstinence principle and his gratification that there is a temperance
> reading-room in Beirut.
> I then alluded to the Episode of the Bab written by Prof E. G. Browne, of Cambridge,
> and asked him if he knew Professor Browne and his book? He replied: “Professor Browne
> has not comprehended our views. He heard us and then heard our enemies (the Subh
> Azelites), and wrote down the views of all. How can he get the truth? Now, supposing that
> a man wanted to learn about the Jews, and you are, we will suppose, an anti-Semite. He
> asks you about the Jews and writes down your views. Then he asks a Rabbi and takes down
> his views, and prints both. How can he get at the real truth? So with Professor Browne. He
> sees us through the eyes of our enemies.”
> I then invited the Effendi to let me know when he came to Beirut, that I might call on
> him. He replied: “When I come to Beirut, I shall do myself the honour of calling upon
> you.”
> And then we took our leave, with the usual profuse Arabic salutations.
> Now, what can one say in brief of such a man? Whether intentionally on his part or
> not, he is now acting what seems to be a double part — a Moslem in the mosque, a Christ,
> or at least a Christian mystic, at his own house. He prays with the Moslems, “There is no
> God but God,” and expounds the Gospels as an incarnation of the Son of God. His dislike
> of Professor Browne comes from the fact that Professor Browne visited Subh el Azel in
> Cyprus and obtained from him documents which reflect seriously upon Beha Allah, and
> charge him with assassination and other crimes.
> His declarations of belief in the Trinity and redemption through the Christ must be
> interpreted in the light of Sufiist pantheism and of his belief in a succession of incarnations,
> of which his followers regard him as the last and greatest.
> It is difficult to regard without indignation the Babite proselytism now being carried on
> in the United States. One American woman who passed through Beirut recently, en route
> for the Abbas Effendi shrine, stated that she was at first an agnostic and found that a failure;
> then she tried Theosophy, and found that too thin; then she tried Christian Science and
> obtained a diploma authorizing her
> 
> [page 180]
> 
> to heal the sick and raise the dead, and found that a sham, and now was on her way to see
> what Abbas Effendi had to offer!
> Surely that woman has found out what it is to feed on ashes.
> At the military barracks in Beirut is a tower clock with an eastern face keeping eastern
> time, in which it is always twelve o’clock at sunset, and a western face keeping European
> time. Abbas Effendi seems to the people of Syria to have these two faces — the eastern for
> the Moslems and the Turkish Government by which he is kept in exile from Persia; and the
> western for the pilgrims who come from New York and Chicago.
> On Mount Carmel are certain round stones, geodes of flint, hollow and lined with
> crystals of quartz. The people call them Elijah’s watermelons. They look smooth and round
> and melon-like on the outside, but inside are nothing but crystals, which would tax the
> digestion of a tougher man than even the stalwart Tishbite. These pilgrims are attracted by
> the rumour of spiritual fruits in Haifa just under the Carmel of Elijah, but they may find to
> their sorrow that there is no more true nourishment in them than in Elijah’s watermelons.
> 
> III
> In the paper already quoted on pp. 134-138 the late Dr. Shedd wrote of the relation of
> Babism to Christianity:
> 
> “It remains to inquire what is the relation of Babism to the missionary work.“When the
> Bab passed through Urumia in 1850 on the way to his execution, the missionaries watched
> the excitement with great interest. The crowds of people were ready to receive him as the
> long expected Imam, even the water in which he bathed was regarded as holy water. Since
> then, the missionaries have ever had a strong desire to utilize the movement, but have found
> the Babis so satisfied or mystified with their own fanciful ideas, and so urgent in their
> argument for a fuller revelation to suit the present age, that they felt no need of Christ. Our
> colporteurs have kept in touch with the different sects in all parts of the country and
> reported the Babis. The congenial field for Babism is not among the rough Turkish race of
> the north and west of Persia, but among the gentler Persian race of the south and east. The
> missionaries come from Ispahan and beyond. Two of them have been at Urumia for several
> weeks previous to this date. They have great assurance, and are ready to discuss with Jews,
> Christians and Moslems, always with great caution lest they be betrayed to their enemies.
> Their arguments are from the Pentateuch, and especially from Daniel and Revelation for
> Jews and Christians, and from the Koran for Moslems. The Jews are not always proof
> against the infection. Some are said to believe, others are turned away from the true
> teachings of the Scriptures. In other places, especially in the darker regions where our
> colporteurs seldom penetrate, the Jews are much affected. Last year, two of the colporteurs
> wrote from such places: ‘We must hasten to enlighten these Jews, or they will all fall in the
> snare.’ Babism offers the Jew a system non-persecuting, suiting his unitarian view of God,
> and nearer his hopes of an earthly Messiah and kingdom than Christianity. The Christian
> faith alone has the resources to meet the sophistries of the Babis. The argument of the
> Moslem is the sword, not reasoning from the Koran and traditions, I have heard of no case
> of a Christian’s conversion to Babism or of a
> 
> [page 181]
> 
> Babi’s conversion to Christianity.108 Is it because the chasm of the two faiths is impassible,
> or because the affinities have not yet been fully established? What shall be the attitude we
> take? Shall we consider the new creed, now accepted by many thousands of Persians, as for
> us or against us in the conflict with Islam?
> “On the favourable side, we may mention:
> “1. It is a most radical reform that revolutionizes the established religion of Persia, and
> thus breaks down the barriers of intolerance and comes into sympathy with Christianity.
> “2. In practical duties, compared with Islam, it has a very liberal aspect. It is a protest
> against the hard legalism and Pharisaism of the mollahs. It exposes their intolerance and
> corruptions and scandalous vices, and teaches sincerity and gentleness, and thus is breaking
> down the civil and social system of the prevailing faith, and in so far is an ally of
> Christianity.
> “3. The adherents of the Bab claim a friendship and kinship with Christians on these
> common grounds. The following extract from Mr. Browne’s record expresses this feeling in
> 
> “‘I have not heard of a Babi’s conversion to Christ,’” comments Dr. Holmes. “At the time Dr.
> Shedd was reading this paper, one of our most consecrated and efficient helpers, was almost within
> earshot. He was a convert from Behaism, and there are various others who have likewise renounced
> Beha for Christ. But the rest of the statement holds good. I do not know of a single original
> Christian in Persia who has been converted to Behaism. Some Behais who made a profession of
> Christianity turned back to Beha, but none of whom we were at any time fully satisfied that their
> profession of faith in Christ was sincere.”
> stronger terms, perhaps, than usual. ‘Yes,’ said the Babi, ‘we are much nearer to you in
> sympathy than the Mohammedans. To them, you are unclean and accursed; if they
> associate with you, it is only by overcoming their religious prejudices. But we are taught to
> regard all good men as clean and pure, whatever their religion. With you Christians
> especially, we have sympathy. Has it not struck you how similar were the life and death of
> our founder (whom we indeed believe to have been Christ Himself returned to earth) and
> the Founder of your faith? Both were wise even in their childhood, beyond the
> comprehension of those around them; both were pure and blameless in their lives; both at
> last were done to death by a fanatical priesthood and a Government alarmed at the love and
> devotion which they inspired in their disciples.’ This is very fairly spoken, but one is at a
> loss to know how far such language comes from the hope of winning converts. Mr. Browne
> is one much in love with Oriental mysticism, and one whom the Babis hoped to win over to
> their belief.
> “Beyond the points just mentioned, I cannot see that Christians and Babis can have
> much in common.
> 
> “The Unfavourable Relations to Mission Work.
> 
> “1. The movement arose entirely outside of Christian influence. It is an outgrowth of
> Persian Mohammedanism, of the sect of the Sheikhis, without a single doctrme derived
> from the New Testament. The face of Babism is not towards Christianity, but towards the
> pantheism of the East. It turns away from the God of Islam, who is an absolute monarch far
> removed from man and his needs. The Bab brings God near, but not through Christ by way
> of reconciliation, not by regarding God as a loving Father, who through the Son and Spirit
> is bringing us into fellowship with Himself. The Bab brings God near through pantheism.
> The universal spirit is manifested in all men. By self-renunciation and abstraction a man
> may escape the illusion of plurality and attain to the unity and blessedness of true being and
> say, ‘I am God.’ Christ said this, and so the Bab and Beha and so many others yet to come.
> This misty pantheism is harder for the
> 
> [page 182]
> 
> missionary to deal with than the fatalistic unitarian conception of God presented by Islam.
> “2. The doctrine of manifestations renders the Babis insensible to Christian influence.
> They accept Christ most fully, and no one can go beyond them in praise of His Divine
> nature; but His mission has ended. The inconsistency of applying the same prediction to the
> Holy Spirit, to Mohammed, and to Beha is overcome by saying that the signs apply equally
> to all successive manifestations. The argument from the unapproachable personality of
> Christ is met by the statement that Beha is also a man of perfection, and that Christ showed
> indications of His weakness in His outcry in Gethsemane and on the Cross. The Cross of
> Christ is made of none effect. The phenomeon of the Bab and Beha eclipses the Sun of
> Righteousness.
> “This doctrine, taken with the fact that a new faith has a charm which for the time
> satisfies the religious need, renders the Babis difficult to reach. Through the darkness of
> pantheism they cannot see the need of a Saviour. The Moslems often feel a need and
> confess that their system has proved a failure, but the Babis are in the zeal and assurance of
> a new religion. They study the New Testament not as disciples to learn, but as partisans
> who will fortify their theory. All previous Scriptures are valuable to them only in so far as
> they testify to the new faith.
> “3. Their basis of morals is quite far from our faith, perhaps farther removed than the
> doctrine of Islam. It has been truly said of Islam ‘Mohammedan law is based on the theory
> that right and wrong depend on legal enactment. Moral acts have no inherent moral
> character. An act is right because God has commanded it, and wrong because He has
> forbidden it. God may abrogate or change His laws so that what was wrong may become
> right. So it is impossible to discuss the moral character of the prophet, because it is
> sufficient answer to any criticism to say that God commanded or expressly permitted those
> acts which in other men would be wrong. Thus God’s moral nature is not known. There is
> no comprehension that God is a moral being doing what is right because it is right, that He
> could not be just and justify the sinner without an atonement made by the incarnation,
> sufferings and death of Christ. Sin is not regarded as itself corruption, nor is there any need
> of regeneration and sanctification by the Holy Spirit before the soul can know the joy of the
> beatific vision.’ This statement applies with increased emphasis to the Babis. There is no
> clear distinction between good and evil, no perception of sin, they wander in the fog.
> “4. The Babist freedom runs to license, and hence as a reform leaves men worse rather
> than better. Mr. Browne found himself in the meshes of the opium habit in Kirman by
> yielding too freely to the influence of his Babi friends. The poetess Kurratu‘l-Ain praises
> opium, though Beha afterwards forbade it. There is undoubtedly a generous fellowship in
> the Babi community, but there is no moral principle. . . . There are no high and strong
> characters developed to lead the world in true reform, no high motives to virtue are
> developed. The seeds of its own destruction are in the system, and the best arguments
> against this as other errors will soon be its fruits,”109
> 
> Missionary Review of the World, December, 1894, pp. 901-903.
>
> — *The Religion of the Bab (Used by permission of the curator)*