# Appreciations of the Baha'i Faith

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: unknown, Appreciations of the Baha'i Faith, Wilmette, IL: Bahá'í Publishing Committee, 1941, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Appreciations of the Bahá'í Faith
> 
> [various authors]
> [name of compiler unknown]
> published in Bahá'í WorldVol. 8 (1938-1940), pp. 595-628
> 
> Wilmette, IL: Bahá'í Publishing Committee, 1941
> 
> Page
> 4
> 
> [This page intentionally blank.]
> 
> Page 5
> 
> Introduction
> 
> THE Revelation proclaimed by Bahá'u'lláh, His followers believe,
> is divine in origin, all-embracing in scope, broad in its outlook, scientific
> in its method, humanitarian in its principles and dynamic in the influence it
> exerts on the hearts and minds of men. The mission of the Founder of their
> Faith, they conceive it to be to proclaim that religious truth is not absolute
> but relative, that Divine Revelation is continuous and progressive, that the
> Founders of all past religions, though different in the non-essential aspects
> of their teachings, "abide in the same Tabernacle, soar in the same heaven, are
> seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech and proclaim the same
> Faith." His Cause, they have already demonstrated, stands identified with, and
> revolves around, the principle of the organic unity of mankind as representing
> the consummation of the whole process of human evolution. This final stage in
> this stupendous evolution, they assert, is not only necessary but inevitable,
> that it is gradually approaching, and that nothing short of the celestial
> potency with which a divinely ordained Message can claim to be endowed can
> succeed in establishing it.
> 
> The Bahá'í Faith recognizes the unity of God and of His
> Prophets, upholds the principle of an unfettered search after truth, condemns
> all forms of superstition and prejudice, teaches that the fundamental purpose
> of religion is to promote concord and harmony, that it must go hand-in-hand
> with science, and that it constitutes the sole and ultimate basis of a
> peaceful, an ordered and progressive society. It inculcates the principle of
> equal opportunity, rights and privileges for both sexes, advocates compulsory
> education, abolishes extremes of poverty and wealth, exalts work performed in
> the spirit of service to the rank of worship, recommends the adoption of an
> auxiliary international language, and provides the necessary agencies for the
> establishment and safeguarding of a permanent and universal peace.
> 
> SHOGHI EFFENDI
> 
> Page 6
> 
> [This page intentionally blank.]
> 
> Page 7
> Alphabetical List of Authors
> 
> 1. Archduchess Anton of Austria
> 
> 30.
> Mr. Renwick J. G. Millard
> 
> 2.
> Charles Baudouin
> 
> 31.
> Prof. Herbert A. Miller, Bryn Mawr College
> 
> 3.
> President Eduard Benes
> 
> 32.
> The Hon. Lilian Helen Montagu, J.P., D.H.L.
> 
> 4.
> Prof. Norman Bentwich, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
> 
> 33.
> Arthur Moore
> 
> 5.
> Princess Marie Antoinette de Broglie Aussenac
> 
> 34.
> Angela Morgan
> 
> 6.
> Prof. E. G. Browse, M.A., M.B., Cambridge University
> 
> 35.
> M. Nicholas
> 
> 7.
> Luther Burbank
> 
> 36.
> Prof. Yore Noguchi
> 
> 8.
> Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, D.Litt., Manchester College, Oxford
> 
> 37.
> Rev. Frederick W. Oases
> 
> 9.
> General Renato Piola Caselli
> 
> 38.
> Princess Olga of Yugoslavia
> 
> 10.
> Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D.Litt., D.D., Oxford University, Fellow of British Academy
> 
> 39.
> Sir Flinders Petrie, archeologist
> 
> 11.
> Sir Valentine Chirol
> 
> 40.
> Prof. R. F. Piper
> 
> 12.
> Rev. K. T. Clung
> 
> 41.
> Prof. B. Popovitch
> 
> 13.
> Right Hon. The Earl Curzon of Kedleston
> 
> 42.
> Charles H. Prism
> 
> 14.
> Prof. James Darmesteter, École Des Hautes Études, Paris
> 
> 43.
> Dr. Edmund Privat, University of Geneva
> 
> 15.
> Rev. J. Tyssul Davis, B.A.
> 
> 44.
> Herbert Putnam, Congressional Library, Washington, D. C.
> 
> 16.
> Dr. August Forel, University of Zurich
> 
> 45.
> Eugene Relgis
> 
> 17.
> Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons
> 
> 46.
> Ernest Renan
> 
> 18.
> Arthur Henderson
> 
> 47.
> Prof. Dr. J. Rypka
> 
> 19.
> Dr. Henry H. Jessup, D.D.
> 
> 48.
> Viscount Herbert Samuel, G.C.B., M.P.
> 
> 20.
> President David Starr Jordan
> 
> 49.
> Emil Schreiber, Publicist
> 
> 21.
> Prof. Jowett, Oxford University
> 
> 50.
> Prof. Hart Prasad Shastri, D.Litt.
> 
> 22.
> Prof. Dimitry Kazarov, University of Sofia
> 
> 51.
> Col. Baja Jai Prithvi Bahádur Singh, Raja of Bajang (Nepal)
> 
> 23.
> Miss Helen Keller
> 
> 52.
> Rev. Griffith J. Sparham
> 
> 24.
> Prof. Dr. V. Lenny
> 
> 53.
> Sir Ronald Storrs, N.V.C., M.G., C.B.E.
> 
> 25.
> Harry Charles Lukach
> 
> 54.
> Ex-Governor William Sulzer
> 
> 26.
> Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania
> 
> 55.
> Shri Purohit Swami
> 
> 27.
> Alfred W. Martin, Society for Ethical Culture, New York
> 
> 56.
> Leo Tolstoy
> 
> 28.
> President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia
> 
> 57.
> Prof. Arminius Vambery, Hungarian Academy of Pesth
> 
> 29.
> Dr. Rokuichiro Masujima, Doyen of Jurisprudence of Japan
> 
> 58.
> Sir Francis Younghusband, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E
> 
> Page 8
> 
> [This page intentionally blank.]
> 
> Page 9
> 
> APPRECIATIONS OF THE BAHÁ'Í FAITH
> 
> BY DOWAGER QUEEN MARIE OF RUMANIA
> 
> I.
> 
> I was deeply moved on reception of your letter.
> 
> Indeed a great light came to me with the message of Bahá'u'lláh
> and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. It came as all great messages come at an hour of dire
> grief and inner conflict and distress, so the seed sank deeply.
> 
> My youngest daughter finds also great strength and comfort in the teachings of
> the beloved masters.
> 
> We pass on the message from month to month and all those we give it to see a
> light suddenly lighting before them and much that was obscure and perplexing
> becomes simple, luminous and full of hope as never before.
> 
> That my open letter was balm to those suffering for the cause is indeed a
> great happiness to me, and I take it as a sign that God accepted my humble
> tribute.
> 
> The occasion given me to be able to express myself publicly, was also His
> Work-for indeed it was a chain of circumstances of which each link led me
> unwittingly one step further, till suddenly all was clear before my eyes and I
> understood why it had been.
> 
> Thus does He lead us finally to our ultimate destiny.
> 
> Some of those of my caste wonder at and disapprove my courage to step forward
> pronouncing words not habitual for Crowned Heads to pronounce, but I advance by
> an inner urge I cannot resist. With bowed head I recognize that I too am but an
> instrument in greater Hands and rejoice in the knowledge.
> 
> Little by little the veil is lifting, grief tore it in two. And grief was also
> a step leading me ever nearer truth, therefore do I not cry out against
> grief!
> 
> May you and those beneath your guidance be blessed and upheld by the sacred
> strength of those gone before you.
> 
> Page 10
> 
> 2.
> 
> A woman brought me the other day a Book. I spell it with a
> capital letter because it is a glorious Book of love and goodness, strength and
> beauty.
> 
> She gave it to me because she had learned I was in grief and sadness and
> wanted to help.... She put it into my hands saying: "You seem to live up to His
> teachings." And when I opened the Book I saw it was the word of
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá, prophet of love and kindness, and of his father the great
> teacher of international goodwill and understanding-of a religion which links
> all creeds.
> 
> Their writings are a great cry toward peace, reaching beyond all limits of
> frontiers, above all dissension about rites and dogmas. It is a religion based
> upon the inner spirit of God, upon the great, not-to-be-overcome verity that
> God is love, meaning just that. It teaches that all hatreds, intrigues,
> suspicions, evil words, all aggressive patriotism even, are outside the one
> essential law of God, and that special beliefs are but surface things whereas
> the heart that beats with divine love knows no tribe nor race.
> 
> It is a wondrous Message that Bahá'u'lláh and his son
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá have given us. They have not set it up aggressively,
> knowing that the germ of eternal truth which lies at its core cannot but take
> root and spread.
> 
> There is only one great verity in it: Love, the mainspring of every energy,
> tolerance toward each other, desire of understanding each other, knowing each
> other, helping each other, forgiving each other.
> 
> It is Christ's Message taken up anew, in the same words almost, but adapted to
> the thousand years and more difference that lies between the year one and
> today. No man could fail to be better because of this Book.
> 
> I commend it to you all. If ever the name of Bahá'u'lláh or
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá comes to your attention, do not put their writings from
> you. Search out their Books, and let their glorious, peace-bringing,
> love-creating words and lessons sink into your hearts as they have into
> mine.
> 
> One's busy day may seem too full for religion. Or one may have a religion that
> satisfies. But the teachings of these gentle, wise and kindly men are
> compatible with all religion, and with no religion.
> 
> Seek them, and be the happier.
> 
> (From the Toronto Daily Star, May 4, 1926.)
> 
> -------
> 
> Miss Martha L. Root-Editor
> 
> Page 11
> 
> Of course, if you take the stand that creation has no aim, it is easy to
> dismiss life and death with a shrug and a "that ends it all; nothing comes
> after."
> 
> But how difficult it is so to dismiss the universe, our world, the animal and
> vegetable world, and man. How clearly one sees a plan in everything. How
> unthinkable it is that the miraculous development that has brought man's body,
> brain and spirit to what it is, should cease. Why should it cease? Why is it
> not logical that it goes on? Not the body, which is only an instrument, but the
> invisible spark or fire within the body which makes man one with the wider plan
> of creation.
> 
> My words are lame, and why should I grope for meanings when I can quote from
> one who has said it so much more plainly, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, whom I know
> would sanction the use of his words:
> 
> "The whole physical creation is perishable. Material bodies are composed of
> atoms. When these atoms begin to separate, decomposition sets in. Then comes
> what we call death.
> 
> "This composition of atoms which constitutes the body or mortal element of any
> created being, is temporary. When the power of attraction which holds these
> atoms together is withdrawn, the body as such ceases to exist.
> 
> "With the soul it is different. The soul is not a combination of elements, is
> not composed of many atoms, is of one indivisible substance and therefore
> eternal.
> 
> "It is entirely out of the order of physical creation; it is immortal! The
> soul, being an invisible, indivisible substance, can suffer neither
> disintegration nor destruction. Therefore there is no reason for its coming to
> an end.
> 
> "Consider the aim of creation: Is it possible that all is created to evolve
> and develop through countless ages with merely this small goal in view-a few
> years of man's life on earth? Is it not unthinkable that this should be the
> final aim of existence? Does a man cease to exist when he leaves his body? If
> his life comes to an end, then all previous evolution is useless. All has been
> for nothing. All those eons of evolution for nothing! Can we imagine that
> creation had no greater aim than this?
> 
> "The very existence of man's intelligence proves his immortality. His
> intelligence is the intermediary between his body and his spirit. When man
> allows his spirit, through his soul, to enlighten his understanding, then does
> he contain all creation; because man being the culmination of all that went
> before, and thus
> 
> Page 12
> 
> superior to all previous evolutions, contains all the lower already-evolved
> world within himself. Illumined by the spirit through the instrumentality of
> the soul, man's radiant intelligence makes him the crowning point of
> creation!"
> 
> Thus does 'Abdu'l-Bahá explain to us the soul-the most convincing
> elucidation I know.
> 
> (From the Toronto Daily Star, September 28, 1926.)
> 
> 4.
> 
> At first we all conceive of God as something or somebody apart
> from ourselves. We think He is something or somebody definite, outside of us,
> whose quality, meaning and so-to-say "personality" we can grasp with our human,
> finite minds, and express in mere words.
> 
> This is not so. We cannot, with our earthly faculties entirely grasp His
> meaning-no more than we can really understand the meaning of Eternity.
> 
> God is certainly not the old Fatherly gentleman with the long beard that in
> our childhood we saw pictured sitting amongst clouds on the throne of judgment,
> holding the lightning of vengeance in His hand.
> 
> God is something simpler, happier, and yet infinitely more tremendous. God is
> All, Everything. He is the power behind all beginnings. He is the inexhaustible
> source of supply, of love, of good, of progress, of achievement. God is
> therefore Happiness.
> 
> His is the voice within us that shows us good and evil.
> 
> But mostly we ignore or misunderstand this voice. Therefore did He choose his
> Elect to come down amongst us upon earth to make clear His word, His real
> meaning. Therefore the Prophets; therefore Christ, Muhammad,
> Bahá'u'lláh, for man needs from time to time a voice upon earth
> to bring God to him, to sharpen the realization of the existence of the true
> God. Those voices sent to us had to become flesh, so that with our earthly ears
> we should be able to hear and understand.
> 
> Those who read their Bible with "peeled eyes" will find in almost every line
> some revelation. But it takes long life, suffering or some sudden event to tear
> all at once the veil from our eyes, so that we can truly see....Sorrow and
> suffering are the surest and also the most common instructors, the straightest
> channel to God-that is to say, to that inner something within each of us which
> is God.
> 
> Page 13
> 
> Happiness beyond all understanding comes with this revelation that God is
> within us, if we will but listen to His voice. We need not seek Him in the
> clouds. He is the All-Father whence we came and to whom we shall return when,
> having done with this earthly body, we pass onward.
> 
> If I have repeated myself, forgive me. There are so many ways of saying
> things, but what is important is the truth which lies in all the many ways of
> expressing it. (From the Philadelphia "Evening Bulletin," Monday, September
> 27, 1926.)
> 
> 5.
> 
> "Lately a great hope has come to me from one,
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá. I have found in His and His Father,
> Bahá'u'lláh's Message of Faith all my yearning for real religion
> satisfied. If you ever hear of Bahá'ís or of the Bahá'í Movement
> which is known in America, you will know what that is. What I mean: these Books
> have strengthened me beyond belief and I am now ready to die any day full of
> hope. But I pray God not to take me away yet for I still have a lot of work to
> do."
> 
> 6.
> 
> "The Bahá'í teaching brings peace and
> understanding.
> 
> "It is like a wide embrace gathering together all those who have long searched
> for words of hope.
> 
> "It accepts all great prophets gone before, it destroys no other creeds and
> leaves all doors open.
> 
> "Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many confessions and
> wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I discovered in the
> Bahá'í teaching the real spirit of Christ so often denied and
> misunderstood:
> 
> "Unity instead of strife, hope instead of condemnation, love instead of hate,
> and a great reassurance for all men."
> 
> 7.
> 
> "The Bahá'í teaching brings peace to the soul
> and hope to [sic]
> 
> "To those in search of assurance the words of the Father are as a fountain in
> the desert after long wandering." 1934.
> 
> 8.
> 
> "More than ever today when the world is facing such a crisis
> of bewilderment and unrest, must we stand firm in Faith seeking that which
> binds together instead of tearing asunder." 1936
> 
> Page 14
> 
> "To those searching for light, the Bahá'í Teachings offer a star
> which will lead them to deeper understanding, to assurance, peace and good will
> with all men."
> 
> ---------------------
> 
> BY PROFESSOR E. G. BROWNE
> 
> I. Introduction to Myron H. Phelps' 'Abbas Effendi, pages
> xi-xx
> 
> 1903 rev. 1912
> 
> I have often heard wonder expressed by Christian ministers at
> the extraordinary success of Bábí missionaries, as contrasted
> with the almost complete failure of their own. "How is it," they say, "that the
> Christian doctrines the highest and the noblest which the world has ever known,
> though supported by all the resources of Western civilization, can only count
> its converts in Muhammadan lands by twos and threes, while
> Bábíism can reckon them by thousands?" The answer, to my mind, is
> plain as the sun at midday. Western Christianity, save in the rarest cases, is
> more Western than Christian, more racial than religious; and by dallying with
> doctrines plainly incompatible with the obvious meaning of its Founder's words,
> such as the theories of "racial supremacy," "imperial destiny," "survival of
> the fittest," and the like, grows steadily more rather than less material. Did
> Christ belong to a "dominant race," or even to a European or "white race"?
> ...
> 
> I am not arguing that the Christian religion is true [sic], but merely that it
> is in manifest conflict with several other theories of life which practically
> regulate the conduct of all States and most individuals in the Western world, a
> world which on the whole, judges all things, including religions, mainly by
> material, or to use the more popular term, "practical," standards....
> 
> There is, of course, another factor in the success of the Bábí
> propagandist, as compared with the Christian missionary, in the conversion of
> Muhammadans to his faith: namely, that the former admits, while the latter
> rejects, the Divine inspiration of the Qur'an and the prophetic function of
> Muhammad. The Christian missionary must begin by attacking, explicitly or by
> implication, both these beliefs; too often forgetting that if (as happens but
> rarely) he succeeds in destroying them, he destroys with them that recognitions
> [sic] of former prophetic dispensations (including the Jewish and the
> Christian) which Muhammad and the Qur'an proclaim, and converts his Muslim
> antagonist not to Christianity, but to Skepticism or Atheism.
> 
> Page 15
> 
> What, indeed, could be more illogical on the part of Christian missionaries to
> Muhammadan lands than to devote much time and labor to the composition of
> controversial works which endeavor to prove, in one and the same breath, first,
> that the Qur'an is a lying imposture, and, secondly, that it bears witness to
> the truth of Christ's mission, as though any value attached to the testimony of
> one proved a liar! The Bábí (or Bahá'í)
> propagandist, on the other hand, admits that Muhammad was the prophet of God
> and that the Qur'an is the Word of God, denies nothing but their finality, and
> does not discredit his own witness when he draws from that source arguments to
> prove his faith. To the Western observer, however, it is the complete sincerity
> of the Bábís, their fearless disregard of death and torture
> undergone for the sake of their religion, their certain conviction as to the
> truth of their faith, their generally admirable conduct towards mankind and
> especially towards their fellow-believers, which constitutes their strongest
> claim on his attention.
> 
> 2.
> 
> Introduction to Myron H. Phelps' 'Abbas Effendi, pages xii-xiv
> 
> It was under the influence of this enthusiasm that I penned
> the introduction to my translation of the Traveller's Narrative.... This
> enthusiasm, condoned, if not shared, by many kindly critics and reviewers,
> exposed me to a somewhat savage attack in the Oxford Magazine, an attack
> concluding with the assertion that my Introduction displayed "a personal
> attitude almost inconceivable in a rational European, and a style unpardonable
> in a university teacher." (The review in question appeared in the Oxford
> Magazine of May 25, 1892, page 394,..."the prominence given to the Báb
> in this book is an absurd violation of historical perspective; and the
> translations of the Traveller's Narrative a waste of the powers and
> opportunities of a Persian Scholar.") Increasing age and experience (more's the
> pity!) are apt enough, even without the assistance of the Oxford Magazine, to
> modify our enthusiasm; but in this case, at least, time has so far vindicated
> my judgment against that of my Oxford reviewer that he could scarcely now
> maintain, as he formerly asserted, that the Bábí religion "had
> affected the least important part of the Muslim World and that not deeply."
> Everyone who is in the slightest degree conversant with the actual state of
> things (September 27, 1903), in Persia now recognizes that the number and
> influence of the Bábís in that country is immensely greater than
> it was fifteen years ago.
> 
> Page 16
> 
> 3.
> 
> A Traveller's Narrative, page 309
> 
> The appearance of such a woman as Qurratu'l-'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 marvelous beauty, her rare
> intellectual gifts, her fervid eloquence, her fearless devotion and her
> glorious martyrdom, she stands forth incomparable and immortal amidst her
> country-women. Had the Bábí religion no other claim to greatness,
> this were sufficient-that it produced a heroine like Qurratu'l-'Ayn.
> 
> 4.
> 
> Introduction to A Traveller's Narrative, pages ix, x
> 
> Though I dimly suspected whither I was going and whom I was to behold
> (for no distinct intimation had been given to me), a second or two elapsed ere,
> with a throb of wonder and awe, I became definitely conscious that the room was
> not untenanted. In the corner where the divan met the wall sat a wondrous and
> venerable figure, crowned with a felt head-dress of the kind called taj by
> dervishes, but of unusual height and make), round the base of which was wound a
> small white turban. 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 host attained!...Thou host come to see a prisoner and an
> 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 mankind.... These strifes and this
> bloodshed and discord must cease,
> 
> Page 17
> 
> 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...."
> 
> Such, so far as I can recall them, were the words which, besides many others,
> I heard from Bahá. Let those who read them consider well with themselves
> whether such doctrines merit death and bonds, and whether the world is more
> likely to gain or lose by their diffusion.
> 
> 5.
> 
> Introduction to A Traveller's Narrative, pages xxxv, xxxvi
> 
> Seldom have I seen one whose appearance impressed me more. A
> tall, strongly built man holding himself straight as an arrow, with white
> turban and raiment, long black locks reaching almost to the shoulder, broad
> powerful forehead, indicating a strong intellect, combined with an unswerving
> will, eyes keen as a hawk's, and strongly marked but pleasing features-such was
> my first impression of 'Abbas Effendi, "The Master" ('Agha) as he par
> excellence is called by the Bábís. Subsequent conversation with
> him served only to heighten the respect with which his appearance had from the
> first inspired me. One more eloquent of speech, more ready of argument, more
> apt of illustration, more intimately acquainted with the sacred books of the
> Jews, the Christians and the Muhammadans, could, I should think, be scarcely
> found even amongst the eloquent, ready and subtle race to which he belongs.
> These qualities, combined with a bearing at once majestic and genial, made me
> cease to wonder at the influence and esteem which he enjoyed even beyond the
> circle of his father's followers. About the greatness of this man and his power
> no one who had seen him could entertain a doubt.
> 
> -------------------
> 
> BY DR. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
> 
> Excerpts from Comparative Religions, page 70, 71
> 
> From that subtle race issues the most remarkable movement
> which modern Muhammadanism has produced.... Disciples gathered round him, and
> the movement was not checked by his arrest, his imprisonment for nearly six
> years and his final execution in 1850. . . . It, too, claims to be a universal
> teaching it has already its noble army of martyrs and its holy books; has
> Persia, in the midst of her miseries, given birth to a religion which will go
> round the world?
> 
> Page 18
> 
> BY THE REV. T. K. CHEYNE, D.LITT., D.D.
> 
> Excerpts from The Reconciliation of Races And Religions,
> (1914)
> 
> There was living quite lately a human being of such consummate
> excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even to
> identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead.... His combination of
> mildness and power is so rare that we have to place him in a line with
> super-normal men.... We learn that, at great points in his career after he had
> been in an ecstasy, such radiance of might and majesty streamed from his
> countenance that none could bear to look upon the effulgence of his glory and
> beauty. Nor was it an uncommon occurrence for unbelievers involuntarily to bow
> down in lowly obeisance on beholding His Holiness.
> 
> The gentle spirit of the Báb is surely high up in the cycles of
> eternity. Who can fail, as Professor Browne says, to be attracted by him? "His
> sorrowful and persecuted life his purity of conduct and youth; his courage and
> uncomplaining patience under misfortune his complete self-negation; the dim
> ideal of a better state of things which can be discerned through the obscure
> mystic utterances of the Bayán; but most of all, his tragic death, all
> serve to enlist our sympathies on behalf of the young prophet of Shiraz."
> 
> "Il sentait le besoin d'une reform profond à introduire dans les moeurs
> publiques.... Il s'est sacrifié pour l'humanité; pour elle il a
> donné son corps et son âme, pour elle il a subi les privations,
> les affronts, les injures, la torture et le martyr." (Mons. Nicholas.)
> 
> If there has been any prophet in recent times, it is to
> Bahá'u'lláh that we must go. Character is the final judge.
> Bahá'u'lláh was a man of the highest class-that of prophets. But
> he was free from the last infirmity of noble minds [sic], and would certainly
> not have separated himself from others. He would have understood the saying:
> "Would God all the Lord's people were prophets!" What he does say, however, is
> just as fine: "I do not desire lordship over others; I desire all men to be
> even as I am."
> 
> The day is not far off when the details of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's missionary
> journeys will be admitted to be of historical importance. How gentle and wise
> he was, hundreds could testify from personal knowledge, and I, too, could
> perhaps say something.... I will only, however, glue here the outward framework
> of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's life, and of his apostolic journeys, with the help of
> my friend Lutfullah.
> 
> Page 19
> 
> During his stay in London he visited Oxford (where he and his party-of
> Persians mainly-were the guests of Professor and Mrs. Cheyne), Edinburgh,
> Clifton and Woking. It is fitting to notice here that the audience at Oxford,
> though highly academic, seemed to be deeply interested, and that Dr. Carpenter
> made an admirable speech....
> 
> ---------------
> 
> BY PROFESSOR VAMBERY
> 
> Testimonial to the Religion of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
> 
> (Published in Egyptian Gazette, Sept. 24, 1913, by Mrs. J.
> Standard.)
> 
> I forward this humble petition to the sanctified and holy presence of
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá 'Abbas, who is the center of knowledge, famous throughout
> the world, and loved by all mankind. O thou noble friend who art conferring
> guidance upon humanity-May my life be a ransom to thee!
> 
> The loving epistle which you have condescended to write to this servant, and
> the rug which you have forwarded, came safely to hand. The time of the meeting
> with your Excellency, and the memory of the benediction of your presence,
> recurred to the memory of this servant, and I am longing for the time when I
> shall meet you again. Although I have traveled through many countries and
> cities of Islam, yet have I never met so lofty a character and so exalted a
> personage as your Excellency, and I can bear witness that it is not possible to
> find such another. On this account, I am hoping that the ideals and
> accomplishments of your Excellency may be crowned with success and yield
> results under all conditions; because behind these ideals and deeds I easily
> discern the eternal welfare and prosperity of the world of humanity.
> 
> This servant, in order to gain first-hand information and experience, entered
> into the ranks of various religions, that is, outwardly, I became a Jew,
> Christian, Muhammadan and Zoroastrian. I discovered that the devotees of these
> various religions do nothing else but hate and anathematize each other, that
> all their religions have become the instruments of tyranny and oppression in
> the hands of rulers and governors, and that they are the causes of the
> destruction of the world of humanity.
> 
> Considering those evil results, every person is forced by necessity to enlist
> himself on the side of your Excellency, and accept with joy the prospect of a
> fundamental basis for a universal religion of God, being laid through your
> efforts.
> 
> Page 20
> 
> I have seen the father of your Excellency from afar. I have realized the
> self-sacrifice and noble courage of his son, and I am lost in admiration.
> 
> For the principles and aims of your Excellency, I express the utmost respect
> and devotion, and if God, the Most High, confers long life, I will be able to
> serve you under all conditions. I pray and supplicate this from the depths of
> my heart.
> 
> Your servant,
> 
> (Mamhenyn.) VAMBERY.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY HARRY CHARLES LUKACH
> 
> Quotation from The Fringe of the East, (Macmillan & Co.,
> London, 1913.)
> 
> Bahá'ísm is now estimated to count more than two million adherents,
> mostly composed of Persian and Indian Shi'ihs, but including also many Sunnis
> from the Turkish Empire and North Africa, and not a few Brahmans, Buddhists,
> Taoists, Shintoists and Jews. It possesses even European converts, and has made
> some headway in the United States. Of all the religions which have been
> encountered in the course of this journey - the stagnant pools of Oriental
> Christianity, the strange survivals of sun-worship, and idolatry tinged with
> Muhammadanism, the immutable relic of the Sumerians - it is the only one which
> is alive, which is aggressive, which is extending its frontiers, instead of
> secluding itself within its ancient haunts. It is a thing which may revivify
> Islam, and make great changes on the face of the Asiatic world.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY SIR VALENTINE CHIROL
> 
> Quotations from The Middle Eastern Question or Some Political
> Problems of Indian Defense, chapter XI, page 116. (The Revival of Babiism.)
> 
> When one has been like Saudi, a great personage, and then a common
> soldier, and then a prisoner of a Christian feudal chief when one has worked as
> a navvy on the fortifications of the Count of Antioch, and wandered back afoot
> to Shiraz after infinite pain and labor, he may well be disposed to think that
> nothing that exists is real, or, at least, has any substantial reality worth
> clinging to. Today the public peace of Persia is no longer subject to such
> violent perturbations. At least, as far as we are concerned, the appearances of
> peace prevail, and few of us care or have occasion to look beyond the
> appearances. But for the Persians themselves, have the conditions very much
> changed? Do they not witness one day the sudden rise of this or that favorite
> of fortune and the next day his sudden fall?
> 
> Page 21
> 
> Have they not seen the Atabak-i-A'zam twice hold sway as the Shah's
> all-powerful Vazir, and twice hurled down from that pinnacle by a bolt from the
> blue? How many other ministers and governors have sat for a time on the seats
> of the mighty and been swept away by some intrigue as sordid as that to which
> they owed their own exaltation? And how many in humbler stations have been in
> the meantime the recipients of their unworthy favors or the victims of their
> arbitrary oppression? A village which but yesterday was fairly prosperous is
> beggared today by some neighboring landlord higher up the valley, who, having
> duly propitiated those in authority, diverts for the benefit of his own estates
> the whole of its slender supply of water. The progress of a governor or royal
> prince, with all his customary retinue of ravenous hangers-on, eats out the
> countryside through which it passes more effectually than a flight of locusts.
> The visitation is as ruinous and as unaccountable. Is it not the absence of all
> visible moral correlation of cause and effect in these phenomena of daily life
> that has gone far to produce the stolid fatalism of the masses, the scoffing
> skepticism of the more educated classes, and from time to time the revolt of
> some nobler minds? Of such the most recent and perhaps the noblest of all
> became the founder of Babiism.
> 
> Chapter XI, page 120
> 
> The Báb was dead, but not Babiism. He was not the first,
> and still less the last, of a long line of martyrs who have testified that even
> in a country gangrene with corruption and atrophied with indifferentism like
> Persia, the soul of a nation survives, inarticulate, perhaps, and in a way
> helpless, but still capable of sudden spasms of vitality.
> 
> Chapter XI, page 124
> 
> Socially one of the most interesting features of Babiism is
> the raising of woman to a much higher plane than she is usually admitted to in
> the East. The Báb himself had no more devoted a disciple than the
> beautiful and gifted lady, known as Qurratu'l-'Ayn, the "Consolation of the
> Eyes," who, having shared all the dangers of the first apostolic missions in
> the north, challenged and suffered death with virile fortitude, as one of the
> Seven Martyrs of Tihran. No memory is more deeply venerated or kindles greater
> enthusiasm than hers, and the influence which she wielded in her lifetime still
> inures to her sex.
> 
> Page 22
> 
> BY PROFESSOR JOWETT OF OXFORD
> 
> Quotation from Heroic Lives, pages 305
> 
> Prof. Jowett of Oxford, Master of Balliol, the translator of
> Plato, studied the movement and was so impressed thereby that he said: "The
> Babite [Bahá'í] movement may not impossibly turn out to have the
> promise of the future." Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter quotes Prof. Edward Caird,
> Prof. Jowett's successor as Master of Balliol, as saying, "He thought Babiism
> (as the Bahá'í movement was then called) might prove the most
> important religious movement since the foundation of Christianity." Prof.
> Carpenter himself gives a sketch of the Bahá'í movement in his
> recent book on Comparative Religions and asks, "Has Persia, in the midst of her
> miseries, given birth to a religion that will go around the world?"
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ALFRED W. MARTIN
> 
> Excerpts from Comparative Religion and the Religion of the
> Future,
> 
> pages 81-91
> 
> Inasmuch as a fellowship of faiths is at once the dearest hope
> and ultimate goal of the Bahá'í movement, it behooves us to take
> cognizance of it and its mission.... Today this religious movement has a
> million and more adherents, including people from all parts of the globe and
> representing a remarkable variety of race, color, class and creed. It has been
> given literary expression in a veritable library of Asiatic, European, and
> American works to which additions are annually made as the movement grows and
> grapples with the great problems that grow out of its cardinal teachings. It
> has a long roll of martyrs for the cause for which it stands, twenty thousand
> in Persia alone, proving it to be a movement worth dying for as well as worth
> living by.
> 
> From its inception it has been identified with Bahá'u'lláh, who
> paid the price of prolonged exile, imprisonment, bodily suffering, and mental
> anguish for the faith he cherished-a man of imposing personality as revealed in
> his writings, characterized by intense moral earnestness and profound
> spirituality, gifted with the self same power so conspicuous in the character
> of Jesus, the power to appreciate people ideally, that is, to see them at the
> level of their best and to make even the lowest types think well of themselves
> because of potentialities within them to which he pointed, but of which they
> were wholly unaware; a prophet whose greatest contribution was not any specific
> doctrine he proclaimed, but an informing spiritual power breathed into the
> world through the example of his life and thereby quickening souls into new
> spiritual activity. Surely a movement of
> 
> Page 23
> 
> which all this can be said deserves-nay, compels-our respectful recognition and
> sincere appreciation.
> 
> Taking precedence over all else in its gospel is the message of unity in
> religion.... It is the crowning glory of the Bahá'í movement
> that, while deprecating sectarianism in its preaching, it has faithfully
> practiced what it preached by refraining from becoming itself a sect.... Its
> representatives do not attempt to impose any beliefs upon others, whether by
> argument or bribery; rather do they seek to put beliefs that have illumined
> their own lives within the reach of those who feel they need illumination. No,
> not a sect, not a part of humanity cut off from all the rest, living for itself
> and aiming to convert all the rest into material for its own growth; no, not
> that, but a leaven, causing spiritual fermentation in all religions quickening
> them with the spirit of catholicity and fraternalism.
> 
> Who shall say but that just as the little company of the Mayflower, landing on
> Plymouth Rock, proved to be the small beginning of a mighty nation, the ideal
> germ of a democracy which, if true to its principles, shall yet overspread the
> habitable globe, so the little company of Bahá'ís exiled from their Persian
> home may yet prove to be the small beginning of the world-wide movement, the
> ideal germ of democracy in religion, the Universal Church of Mankind?
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. JAMES DARMESTETER
> 
> Excerpt from Art in "Persia: A Historical and Literary Sketch"
> (translated by G. K. Nariman), and incorporated in Persia And Parsis, Part 1,
> edited by G. K. Nariman. Published under patronage of the Iran League, Bombay,
> 1925. (The Marker Literary Series for Persia, No. 2.)
> 
> The political reprieve brought about by the Sufis did not result in
> the regeneration of thought. But the last century which marks the end of Persia
> has had its revival and twofold revival, literary and religious. The funeral
> ceremonies by which Persia celebrates every year for centuries-the fatal day of
> the 10th of Muharram, when the son of 'Ali breathed his last at Karbila-have
> developed a popular theater and produced a sincere poetry, dramatic and human,
> which is worth all the rhetoric of the poets. During the same times an attempt
> at religious renovation was made, the religion of Babiism. Demoralized for
> centuries by ten foreign conquests,
> 
> Page 24
> 
> by the yoke of a composite religion in which she believed just enough to
> persecute, by the enervating influence of a mystical philosophy which disabled
> men for action and divested life of all aim and objects, Persia has been making
> unexpected efforts for the last fifty five years to remake for herself a virile
> ideal. Babiism has little of originality in its dogmas and mythology. Its
> mystic doctrine takes its rise from Sufism and the old sects of the 'Aliides
> formed around the dogma of divine incarnation. But the morality it inculcates
> is a revolution. It has the ethics of the West. It suppresses lawful impurities
> which are a great barrier dividing Islam from Christendom. It denounces
> polygamy, the fruitful source of Oriental degeneration. It seeks to
> reconstitute the family and it elevates man and in elevating him exalts woman
> up to his level. Babiism which diffused itself in less than five years from one
> end of Persia to another, which was bathed in 1852 in the blood of its martyrs,
> has been silently progressing and propagating itself. If Persia is to be at all
> regenerate it will be through this new faith.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY CHARLES BAUDOUIN
> 
> Excerpts from Contemporary Studies, Part 111, page 131. (Allen
> & Unwin, London, 1924.)
> 
> We Westerners are too apt to imagine that the huge continent of Asia
> is sleeping as soundly as a mummy. We smile at the vanity of the ancient
> Hebrews, who believed themselves to be the chosen people. We are amazed at the
> intolerance of the Greeks and the Romans, who looked upon the members of all
> races as barbarians. Nevertheless, we ourselves are like the Hebrews, the
> Greeks and the Roman. As Europeans we believed Europe to be the only world that
> matters, though from time to time we may turn a paternal eye towards America,
> regarding our offspring in the New World with mingled feelings of condescension
> and pride.
> 
> Nevertheless, the great cataclysm of 1914 is leading some of us to undertake a
> critical examination of the inviolable dogma that the European nations are the
> elect. Has there not been of late years a demonstration of the nullity of
> modern civilization-the nullity which had already been proclaimed by Rousseau,
> Carlyle, Ruskin, Tolstoy, and Nietzsche? We are now inclined to listen more
> attentively to whispers from the East. Our self-complacency has been disturbed
> by such utterances as that of Rabindranath Tagore, who,
> 
> Page 25
> 
> lecturing at the Imperial University of Tokio on June 18, 1916, foretold a
> great future for Asia. The political civilization of Europe was "carnivorous
> and cannibalistic in its tendencies." The East was patient, and could afford to
> wait till the West, "hurry after the expedient," had to halt for want of
> breath. "Europe, while busily speeding to her engagements, disdainfully casts
> her glance from her carriage window at the reaper reaping his harvest in the
> field, and in her intoxication of speed, cannot but think him as slow and ever
> receding backwards. But the speed comes to its end, the engagement loses its
> meaning, and the hungry heart clamors for food, till at last she comes to the
> lonely reaper reaping his harvest in the sun. For if the office cannot wait, or
> the buying and selling, or the craving for excitement-love waits, and beauty,
> and the wisdom of suffering and the fruits of patient devotion and reverent
> meekness of simple faith. And thus shall wait the East till her time comes."
> 
> Being thus led to turn our eyes towards Asia, we are astonished to find how
> much we have misunderstood it; and we blush when we realize our previous
> ignorance of the fact that, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, Asia
> gave birth to a great religious movement-a movement signalized for its
> spiritual purity, one which has had thousands of martyrs, one which Tolstoy has
> described. H. Dreyfus, the French historian of this movement, says that it is
> not "a new religion," but "religion renewed," and that it provides "the only
> possible basis for a mutual understanding between religion and free thought."
> Above all, we are impressed by the fact that, in our own time, such a
> manifestation can occur, and that the new faith should have undergone a
> development far more extensive than that undergone in the same space of time
> nearly two thousand years ago, by budding Christianity.
> 
> .At the present time, the majority of the inhabitants of Persia have, to a
> varying extent, accepted the Babist faith. In the great towns of Europe,
> America, and Asia, there are active centers for the propaganda of the liberal
> ideas and the doctrine of human community, which form the foundations of
> Bahá'íst teaching.
> 
> We shall not grasp the full significance of this tendency until we pass from
> the description of Bahá'ísm as a theory to that of Bahá'ísm as a practice, for
> the core of religion is not metaphysics, but morality.
> 
> The Bahá'íst ethical code is dominated by the law of love taught by Jesus and
> by all the prophets. In the thousand and one details of practical life, this
> law is subject to manifold interpretations. That of Bahá'u'lláh
> is unquestionably one of the most comprehensive of these, one of the most
> exalted, one of the most satisfactory to the modern mind....
> 
> Page 26
> 
> That is why Bahá'u'lláh is a severe critic of the patriotism
> which plays so large a part in the national life of our day. Love of our native
> land is legitimate, but this love must not be exclusive. A man should love his
> country more than he loves his house (this is the dogma held by every patriot);
> but Bahá'u'lláh adds that he should love the divine world more
> than he loves his country. From this standpoint, patriotism is seen to be an
> intermediate stage on the road of renunciation, an incomplete and hybrid
> religion, something we have to get beyond. Throughout his life
> Bahá'u'lláh regarded the ideal universal peace as one of the most
> important of his aims....
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh is in this respect enunciating a novel and fruitful
> idea. There is a better way of dealing with social evils than by trying to cure
> them after they have come to pass. We should try to prevent them by removing
> their causes, which act on the individual, and especially on the child. Nothing
> can be more plastic than the nature of the child. The government's first duty
> must be to provide for the careful and efficient education of children,
> remembering that education is something more than instruction. This will be an
> enormous step towards the solution of the social problem, and to take such a
> step will be the first task of the Baytu'l-'Ad'l (House of Justice). "It is
> ordained upon every father to rear his son or his daughter by means of the
> sciences, the arts, and all the commandments; and if any one should neglect to
> do so, then the members of the council, should the offender be a wealthy man,
> must levy from him the sum necessary for the education of his child. When the
> neglectful parent is poor, the cost of the necessary education must be borne by
> the council, which will provide a refuge for the unfortunate."
> 
> The Baytu'l-'Ad'l, likewise, must prepare the way for the establishment of
> universal peace, doing this by organizing courts of arbitration and by
> influencing the governments. Long before the Esperantists had begun their
> campaign, and more than twenty years before Nicholas II had summoned the first
> Hague congress, Bahá'u'lláh was insisting on the need for a
> universal language and courts of arbitration. He returns to these matters again
> and again: "Let all the nations become one in faith, and let all men be
> brothers, in order that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of
> men may be strengthened.... What harm can there be in that? ... It is going to
> happen. There will be an end to sterile conflicts, to ruinous
> 
> Page 27
> 
> wars; and the Great Peace will come!" Such were the words of
> Bahá'u'lláh in 1890, two years before his death.
> 
> While adopting and developing the Christian law of love,
> Bahá'u'lláh rejected the Christian principle of asceticism. He
> discountenanced the machinations which were a nightmare of the Middle Ages, and
> whose evil effects persist even in our own days....
> 
> Bahá'ísm, then, is an ethical system, a system of social morality. But it
> would be a mistake to regard Bahá'íst teaching as a collection of abstract
> rules imposed from without. Bahá'ísm is permeated with a sane and noble
> mysticism; nothing could be more firmly rooted in the inner life, more benignly
> spiritual; nothing could speak more intimately to the soul, in low tones, and
> as if from within....
> 
> Such is the new voice that sounds to us from Asia such is the new dawn in the
> East. We should give them our close attention; we should abandon our customary
> mood of disdainful superiority. Doubtless, Bahá'u'lláh's teaching
> is not definitive. The Persian prophet does not offer it to us as such. Nor can
> we Europeans assimilate all of it; for modern science leads us to make certain
> claims in matters of thought-claims we cannot relinquish, claims we should not
> try to forego. But even though Bahá'u'lláh's precepts (like those
> of the Gospels) may not fully satisfy all these intellectual demands, they are
> rarely in conflict with our scientific outlooks. If they are to become our own
> spiritual food, they must be supplemented, they must be relived by the
> religious spirits of Europe, must be rethought by minds schooled in the Western
> mode of thought. But, in its existing form, Bahá'íst teaching may serve, amid
> our present chaos, to open for us a road leading to solace and to comfort; may
> restore our confidence in the spiritual destiny of man. It reveals to us how
> the human mind is in travail; it gives us an inkling of the fact that the
> greatest happenings of the day are not the ones we were inclined to regard as
> the most momentous, not the ones which are making the loudest noise.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> DR. HENRY H. JESSUP, D.D.
> 
> From the World Parliament of Religion; Volume II, 13th Day,
> under Criticism and Discussion of Missionary Methods, page 1122. At the
> Columbian Exposition of 1893, at Chicago. Edited by the Rev. John Henry
> Barrows, D.D.(The Parliament Publishing Company, Chicago, 1893.)
> 
> This, then, is our mission: that we who are made in the image of God
> should remember that all men are made in God's image. To this divine knowledge
> we owe all we are, all we hope for. We are
> 
> Page 28
> 
> rising gradually toward that image, and we owe to our fellow men to aid them in
> returning to it in the Glory of God and the Beauty of Holmes [sic]. It is a
> celestial privilege and with it comes a high responsibility, from which there
> is no escape.
> 
> In the Palace of Bahjí , or Delight, just outside the Fortress of
> 'Akká, on the Syrian coast, there died a few months since, a famous
> Persian sage, the Bábí Saint, named Bahá'u'lláh-the
> "Glory of God"-the head of that vast reform party of Persian Muslims, who
> accept the New Testament as the Word of God and Christ as the Deliverer of men,
> who regard all nations as one, and all men as brothers. Three years ago he was
> visited by a Cambridge scholar and gave utterance to sentiments so noble, so
> Christlike, that we repeat them as our closing words:
> 
> "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 religions 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? Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his
> country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind."
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY THE RIGHT HON. THE EARL CURZON
> 
> Excerpts from Persia, Vol. 1, pages 496-594. (Written in
> 1892.)
> 
> Beauty and the female sex also lent their consecration to the new
> creed and the heroism of the lovely but ill-fated Poetess of Qazvin, Zarrin-Taj
> (Crown of Gold) or Qurratu'l-'Ayn (Solace of the Eyes), who, throwing off the
> veil, carried the missionary torch far and wide, is one of the most affecting
> episodes in modern history.
> 
> The lowest estimate places the present number of Bábís in Persia
> at half a million. I am disposed to think, from conversations with persons well
> qualified to judge, that the total is nearer one million. They are to be found
> in every walk of life, from the ministers and nobles of the Court to the
> scavenger or the groom, not the least arena of their activity being the
> Mussulman priesthood itself. It will have been noticed that the movement was
> initiated by Siyyids, Hajis and Mullas, i.e., persons who, either by descent,
> from pious inclination, or by profession, were intimately concerned with the
> Muhammadan creed; and it is among even the professed votaries of
> 
> Page 29
> 
> the faith that they continue to make their converts.... Quite recently the
> Bábís have had great success in the camp of another enemy, having
> secured many proselytes among the Jewish populations of the Persian towns. I
> hear that during the past year (1891) they are reported to have made 150 Jewish
> converts in Tihran, 100 in Hamadan, 50 in Kashan, and 75 per cent of the Jews
> at Gulpayigan.... The two victims [sic], whose names were Haji Mirza Hasan and
> Haji Mirza Husayn, have been renamed by the Bábís-
> Sultanu'sh-Shuhada', or King of Martyrs, and Mahbubu'sh-Shuhada', or Beloved of
> Martyrs-and their naked graves in the cemetery have become places of pilgrimage
> where many a tear is shed over the fate of the "Martyrs of Isfahan."
> 
> It is these little incidents, protruding from time to time their ugly
> features, that prove Persia to be not as yet quite redeemed, and that somewhat
> staggers the tall talkers about Iranian civilization. If one conclusion more
> than another has been forced upon our notice by the retrospect in which I have
> indulged, it is that a sublime and unmurmuring devotion has been inculcated by
> this new faith, whatever it be. There is, I believe, but one instance of a
> Bábí having recanted under pressure of menace of suffering, and
> he reverted to the faith and was executed within two years. Tales of
> magnificent heroism illumine the bloodstained pages of Bábí
> history. Ignorant and unlettered as many of its votaries are, and have been,
> they are yet prepared to die for their religion, and fires of Smithfield did
> not kindle a nobler courage than has met and defied the more refined
> torture-mongers of Tihran. Of no small account, then, must be the tenets of a
> creed that can awaken in its followers so rare and beautiful a spirit of
> self-sacrifice. From the facts that Babiism in its earliest years found itself
> in conflict with the civil powers and that an attempt was made by
> Bábís upon the life of the Shah, it has been wrongly inferred
> that the movement was political in origin and Nihilist in character. It does
> not appear from a study of the writings either of the Báb or his
> successors, that there is any foundation for such a suspicion.... The charge of
> immorality seems to have arisen partly from the malignant inventions of
> opponents, partly from the much greater freedom claimed for women by the
> Báb, which in the oriental mind is scarcely dissociable from profligacy
> of conduct.... if Babiism continues to grow at its present rate of progression,
> a time may conceivably come when it will oust Muhammadanism from the field in
> Persia.... Since its recruits are won from the best soldiers of the garrison
> whom it is attacking, there is greater reason to believe that it may ultimately
> 
> Page 30
> 
> prevail.... The pure and suffering life of the Báb, his ignominious
> death, the heroism and martyrdom of his followers, will appeal to many others
> who can find no similar phenomena in the contemporaneous records of
> Islam....
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY SIR FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND
> 
> Excerpts from The Gleam. (1923.)
> 
> The story of the Báb, as Mirza 'Ali-Muhammad called
> himself, was the story of spiritual heroism unsurpassed in Svabhava's
> experience; and his own adventurous soul was fired by it. That a youth of no
> social influence and no education should, by the simple power of insight, be
> able to pierce into the heart of things and see the real truth, and then hold
> on to it with such firmness of conviction and present it with such suasion that
> he was able to convince men that he was the Messiah and get them to follow him
> to death itself, was one of those splendid facts in human history that Svabhava
> loved to meditate on. This was a true hero whom he would wish to emulate and
> whose experiences he would profit by. The Báb's passionate sincerity
> could not be doubted, for he had given his life for his faith. And that there
> must be something in his message that appealed to men and satisfied their
> souls, was witnessed to by the fact that thousands gave their lives in his
> cause and millions now follow him.
> 
> If a young man could, in only six years of ministry, by the sincerity of his
> purpose and the attraction of his personality, so inspire rich and poor,
> cultured and illiterate, alike, with belief in himself and his doctrines that
> they would remain staunch, though hunted down and without trial sentenced to
> death, sawn asunder, strangled, shot, blown from guns and if men of high
> position and culture in Persia, Turkey and Egypt in numbers to this day adhere
> to his doctrines, his life must be one of those events in the last hundred
> years which is really worth study. And that study fortunately has been made by
> the Frenchman Gobineau and by Professor E. G. Browne, so that we are able to
> have a faithful representation of its main features.... Thus, in only his
> thirtieth year, in the year 1850, ended the heroic career of a true God-man. Of
> the sincerity of his conviction that he was God-appointed, the manner of his
> death is the amplest possible proof. In the belief that he would thereby save
> others from the error of their present beliefs he willingly sacrificed
> 
> Page 31
> 
> his life. And of his power of attaching men to him, the passionate devotion of
> hundreds and even thousands of men who gave their lives in his cause is
> convincing testimony....
> 
> He himself was but "a letter out of that most mighty book, a dewdrop from that
> limitless ocean." The One to come would reveal all mysteries and all riddles.
> This was the humility of true insight. And it has had its effect. His movement
> has grown and expanded, and it has yet a great future before it.
> 
> During his six years of ministry, four of which were spent in captivity, he
> had permeated all Persia with his ideas. And since his death the movement has
> spread to Turkey, Egypt, India and even into Europe and America. His adherents
> are now numbered by millions. "The Spirit which pervades them," says Professor
> Browne, "is such that it cannot fail to affect most powerfully all subject to
> its influence."
> 
> 2.
> 
> For many years I have been interested in the rise and progress
> of the Bahá'í Movement. Its roots go deep down into the past and
> yet it looks far forward into the future. It realizes and preaches the oneness
> of mankind. And I have noticed how ardently its followers work for the
> furtherance of peace and for the general welfare of mankind. God must be with
> them and their success therefore assured. Excerpts from Modern Mystic. (1935,
> p. 142.)
> 
> 3.
> 
> This martyrdom of the Báb took place on July 9, 1850,
> thirty-one years from the date of his birth.
> 
> His body was dead. His spirit lived on. Husayn had been slain in battle.
> Quddus had been done to death in captivity. But Bahá'u'lláh
> lived. The One who shall be made manifest was alive. And in him and in others
> had been engendered such love for the Báb and what he stood for as, in
> the words of the chronicler, no eye had ever beheld nor mortal heart conceived:
> if branches of every tree were turned into pens, and all the seas into ink, and
> Earth and Heaven rolled into one parchment, the immensity of that love would
> still remain untold. This love for the Cause still survived. And it was
> sufficient. Bahá'u'lláh was, indeed, despoiled of his
> possessions, deserted by his friends, driven into exile from his native land
> and, even in exile, confined to his house. But in him the Cause was still
> alive- and more than alive, purified and ennobled by the fiery trials through
> which it had passed.
> 
> Page 32
> 
> Under the wise control, and direction of Bahá'u'lláh from his
> prison-house, first at Baghdad and then at 'Akká in Syria, there grew
> what is now known as the Bahá'í Movement which, silently
> propagating itself, has now spread to Europe and America as well as to India
> and Egypt, while the bodily remains of the Báb, long secretly guarded,
> now find a resting-place on Mount Carmel in a Tomb-shrine, which is a place of
> pilgrimage to visitors from all over the world.
> 
> Excerpt from The Christian Commonwealth, January 22, 1913:
> "'Abdu'l-Bahá at Oxford"
> 
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá addressed a large and deeply interested
> audience at Manchester College, Oxford, on December 31. The Persian leader
> spoke in his native tongue, Mirza Ahmad Sohrab interpreting. Principal Estlin
> Carpenter presided, and introduced the speaker by saying that they owed the
> honor and pleasure of meeting 'Abdu'l-Bahá to their revered friend, Dr.
> Cheyne, who was deeply interested in Bahá'í teaching. The
> movement sprung up during the middle of the last century in Persia, with the
> advent of a young Muhammadan who took to himself the title of the Báb
> (meaning door or gate, through which men could arrive at the knowledge or truth
> of God), and who commenced teaching in Persia in the year 1844. The purity of
> his character, the nobility of his words, aroused great enthusiasm. He was,
> however, subjected to great hostility by the authorities, who secured his
> arrest and imprisonment, and he was finally executed in 1850. But the movement
> went on, and the writings of the Báb, which had been copious, were
> widely read. The movement has been brought into India, Europe, and the United
> States. It does not seek to create a new sect, but to inspire all sects with a
> deep fundamental love. The late Dr. Jowett once said to him that he had been so
> deeply impressed with the teachings and character of the Báb that he
> thought Babiism, as the present movement was then known, might become the
> greatest religious movement since the birth of Christ.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY REV. J. TYSSUL DAVIS, B.A.
> 
> Quotation from A League of Religions. Excerpts from Chapter X:
> "Bahá'ísm-The Religion of Reconciliation."
> 
> (The Lindsey Press, London, England.)
> 
> The Bahá'í religion has made its way . . .
> because it meets the needs of its day. It fits the larger outlook of our time
> better than the rigid exclusive older faiths. A characteristic is its
> unexpected
> 
> Page 33
> 
> liberality and toleration. It accepts all the great religions as true, and
> their scriptures as inspired. The Bahá'ísts bid the followers of these faiths
> disentangle from the windings of racial, particularist, local prejudices, the
> vital, immortal thread, the pure gospel of eternal worth, and to apply this
> essential element of life. Instances are quoted of people being recommended to
> work within the older faiths, to remain, vitalizing them upon the principles of
> the new faith. They cannot fear new facts, new truths as the Creed defenders
> must. They believe in a progressive revelation. They admit the cogency of
> modern criticism and allow that God is in His nature incomprehensible, but is
> to be known through His Manifestations. Their ethical ideal is very high and is
> of the type we Westerners have learnt to designate "Christlike." "What does he
> do to his enemies that he makes them his friends?" was asked concerning the
> late leader. What astonishes the student is not anything in the ethics or
> philosophy of this movement, but the extraordinary response its ideal has
> awakened in such numbers of people, the powerful influence this standard
> actually exerts on conduct. It is due to four things: (I) It makes a call on
> the Heroic Element in Man. It offers no bribe. It bids men endure, give up,
> carry the cross. It calls them to sacrifice, to bear torture, to suffer
> martyrdom, to brave death. (2) It offers liberty of thought. Even upon such a
> vital question as immortality it will not bind opinion. Its atmosphere is one
> of trust and hope, not of dogmatic chill. (3) It is a religion of love.
> "Notwithstanding the interminable catalogue of extreme and almost incredible
> sufferings and privations which this heroic band of men and women have
> endured-more terrible than many martyrdoms-there is not a trace of resentment
> or bitterness to be observed among them. One would suppose that they were the
> most fortunate of the people among whom they live, as indeed they do certainly
> consider themselves, in that they have been permitted to live near their
> beloved Lord, beside which they count their sufferings as nothing" (Whelps).
> Love for the Master, love for the brethren, love for the neighbors, love for
> the alien, love for all humanity, love for all life, love for God-the old,
> well-tried way trod once before in Syria, trodden again. (4) It is a religion
> in harmony with science. It has here the advantage of being thirteen centuries
> later than Islam. This new dispensation has been tried in the furnace, and has
> not been found wanting. It has been proved valid by the lives of those who have
> endured all things on its behalf. Here is something more appealing than its
> logic and rational philosophy. "To the Western observer" (writes Prof. Browne),
> "it is the complete sincerity of the
> 
> Page 34
> 
> Bábís, their fearless disregard of death and torture undergone
> for the sake of their religion, their certain conviction as to the truth of
> their faith, their generally admirable conduct toward mankind, especially
> toward their fellow-believers, which constitute their strongest claim on his
> attention."
> 
> "By their fruits shall ye know them! " We cannot but address to this youthful
> religion an All Hail! of welcome. We cannot fail to see in its activity another
> proof of the living witness in our own day of the working of the sleepless
> spirit of God in the hearts of men, for He cannot rest, by the necessity of His
> nature, until He heath made in conscious reality, as in power, the whole world
> His own.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY HERBERT PUTNAM Librarian of Congress
> 
> The dominant impression that survives in my memory of
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá is that of an extraordinary nobility: physically, in the
> head so massive yet so finely poised, and the modeling of the features; but
> spiritually, in the serenity of expression, and the suggestion of grave and
> responsible meditation in the deeper lines of the face. But there was also, in
> his complexion, carriage, and expression, an assurance of the complete health
> which is a requisite of a sane judgment. And when, as in a lighter mood, his
> features relaxed into the playful, the assurance was added of a sense of humor
> without which there is no true sense of proportion. I have never met any one
> concerned with the philosophies of life whose judgment might seem so reliable
> in matters of practical conduct.
> 
> My regret is that my meetings with him were so few and that I could not
> benefit by a lengthier contact with a personality combining a dignity so
> impressive with human traits so engaging.
> 
> I wish that he could be multiplied!
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY LEO TOLSTOY
> 
> Translated from a letter to Mme. Isabel Grinevskaya, Oct. 22,
> 1903
> 
> I am very glad that Mr. V. V. Stassov has told you of the good
> impression which your book has made on me, and I thank you for sending it.
> 
> I have known about the Bábís for a long time, and have always
> been interested in their teachings. It seems to me that these teachings,
> 
> Page 35
> 
> as well as all the rationalistic social religious teachings that have arisen
> lately out of the original teachings of Brahmanism, Buddhism, Judaism,
> Christianity and Islam distorted by the priests, have a great future for this
> very reason that these teachings, discarding all these distorting incrustations
> that cause division, aspire to unite into one common religion of all
> mankind.
> 
> Therefore, the teachings of the Bábís, inasmuch as they have
> rejected the old Muhammadan superstitions and have not established new
> superstitions which would divide them from other new superstitions
> (unfortunately something of the kind is noticed in the exposition of the
> Teachings of the Báb), and inasmuch as they keep to the principal
> fundamental ideas of brotherhood, equality and love, have a great future before
> them.
> 
> In the Muhammadan religion there has been lately going on an intensive
> spiritual movement. I know that one such movement is centered in the French
> colonies in Africa, and has its name (I do not remember it), and its prophet.
> Another movement exists in India, Lahore, and also has its prophet and
> publishes its paper "Review of Religions."
> 
> Both these religious teachings contain nothing new, neither do they have for
> their principal object a changing of the outlook of the people and thus do not
> change the relationship between the people, as is the case with Babiism, though
> not so much in its theory (Teachings of the Báb) as in the practice of
> life as far as I know it. I therefore sympathize with Babiism with all my heart
> inasmuch as it teaches people brotherhood and equality and sacrifice of
> material life for service to God.
> 
> Translated from a letter to Frid ul Khan Wadelbekow (This communication is
> dated 1908 and is found among epistles written to Caucasian Muhammadans.)
> 
> In answer to your letter which questions how one should understand the term
> God. I send you a collection of writings from my literary and reading club, in
> which some thoughts upon the nature of God are included. In my opinion if we
> were to free ourselves from all false conception of God we should, whether as
> Christians or Muhammadans, free ourselves entirely from picturing God as a
> personality. The conception which then seems to me to be the best for meeting
> the requirements of reason and heart is found in 4th chap. St. John, 7-12-15
> that means God is love. It therefore follows that God lives in us according to
> the measure or
> 
> Page 36
> 
> capacity of each soul to express His nature. This thought is implicit more or
> less clearly in all religions, and therefore in Muhammadanism.
> 
> Concerning your second question upon what awaits us after death I can only
> reply that on dying we return to God from whose Life we came. God, however,
> being Love we can on going over expect God only.
> 
> Concerning your third question, I answer that so far as I understand Islam,
> like all other religions Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc., it contains
> great basic truths but that these have become corrupted by superstitions, and
> coarse interpretations and filled with unnecessary legendic descriptions. I
> have had much help in my researches to get clear upon Muhammadanism by a
> splendid little book "The sayings of Muhammad."
> 
> The teachings of the Bábís which come to us out of Islam have
> through Bahá'u'lláh's teachings been gradually developed and now
> present us with the highest and purest form of religious teaching.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY DR. EDMUND PRIVAT
> 
> The practical and spiritual understanding between nations, the
> realization of the unity of mankind above all barriers of language and
> religion, the feeling of responsibility towards all who suffer from grief or
> injustice, are only different branches of the same central teaching which gives
> the Bahá'í Movement such a faithful and active family of workers
> in so many countries. [The following passages in French may
> contain scanning errors] La superstition l'intolérance et
> l'alliance des prêtres avec la tyrannize sevit en Islam comme ailleurs.
> La grande lumière s'assombrit dan la fume tenebreuse des forbes vises et
> des passions fanatiques. Il y a plusieurs foss des revels et des retours a la
> purée du message.
> 
> Chez nous, en Perse, le Báb recut en saint et mourut en martyr à
> Tabriz, il y a près d'un siècle. Bahá'u'lláh lui
> succéda, exile de Perse emprisonné par le sultan turc. Il
> proclamait comme l'unité divine exclut les rivalités. La
> soumission à Dieu doit rapprocher les Hommes. Si la religion les
> sépare, c'est qu'elle a Perdu son principal sens.
> 
> Page 37
> 
> En plein milieu du dix-neuvième siècle, au temps des Lamartine
> et des Victor Hugo, le grand saint musulman fixate au Bahá'í, ses
> disciples, un programme et des principes plus actuels que jamais....
> 
> L'Islam a toujours proclamé ce dogme avec majesté, mais les
> religions luttent en brandissant le nom d'un prophète où d'un
> autre, au lieu d'insister sur leur enseignement, qui pourrait les rapprocher.
> Bahá'u'lláh tachait de faire tombed les Paris, non pas
> Mahometisme avant tout, mais vraiment Islam, c'est-a-dire soumission commune
> à la volonté suprème.
> 
> On ne parlait alors ni d'un Wilson, ni d'un Zamenhof, mais l'exile de
> Bahá'í montrait aux genérations futures le chemin qu'elles
> devaient prendre. Son fils 'Abdu'l-Bahá repandit plus tard son message
> en Europe et en Amérique. Meme un libre penseur comme Auguste Forel s'y
> rallia de grand coeur. Le circle apical des Bahá'í s'étend
> autour du mode.
> 
> En Perse, un million d'entre eux soutiennent des écoles fameuses den le
> pays. (From La Sagelle de l'Orient, Chap. Ill)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY DR. AUGUSTE FOREL
> 
> J'avais écrit les lingnes comme précèdent
> en 1912. Comme dois-je ajouter aujourd'hui en aout 1921, après les
> horribles guerres qui viennent de mettre l'humanité à feu et
> à sang, tout en dévoilant plus que jamais la térrible
> férocité de nos passions haineuses? Riven, si non que nous devon
> demurer d'autant plus fermes, d'autant plus inébranables Dan notre lutte
> pour le bien social. Nos enfants ne doivent pas se décourager ils
> doivent au contraire profiter du chaos mondial actual pour aider à la
> penile organization superieure et supranational de l'humanité, à
> l'aide d'une fédération universelle des peuples.
> 
> En 1920 seulement, j'ai appris à connâitre, a Karlsruhe, la
> religion supraconfessionnelle et mondiale des Bahá'ís fondue en Orient par le
> person Bahá'u'lláh, il y a 70 ans. C'est la vraie religion du
> bien social human, sans dogmes, ni prêtres, reliant entre eux tous les
> hommes sûr notre petit globe terrestre. Je suis devenu
> Bahá'í. Comme cette religion vive et prosper pour le bien de
> l'humanité c'est la mon voeux le plus ardent.... (Excerpt from Dr
> Auguste Forel's Will)
> 
> Page 38
> 
> BY GENERAL RENATO PIOLA CASELLI
> 
> Having been engaged all of his life in the training of men, he
> does this (i.e., write on the subject of religion) more as a "shepherd of a
> flock" might do, in hope of persuading his friends and brothers to turn
> spontaneously to the Illumined Path of the Great Revelation.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY FREDERICK W. OAKES
> 
> The Enlightener of human minds in respect to their religious
> foundations and privileges is of such vital importance that no one is safe who
> does not stop and listen for its quiet meaning, and is to the mind of men, as
> the cooling breeze that unseen passes its breath over the varying leaves of a
> tree. Watch it! And see how uniformly, like an unseen hand passing caressingly
> over all its leaves: Full of tender care and even in its gifts of love and
> greater life: Caresses each leaf. Such it is to one who has seated himself amid
> the flowers and fruit trees in the Garden Beautiful at 'Akká, just
> within the circle of that Holy and Blessed shrine where rests the Mortal part
> of the Great Enlightener. His handiwork is there, you touch the fruit and
> flowers his hand gave new life's hopes to, and kneeling as I did beside Shoghi
> Effendi, Guardian of the Marvelous Manifestation, felt the spirit's immortal
> love of Him who rests there. While I could not speak the words of the Litany,
> my soul knew the wondrous meaning, for every word was a word of the soul's
> language that speaks of the Eternal love and care of the Eternal Father. So
> softly and so living were the reflections from his beautiful personality, that
> one needed not spoken words to be interpreted. And this Pilgrim came away
> renewed and refreshed to such a degree, that the hard bands of formalism were
> replaced by the freedom of love and light that will ever make that sojourn
> there the prize memory and the Door of revelation never to be closed again, and
> never becloud the glorious Truth of Universal Brotherhood. A calm, and glorious
> influence that claims the heart and whispers to each of the pulsing leaves of
> the great family in all experiences of life, "Be not afraid. It is I!"-And
> makes us long to help all the world to know the meaning of those words spoken
> by The Great Revealer, "Let us strive with heart and soul that unity may dwell
> in the world." And to catch the greatness of the word "Strive," in quietness
> and reflection.
> 
> Page 39
> 
> BY RENWICK J. G. MILLAR
> 
> Editor of John O'Groat Journal, Wick, Scotland
> 
> I was in Chicago for only some ten days, yet it would take a
> hundred chapters to describe all the splendid sights and institutions I was
> privileged to see. No doubt Chicago has more than its fair share of alien
> gangsters and gunmen, and the despicable doings of this obnoxious class has
> badly vitiated its civic life and reputation. But for all that it is a
> magnificent city-in many respects probably the finest in America; a city of
> which its residents have innumerable reasons to be proud....
> 
> Every day indeed was filled up with sightseeing and the enjoyment of lavish
> hospitality. One day, for example, I was entertained to lunch at the Illinois
> Athletic Club as the guest of Mr. Robert Black, a prosperous Scot belonging to
> Wigtonshire, who is in the building trade. He is an ex-president of the St.
> Andrew's Society. Mr. Falconer and other Scots friends were present, and they
> were all exceedingly kind and complimentary. I could not, in short, have been
> treated with more distinction if I had been a prominent Minister of State
> instead of a humble Scottish journalist out on a mission of fraternity and good
> will.
> 
> On the same day I met by appointment Mr. Albert R. Windust with whom I went
> out to see the Bahá'í Temple which is in course of being erected
> at Wilmette, a suburb of Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan. It is about an
> hour's ride out on the elevated railway. Only the foundation and basement have
> so far been constructed, and the work was meanwhile stopped, but, we understand
> is now shortly to be resumed. I have no hesitation in saying that when
> completed this Temple will be one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture
> in the world. I had the privilege of an introduction to the architect, a
> Frenchman, M. Bourgeois, who speaks English fluently. We spent a considerable
> time with him in his beautiful studio overlooking the Lake, and he did me the
> honour of showing me the plans of the Temple, drawings which cost him years of
> toil, and they are far beyond anything I could have imagined in beauty and
> spiritual significance. M. Bourgeois, who is well advanced in years, is a
> genius and mystic-a gentleman of charming personality. In all that I had the
> pleasure of seeing in his studio I had a privilege that is given to few. My
> signature is in his personal book, which contains the names of some of the
> great ones of the earth! Mr. Windust, who is a leading Bahá'í in
> the city, is a quiet and humble man, but full of fine ideas and ideals. He
> treated me with
> 
> Page 40
> 
> the utmost brotherly courtesy. How is it, I kept asking myself, that it should
> be mine to have all this privilege and honour? There was no reason save that
> they told me I had touched the chords of truth and sincerity in referring to
> and reviewing the Bahá'í writings and principles in a few short
> articles in this Journal. The Temple is designed to represent these
> principles-universal religion, universal brotherhood, universal education, and
> the union of science and religion. Meantime, the Chicagoans are seemingly
> indifferent to all its spiritual significance; but some day they will wake up
> to a realisation of the fact that its symbolism will mark the city as one of
> destiny in the world.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY CHARLES H. PRISK
> 
> Editor, Pasadena Star News
> 
> Humanity is the better, the nobler, for the
> Bahá'í Faith. It is a Faith that enriches the soul; that takes
> from life its dross.
> 
> I am prompted thus to express myself because of what I have seen, what I have
> heard, what I have read of the results of the Movement founded by the Reverend
> Bahá'u'lláh. Embodied within that Movement is the spirit of world
> brotherhood; that brotherhood that makes for unity of thought and action.
> 
> Though not a member of the Bahá'í Faith, I sense its tremendous
> potency for good. Ever is it helping to usher in the dawn of the day of "Peace
> on Earth Good Will to Men." By the spread of its teachings, the
> Bahá'í cause is slowly, yet steadily, making the Golden Rule a
> practical reality.
> 
> With the high idealism of Bahá'u'lláh as its guide, the
> Bahá'í Faith is as the shining light that shineth more and more
> unto the perfect day. Countless are its good works. For example, to the
> pressing economic problems it gives a new interpretation, a new solution. But
> above all else it is causing peoples everywhere to realize they are as one, by
> heart and spirit divinely united.
> 
> And so I find joy in paying this little tribute to a cause that is adding to
> the sweetness, the happiness, the cleanness of life.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. HARI PRASAD SHASTRI, D.LITT.
> 
> My contact with the Bahá'í Movement and my acquaintance
> with its teachings, given by Hadrat-i-Bahá'u'lláh, have filled me
> with real joy, as I see that this Movement, so cosmopolitan in its
> 
> Page 41
> 
> appeal, and so spiritual in its advocacy of Truth, is sure to bring peace and
> joy to the hearts of millions.
> 
> Free from metaphysical subtleties, practical in its outlook, above all
> sectarianism, and based on God, the substratum of the human soul and the
> phenomenal world, the Bahá'í Movement carries peace and
> illumination with it.
> 
> As long as it is kept free from orthodoxy and church-spirit, and above
> personalities, it will continue to be a blessing to its followers.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY SHRI PUROHIT SWAMI
> 
> I am in entire sympathy with all of the principles that the
> Bahá'í Movement stands for; there is nothing which is contrary to
> what I am preaching. I think at this stage of the world such teachings are
> needed more than anything else. I find the keynote of the Teachings is the
> spiritual regeneration of the world. The world is getting more and more
> spiritually bankrupt every day, and if it requires anything it requires
> spiritual life. The Bahá'í Movement stands above all caste, creed
> and color and is based on pure spiritual unity.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. HERBERT A. MILLER
> 
> In World Unity Magazine
> 
> The central drive of the Bahá'í Movement is for
> human unity. It would secure this through unprejudiced search for truth, making
> religion conform to scientific discovery and insisting that fundamentally all
> religions are alike. For the coming of universal peace, there is great
> foresight and wisdom as to details. Among other things there should be a
> universal language, so the Bahá'ís take a great interest in Esperanto though
> they do not insist on it as the ultimate language. No other religious movement
> has put so much emphasis on the emancipation and education of women. Everyone
> should work whether rich or poor and poverty should be abolished....What will
> be the course of the Bahá'í Movement no one can prophesy, but I
> think it is no exaggeration to claim that the program is the finest fruit of
> the religious contribution of Asia.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi's statement cannot be improved upon. The Bahá'ís have had the
> soundest position on the race question of any religion. They not only accept
> the scientific conclusions but
> 
> Page 42
> 
> they also implement them with spiritual force. This latter is necessary because
> there is no other way to overcome the emotional element which is basic in the
> race problem....
> 
> I have not said enough perhaps in the first paragraph. Please add the
> following: The task of learning to live together, though different, is the most
> difficult and the most imperative that the world faces. The economic problem
> will be relatively easy in comparison. There are differences in the qualities
> of cultures but there are no differences in qualities of races that correspond.
> This being recognized by minorities leads them to resist methods of force to
> keep them in subordination. There is no solution except cooperation and the
> granting of self-respect.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY VISCOUNT SAMUEL, G.C.B., M.P.
> 
> In John O'Lonlon's Weekly, March 2sth, 1933.
> 
> It is possible indeed to pick out points of fundamental
> agreement among all creeds. That is the essential purpose of the
> Bahá'í Religion, the foundation and growth of which is one of the
> most striking movements that have proceeded from the East in recent
> generations.
> 
> If one were compelled to choose which of the many religious communities of the
> world was closest to the aim and purpose of this Congress, I think one would be
> obliged to say that it was the comparatively little known Bahá'í
> Community. Other faiths and creeds have to consider, at a Congress like this,
> in what way they can contribute to the idea of world fellowship. But the
> Bahá'í Faith exists almost for the sole purpose of contributing
> to the fellowship and the unity of mankind.
> 
> Other communities may consider how far a particular element of their
> respective faith may be regarded as similar to those of other communities, but
> the Bahá'í Faith exists for the purpose of combining in one
> synthesis all those elements in the various faiths which are held in common.
> And that is why I suggest that this Bahá'í community is really
> more in agreement with the main idea which has led to the summoning of the
> Congress than any particular one of the great religious communities of the
> world.
> 
> Its origin was in Persia where a mystic prophet, who took the name of the
> Báb, the "Gate," began a mission among the Persians
> 
> Page 43
> 
> in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. He collected a considerable
> number of adherents. His activities were regarded with apprehension by the
> Government of Persia of that day. Finally, he and his leading disciples were
> seized by the forces of the Persian Government and were shot in the year 1850.
> In spite of the persecution, the movement spread in Persia and in many
> countries of Islam. He was followed as the head of the Community by the one who
> has been its principal prophet and exponent, Bahá'u'lláh. He was
> most active and despite persecution and imprisonment made it his life's mission
> to spread the creed which he claimed to have received by direct divine
> revelation. He died in 1892 and was succeeded as the head of the Community by
> his son, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who was born in 1844. He was living in Haifa, in
> a simple house, when I went there as High Commissioner in 1920, and I had the
> privilege of one or two most interesting conversations with him on the
> principles and methods of the Bahá'í Faith. He died in 1921 and
> his obsequies were attended by a great concourse of people. I had the honour of
> representing His Majesty the King on that occasion.
> 
> Since that time, the Bahá'í Faith has secured the support of a
> very large number of communities throughout the world. At the present time it
> is estimated that there are about eight hundred Bahá'í
> communities in various countries. In the United States, near Chicago, a great
> Temple, now approaching completion, has been erected by American adherents of
> the Faith, with assistance from elsewhere. Shoghi Effendi, the grandson of
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá, is now the head of the community. He came to England and
> was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, but now lives in Haifa, and is the
> center of a community which has spread throughout the world. (Introductory
> address delivered at the Bahá'í session of the World Congress of
> Faiths, held in London, July, 1936.)
> 
> 3.
> 
> Letter from Lord Samuel of Carmel.-G.C.B., C.B.E.
> 
> In 1920 I was appointed as the first High Commissioner for
> Palestine under the British Mandate, and took an early opportunity of paying a
> visit to 'Abdu'l-Bahá Effendi at his home in Haifa.
> 
> I had for some time been interested in the Bahá'í Movement, and
> felt privileged by the opportunity of making the acquaintance of its head. I
> had also an official reason as well as a personal one. 'Abdu'l-Bahá had
> been persecuted by the Turks.
> 
> A British regime had now been substituted in Palestine for the Turkish.
> Toleration and respect for all religions had long been a
> 
> Page 44
> 
> principle of British rule wherever it extended; and the visit of the High
> Commissioner was intended to be a sign to the population that the adherents of
> every creed would be able to feel henceforth that they enjoyed the respect and
> could count upon the good will of the new Government of the land.
> 
> I was impressed, as was every visitor, by 'Abdu'l-Bahá's dignity, grace
> and charm. Of moderate stature, his strong features and lofty expression lent
> to his personality an appearance of majesty. In our conversation he readily
> explained and discussed the principal tenets of Bahá'í, answered
> my inquiries and listened to my comments. I remember vividly that friendly
> interview of sixteen years ago, in the simple room of the villa, surrounded by
> gardens, on the sunny hillside of Mount Carmel.
> 
> I was glad I had paid my visit so soon, for in 1921 'Abdu'l-Bahá died.
> I was only able to express my respect for his creed and my regard for his
> person by coming from the capital to attend his funeral. A great throng had
> gathered together, sorrowing for his death, but rejoicing also for his life.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY REV. K. T. CHUNG
> 
> Last summer upon my return from a visit to Japan, I had the
> pleasure of meeting Mrs. Keith Ransom-Kehler on the boat. It was learnt that
> this lady is a teacher of the Bahá'í Cause, so we conversed upon
> various subjects of human life very thoroughly. It was soon found that what the
> lady imparted to me came from the source of Truth as I have felt inwardly all
> along, so I at once realized that the Bahá'í Faith can offer
> numerous and profound benefits to mankind.
> 
> My senior, Mr. Y. S. Tsao, is a well-read man. His mental capacity and deep
> experience are far above the average man. He often said that during this period
> of our country when old beliefs have lost their hold upon the people, it is
> absolutely necessary to seek a religion of all-embracing Truth which may exert
> its powerful influence in saving the situation. For the last ten years, he has
> investigated indefatigably into the teachings of the Bahá'í
> Cause. Recently, he has completed his translations of the book on the New Era
> and showed me a copy of the proof. After carefully reading it, I came to the
> full realization that the Truth as imparted to me by Mrs. Ransom-Kehler is
> veritable and unshakeable. This Truth of great value to mankind has been
> eminently translated by Mr. Tsao
> 
> Page 45
> 
> and now the Chinese people have the opportunity of reading it, and I cannot but
> express my profound appreciation for the same.
> 
> Should the Truth of the Bahá'í Faith be widely disseminated
> among the Chinese people, it will naturally lead to the coming of the Kingdom
> of Heaven. Should everybody again exert his efforts towards the extension of
> this beneficent influence throughout the world, it will then bring about world
> peace and the general welfare of humanity. (From Rev. K. T. Chung's Preface to
> the Chinese version of Dr. Esslemont's Book.)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. DIMITRY KAZAROV
> 
> University, Sofia Bulgaria
> 
> [The following passages in French may contain scanning
> errors] Une des causes principales de la situation actuelle du
> monde c'est que l'humanité est trop en arrière encore dans son
> développement spirituel. Voilà pourquoi tout enseignement qui a
> pour but à éveiller et fortifier la conscience morale et
> religieuse des hommes est d'une importance capitale pour l'avenir de notre
> race. Le Bahá'ísme est un de ces enseignements. Il a ce mérite qu'en
> portant des principes qui sont communs de toutes les grandes religions (et
> spécialement du christianisme) cherche à les adapter aux
> conditions de la vie actuelle et à la psychologie de l'homme moderne. En
> outre il travail pour l'union des hommes de toute nationalité et race
> dans une conscience morale et religieuse commune. Il n'a pas la
> prétention d'être autant une religion nouvelle qu'un trait d'union
> entre les grandes religions existantes: ce sur quoi il insiste surtout ce n'est
> pas d'abandoner la religion à laquelle nous appartenons déja pour
> en chercher une autre, mais à faire un effort pour trouver dans cette
> même religion l'element qui nous unit aux autres et d'en faire la force
> déterminante de notre conduite toute entière. Cet element (commun
> à toutes les grandes religions) c'est la conscience que nous sommes
> avant tout des êtres spirituels, unis dans une même entité
> spirituelle dont nous ne sommes que des parties-unies entre elles par
> l'attribut fondamental de cette entitê spirituelle-à savoir
> l'amour. Manifester, realiser, developper chez nous et chez les autres (surtout
> chez les enfants) cette conscience de notre nature spirituelle et l'amour comme
> son attribut fondamental c'est la chose principale que nous devons poursuivre
> avant tout et par toutes les manifestations de notre activité. C'est en
> même temps le seul moyen par lequel nous pouvons esperer de realiser une
> union tourjours grandissant parmi les hommes.
> 
> Page 46
> 
> Le Bahá'ísme est un des enseignements qui cherche à éveiller
> chez nous n'importe à quelle religion nous appartenons justement cette
> conscience de notre nature spirituelle.
> 
> Il y a plus de 20 ans un groupe d'hommes et femmes de différentes
> nationalités et religions, animés par le désir de
> travailler pour l'union des peuples, ont commencé a publier un journal
> en esperanto sous le tître "Universala Unigo." Le premier article du
> premier numéro de ce journal était consacré au Bahá'ísme
> et a son fondateur. Il me semble que ce fait est une preuve éclatante de
> ce que je viens de dire sur le Bahá'ísme.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY REV. GRIFFITH J. SPARHAM
> 
> Highgate Hill Unitarian Christian Church, London, England
> 
> In his book "A League of Religions," the Rev. J. Tyssul Davis
> formerly minister of the Theistic Church in London, and at present minister of
> a Unitarian Church in Bristol, England, the writer sets out to demonstrate that
> each great religious movement in the world has contributed something of
> peculiar importance to the spiritual life of man. Thus, he says, the great
> contribution of Zoroastrianism has been the thought of Purity; of Brahmanism
> that of Justice; of Muhammadanism that of Submission; of Christianity that of
> Service; and so on. In each instance he lays his finger on the one thing par
> excellence for which the particular religious culture seemed to him to stand,
> and tries to catch its special contribution in an epigrammatic phrase. Coming,
> in this way, to Bahá'ísm, he names it "the Religion of Reconciliation." In his
> chapter on Bahá'ísm he says:
> 
> "The Bahá'í religion has made its way because it meets the need
> of the day. It fits the larger outlook of our time, better than the rigid older
> faiths. A characteristic is its unexpected liberality and toleration. It
> accepts all the great religions as true and their scriptures as inspired."
> 
> These, then, as he sees Bahá'ísm, are its essential features: liberality,
> toleration, the spirit of reconciliation; and that, not in the sense, as Mr. H.
> G. Wells has it in his "Soul of a Bishop," of making a "collection" of approved
> portions of the world's varied and differing creeds, but in the sense, as he
> also puts it in the same book, of achieving a great "simplification."
> 
> "Bahá'ísts," says Dr. Davis, "bid the followers of these (that is, the
> world's) faiths disentangle from the windings of racial, particularist,
> 
> Page 47
> 
> local prejudices, the vital, immortal thread of the pure gospel of eternal
> worth, and to apply this essential element to life."
> 
> That is Dr. Davis's interpretation of the genius of Bahá'ísm, and that it is a
> true one, no one who has studied Bahá'ísm, even superficially, can question,
> least of all the outsider. Indeed one may go further and assert that no one who
> has studied Bahá'ísm, whether superficially or otherwise, would wish to
> question it; particularly if he approaches the subject from a liberal and
> unprejudiced point of view. In the last act of his "Wandering Jew," Mr. Temple
> Thurston puts into the mouth of Matteos, the Wandering Jew himself, the
> splendid line, "All men are Christians-all are Jews." He might equally well
> have written, "All men are Christians-all are Bahá'ís." For, if the sense of
> the Unity of Truth is a predominant characteristic of liberally-minded people,
> whatever may be their religious tradition, it is predominantly a characteristic
> of Bahá'ísm; since here is a religious system based, fundamentally, on the one,
> simple, profound, comprehensive doctrine of the unity of God, which carries
> with it, as its necessary corollary and consequence, the parallel doctrine of
> the unity of Man.
> 
> This, at all events, is the conviction of the present writer; and it is why,
> as a Unitarian, building his own faith on the same basic principles of divine
> and human unity, he has long felt sympathy with and good will toward a
> religious culture which stands on a foundation identical with that of the faith
> he holds. And a religion that affirms the unity of things must of necessity be
> a religion of reconciliation; the truth of which in the case of Bahá'ísm is
> clear.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ERNEST RENAN
> 
> Passage tiré de Renan "Les Apôtres, P." Edition
> Levy, Paris, 1866
> 
> [The following passages in French may contain
> scanning errors] Notre siècle a vu des mouvements
> religieux tout aussi extraordinaires que ceux d'autrefois, mouvements qui ont
> provoqué autant d'enthousiasme, qui ont eu deja, proportion
> gardée, plus de martyrs, et dont l'avenir est encore incertain.
> 
> Je ne parle pas des Mormons, secte à quelques égards si sotte et
> si abjecte que l'on hesite à la prendre au sérieux.
> 
> Il est instructif, cependant, de voir en plein 19ième siècle des
> milliers d'hommes de notre race vivant dans le miracle, croyant avec une foi
> aveugle des merveilles qu'ils disent avoir vues et touchées. Il y a
> déja toute une littérature pour montrer l'accord du mormonisme et
> de la science; ce qui vaut mieux, cette religion, fondée sur de niaises
> impostures, a su accomplir des prodiges de
> 
> Page 48
> 
> patience et d'abnegation; dans cinq cents ans des docteurs prouveront sa
> divinité par les merveilles de son etablissement.
> 
> Le Babisme, en Perse, a été un phénomene autrement
> considerable. Un homme doux et sans aucune, prétention, une sorte de
> Spinoza modeste et pieux, s'est vu, presque malgré lui,
> élève au rang de thaumaturge d'incarnation divine, et est devenu
> le chef d'une secte nombreuse, ardente et fanatique, qui a failli amener une
> revolution comparable à celle de l'Islam. Des milliers de martyrs sont
> accourus pour lui avec l'allegresse audevant de la mort. Un jour sans pareil
> peut-etre dans l'histoire du monde fut celui de la grande boucherie qui se fit
> des Bábís, a Teheran. "On vit ce jourla dans les rues et les
> bazars de Teheran," dit un narrateur qui a tout su d'original, "un spectacle
> que la population semble devoir n'oublier jamais. Quand la conversation encore
> aujourd'hui se met sur cette matière, on peut juger l'admiration
> melée d'horreur que la foule éprouve et que les années
> n'ont pas diminuée. On voit s'avancer entre les bourreaux des enfants et
> des femmes les chairs ouvertes sur tout le corps, avec des meches allumees,
> flambantes, fichees dans les blessures. On trainait les victimes par des cordes
> et on les faisait marcher à coups de fouet. Enfants et femmes
> s'avancaient en chantant un verset qui dit: En verite nous venons de Dieu et
> nous retournons à Lui. Leurs voix s'élèvaient,
> éclatantes, au-dessus du silence profond de la foule. Quand un des
> supplicies tombait et qu'on le faisait relever a coups de fouet ou de
> baionnette, pour peu que la perte de son sang qui ruisselait sur tous ses
> membres lui laissat encore un peu de force, il se mettait a danser et criait
> avec un surcrol d'enthousiasme: "En verite nous sommes à Dieu et nous
> retournons à Lui." Quelques-uns des enfants expirerent pendant le
> trajet; les bourreaux jeterent leurs corps sous les pieds de leurs peres et de
> leurs soeurs, qui marcherent fièrement dessus et ne leur donnerent pas
> deux regards. Quand on arriva au lieu d'execution, on proposa encore aux
> victimes la vie pour leur abjuration. Un bourreau imagina de dire à un
> pere que, s'il ne cedait pas, il couperait la gorge à ses deux fils sur
> sa poitrine. C'etaient deux petits garcons dont l'ainé avait 14 ans et
> qui, rouges de leur sang, les chairs calcinées, écoutaient
> froidement le dialogue; le pere repondit, en se couchant par terre, qu'il etait
> pret et l'ainé des enfants, reclamant avec emportement son droit
> d'ainesse, demanda à être égorgé le premier.[1]
> 
> Enfin tout fut acheve. La nuit tomba sur un amas
> 
> Page 49
> 
> de chairs informés; les têtes étaient attachées en
> paquets au poteau justicier et les chiens des faubourgs se dirigeaient par
> troupes de ce côté.
> 
> Cela se passait en 1852. Le secte de Mozdak sous Chosroes Nousch fut
> etouffée dans un pareil bain de sang. Le devouement absolu est pour les
> nations naives la plus exquise des jouissances et une sorte de besoin. Dans
> l'affaire des Bábís, on vit des gens qui étaient à
> peine de la secte, venir se denoncer eux-memes afin qu'on les adjoignit aux
> patients. Il est si doux a l'homme de souffrir pour quelque chose, que dans
> bien des cas l'appat du martyre suffit pour faire croire.
> 
> Un disciple qui fut le campagnon de supplice du Báb, suspendu à
> côté de lui aux remparts de Tabriz et attendant le mort, n'avait
> qu'un mot à la bouche: "Es-tu content de moi, maître?"
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY HON. LILIAN HELEN MONTAGUE, J.P., D.H.L.
> 
> As a Jewess I am interested in the Bahá'í
> Community. The teaching lays particular stress on the Unity of God and the
> Unity of Man, and incorporates the doctrine of the Hebrew Prophets that the
> Unity of God is revealed in the Unity of men. Also, we seem to share the
> conception of God's messengers as being those people who in their deep
> reverence for the attributes of God, His beauty, His truth, His righteousness
> and His justice, seek to imitate Him in their imperfect human way. The light of
> God is reflected in the soul of him who seeks to be receptive. Like the members
> of the Bahá'í community, we Jews are scattered all over the
> world, but united in a spiritual brotherhood. The Peace ideal enumerated by the
> Hebrew Prophets is founded on faith in the ultimate triumph of God's justice
> and righteousness.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY NORMAN BENTWICH
> 
> "Palestine may indeed be now regarded as the land not of three
> but of four faiths, because the Bahá'í creed, which has its
> center of faith and pilgrimage in Acre and Haifa, is attaining to the character
> of a world-religion. So far as its influence goes in the land, it is a factor
> making for international and interreligious understanding."
> 
> (From "Palestine," by Norman Bentwich, p. 235.)
> 
> Page 50
> 
> BY EMILE SCHREIBER
> 
> I.
> 
> Trois prophètes
> 
> [The following passages in French may contain
> scanning errors] Alors que le marxisme sovietique proclame le
> materialisme historique, alors que les jeunes generations sionistes sont
> également de plus en plus indifferentes aux croyances établies,
> une nouvelle religion est née en Orient, et sa doctrine prend, dans les
> circonstances actuelles, un intérêt d'autant plus grand que,
> s'écartant du domaine purement philosophique, elle préconise en
> economie politique des solutions qui co-incident curieusement avec les
> preoccupations de notre époque.
> 
> Cette religion, de plus, est par essence antiraciste. Elle est née en
> Perse, vers 1840, et les trois prophètes successifs qui l'ont
> prechée sont des Persans, c'est-à-dire des musulmans de
> naissance.
> 
> Le premier, le createur, s'appelait le Báb. Il-precha vers 1850, et
> préconisa, outre la reconciliation des differents cultes qui divisent
> l'humanité, la liberation de la femme, réduite aujourd'hui encore
> à un quasi esclavage dans tout l'Islam.
> 
> Une Persane d'une rare beauté, et qui, chose rare chez les musulmanes,
> était douée d'un grand talent oratoire, repondant au nom
> difficile à prononcer de Qourratou-'l-'Ayn, l'accompagna dans ses
> réunions, n'hesitant pas, en donnant elle-meme l'exemple, à
> preconiser la suppression du voile pour les femmes.
> 
> Le Báb et elle reussirent à convaincre, à
> l'époque, des dizaines de milliers de Persans et le shah de Perse les
> emprisonna l'un et l'autre, ainsi que la plupart de leurs partisans. Le
> Báb fut pendu. Sa belle collaboratrice fut etranglée dans sa
> prison. Leurs disciples furent exilés à Saint-Jean-d'Acre,
> devenue temple du "Bahá'ísme." C'est ainsi que j'ai visite la maison du
> successeur du Báb, Bahá'u'lláh, transformée
> aujourd'hui en temple du "Bahá'ísme." C'est ainsi que s'intitule cette
> religion, qui est plutot une doctrine philosophique, car elle ne comporte ni
> culte defini, ni surtout de clergé. Les prêtres, disent les
> Bahá'ístes, sont tentés de fausser, dans un but de lucre, l'idealisme
> désinteressé des createurs de religions.
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh, le principal des trois prophetes, répandit
> sa doctrine non seulement en Orient, mais dans beaucoup de pays d'Europe, et
> surtout aux Etats-Unis ou son influence fut telle que le nombre des Bahá'ístes
> attient aujourd'hui plusieurs millions. Il fut persecuté par les Perses
> et mourut en exil.
> 
> Son fils, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, lui succeda et formula, d'apres les
> 
> Page 51
> 
> principes de son pere, la doctrine économique du Bahá'ísme; elle indique
> une prescience étonnante des évenements qui se sont
> deroulés depuis: la guerre d'abord, la crise ensuite. Il mourut peu
> après la guerre, ayant vu la réalisation de la première
> partie de ses propheties.
> 
> L'originalité du Bahá'ísme est de chercher à faire passer dans
> le domaine pratique, et plus particulièrement dans le domaine social,
> les principes essentiels du juda-isme, du catholicisme et de l'islamisme, en
> les combinant et en les adaptant aux besoins de notre époque.
> 
> Le Bahá'ísme proclame que les rapports sociaux deviennent fatalement
> impossibles dans une societé ou l'idealisme individuel ne donne pas une
> base certaine aux engagements qui lient les hommes entre eux.
> 
> L'individu se sent de plus en plus isolé au milieu d'une jungle sociale
> qui ménace, à beaucoup d'égards, son bien-etre et sa
> sécurité. La bonne volonté et l'honnêteté, ne
> produisant plus dans sa vie et dans son travail le resultat qu'il attend,
> tendent à perdre pour lui toute valeur pratique. De la naissent, selon
> les caractères, l'indifférence et le découragement, ou
> l'audace, le manque de scrupules qui tendent à se procurer par tous les
> moyens, même les plus repréhensibles, les benefices materiels
> necessaires à l'existence.
> 
> La societé, n'étant plus soumise à aucun controle, ni
> politique ni moral, devient un vaisseau sans gouvernail ou personne ne peut
> plus rien prevoir et qui est sujet à des crises de plus en plus
> fréquentes et de plus en plus violentes. L'époque actuelle,
> déclarent les prophètes persans, marque la fin d'une civilisation
> qui ne sert plus les intérêts de l'humanité.
> 
> Elle aboutit a la faillité complete des institutions morales et
> materielles destinées à assurer le bien-etre et la
> sécurité des hommes, c'est-à-dire l'État,
> l'Église, le Commerce et l'Industrie. Le principe fondamental d'ou peut
> venir le salut de la civilisation engagé dans des voies qui conduisent
> à sa déstruction est la solidarité des nations et des
> races. Car l'interpenetration des peuples est devenue telle qu'il leur est
> impossible de trouver isolement la voie de la prospente.
> 
> Ces propheties, qui pouvaient paraître excessives et quelque peu
> pessimistes à l'époque ou elles ont été faites,
> vers 1890, ne sont pas, les évenements l'ont prouvé, de simples
> jeremiades. Il reste à examiner comment, partant de ces données,
> qui ne sont que trop exactes, le Bahá'ísme, concu dans la Perse lointaine et si
> arrièrée a
> 
> Page 52
> 
> l'époque, aboutit aux mêmes conclusions que la plupart des
> économistes modernes qui, dans les différents pays de
> civilisation occidentale, proclament qu'en dehors d'une collaboration
> internationale il n'y a pas d'issue possible à la crise actuelle
> entrainant tous les peuples à une misére toujours plus grande.
> (From Les Echos, Paris, France, September 27, 1933.)
> 
> 2.
> 
> Une religion "economique"
> 
> Les principes du Bahá'ísme, formules par son principal
> prophete, Bahá'u'lláh, peuvent paraître sérieusement
> compromis en un temps ou la frenesie nationaliste, recemment aggravée de
> racisme, semble en eloigner de plus en plus l'application.
> 
> Toute la question est de savoir si ceux qui sont en faveur aujourd'hui, dans
> tant de pays, sont susceptibles de resoudre le probleme non pas de la
> prosperité, mais simplement du logement et de la faim, dans les
> différentes nations qui nient par leurs théories et tous leurs
> actes la solidarité des peuples et des races.
> 
> Une nouvelle guerre mondiale sera sans doute necessaire pour que
> l'humanité, qui n'a pas encore compris la leçon de 1914, se rende
> enfin compte que les solutions de violence et de conquête ne peuvent
> engendrer que la ruine generale, sans profit pour aucun des
> bélligerants.
> 
> Quoi qu'il en soit, les principales pensées economiques de
> Bahá'u'lláh, telles qu'elles ont été
> formulées il y a un demisiecle, prouvent que la sagesse et le simple bon
> sens ont cela de commun avec les écrevisses, c'est qu'il leur arrive
> fréquemment de marcher a reculons.
> 
> Voici les principaux préceptes de ce moderne Marc-Aurele:
> 
> "L'evolution humaine se divise en cycles organiques, correspondant à la
> durée d'une religion, laquelle est d'environ un millier d'années.
> Un cycle social nouveau commence toutes les fois qu'apparaît un prophete
> dont l'influence et les enseignements renouvellent la vie interieure de l'homme
> et font deferler à travers le monde une nouvelle vague de progres.
> 
> "Chaque nouveau cycle détruit les croyances et les institutions
> usées du cycle précedent et fondé sur d'autres croyances,
> en étroite conformité, celles-la, avec les besoins actuels de
> l'humanité, une civilisation nouvelle.
> 
> "L'influence de chaque prophete s'est, dans le passé, limitée
> à une race ou a une religion, en raison de l'isolement
> géographique
> 
> Page 53
> 
> des regions et des races, mais le siècle dans lequel nous entrons
> necessite la création d'un ordre organique s'etendant au monde entier.
> Si le vieil ésprit de tribu persiste, la science detruira le monde, ses
> forces destructrices ne pouvant être controlées que par une
> humanité unie travaillant pour la prosperité et le bien
> commun.
> 
> "La loi de la lutte pour la vie n'existe plus pour l'homme des qu'il devient
> conscient de ses pouvoirs spirituels et moraux. Elle est alors remplacée
> par la loi plus haute de la cooperation. Sous cette loi, l'individu jouira d'un
> statut beaucoup plus large que celui qui est accorde aux citoyens passifs du
> corps politique actuel. L'administration publique passera des mains de
> partisans politiques qui trahissent la cause du peuple aux mains d'hommes
> capables de considerer une charge publique comme une mission sacrée.
> 
> "La stabilité economique ne depend pas de l'application de tel plan
> socialiste ou communiste plus ou moins théorique, mais du sentiment de
> la solidarité morale qui unit tous les hommes et de cette conception que
> les richesses ne sont pas la fin de la vie, mais seulement un moyen de
> vivre.
> 
> "L'important n'est pas en une aveugle soumission generale à tel systeme
> politique, à tel reglement, qui ont pour effet de supprimer chez
> l'individu tout sentiment de responsabilité morale, mais en un esprit
> d'entr'aide et de cooperation. Ni le principe democratique, ni le principe
> aristocratique ne peuvent fournir séparement a la societé une
> base solide. La démocratie est impuissante contre les querelles
> intestines et l'aristocratie ne subsiste que par la guerre. Une combinaison des
> deux principes est donc necessaire.
> 
> "En cette periode de transition entre le vieil âge de la concurrence et
> l'ere nouvelle de la cooperation, la vie même de l'humanité est en
> péril. Les ambitions nationalistes, la lutte des classes, la peur et les
> convoitises économiques sont autant de forces qui poussent a une
> nouvelle guerre internationale. Tous les Gouvernements du monde doivent
> soutenir et organiser une assemblée dont les membres soient élus
> par l'élite des nations. Ceux-ci devront mettre au point, au-dessus des
> égoismes particuliers, le nouveau statut économique du monde en
> dehors duquel tous les pays, mais surtout l'Europe, seront conduits aux pires
> catastrophes."
> 
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá, son successeur, reprenant la doctrine de son père,
> concluait dans un discours prononcé a New-York en 1912
> 
> "La civilisation materielle à atteint, en Occident, le plus haut
> degré de son développement. Mais c'est en Orient qu'a pris
> naissance et que s'est developpée la civilisation spirituelle. Un lien
> s'etablira
> 
> Page 54
> 
> entre ces deux forces, et leur union est la condition de l'immense progres qui
> doit être accompli.
> 
> "Hors de la, la securité et la confiance feront de plus en plus defaut,
> les luttes et les dissensions s'accroltront de jour en jour et les divergences
> entre nations s'accentueront davantage. Les pays augmenteront constamment leurs
> armements; la guerre, puis la certitude d'une autre guerre mondiale
> angoisseront de plus en plus les esprits. L'unité du genre humain est le
> premier fondement de toutes les vertus."
> 
> Ainsi parla 'Abdu'l-Bahá en 1912, et tout se passa comme il l'avait
> predit.
> 
> Mais ces paroles n'ont pas vieilli; elles pourraient, sans le moindre
> changement, être repetées en 1933. Aujourd'hui, comme il y a vingt
> ans, la menace de la guerre est de nouveau suspendue audessus de nos
> têtes et les causes de haines et de conflits s'accumulent à tel
> point que, s'il existe vraiment un flux et un reflux des idées, on peut
> presque conclure, avec une certaine dose d'optimisme, que nous n'avons jamais
> été si près de venir aux idées de cooperation qui,
> seules, peuvent nous sauver.
> 
> (From Les Echos, Paris, France, September 28, 1933.)
> 
> Malgré les tristesses de notre époque et peut-etre même
> â cause d'elles, je reste convaincue que les idées â la fois
> divines et humaines qui sont l'essence du Bahá'ísme finiront par triompher,
> pourvu que chacun de ceux qui en comprennent l'immense intérêt
> continue quoi qu'il advienne â les defendre et a les propager. (Excerpt
> from a letter dated October 29, 1934.)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY DR. ROKUICHIRO MASUJIMA
> 
> "The Japanese race is of rational mind. No superstition can
> play with it. Japan is the only country in the world where religious tolerance
> has always existed. The Japanese Emperor is the patron of all religious
> teachings. The Bahá'í publications now form part of His Majesty's
> Library as accepted by the Imperial House....
> 
> "The search for truth and universal education inculcated by the
> Bahá'í Teachings, if soundly conducted, cannot fail to interest
> the Japanese mind. Bahá'ísm is bound to permeate the Japanese race in a short
> time."
> 
> Page 55
> 
> BY MISS HELEN KELLER
> 
> The philosophy of Bahá'u'lláh deserves the best
> thought we can give it. I am returning the book so that other blind people who
> have more leisure than myself may be "shown a ray of Divinity" and their hearts
> be "bathed in an inundation of eternal love."
> 
> I take this opportunity to thank you for your kind thought of me, and for the
> inspiration which even the most cursory reading of Bahá'u'lláh's
> life cannot fail to impart. What nobler theme than the "good of the world and
> the happiness of the nations" can occupy our lives? The message of universal
> peace will surely prevail. It is useless to combine or conspire against an idea
> which has in it potency to create a new earth and a new heaven and to quicken
> human beings with a holy passion of service. (In a personal letter written to
> an American Bahá'í after having read something from the Braille
> edition of "Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era.")
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY SIR FLINDERS PETRIE
> 
> The Bahá'í Movement of Persia should be a welcome
> adjunct to true Christianity; we must always remember how artificial the growth
> of Latin Christian ideas has been as compared with the wide and less defined
> beliefs native to early Christian faith. (In a letter to the "Daily Sketch,"
> London, England, December 16, 1932.)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY FORMER PRESIDENT MASARYK OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA
> 
> Continue to do what you are doing, spread these principles of
> humanity and do not wait for the diplomats. Diplomats alone cannot bring the
> peace, but it is a great thing that official people begin to speak about these
> universal peace principles. Take these principles to the diplomats, to the
> universities and colleges and other schools, and also write about them. It is
> the people who will bring the universal peace. (In an audience with an American
> Bahá'í journalist in Praha, in 1928.)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ARCHDUCHESS ANTON OF AUSTRIA
> 
> Archduchess Anton of Austria, who before her marriage was Her
> Royal Highness Princess Ileana of Rumania, in an audience with Martha L. Root,
> June 19, 1934, in Vienna, gave the following statement for The Bahá'ís World,
> Vol. V: "I like the Bahá'í Movement,
> 
> Page 56
> 
> because it reconciles all Faiths, and teaches that science is from God as well
> as religion, and its ideal is peace."
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY DR. HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS -
> American Historian
> 
> I have had on my desk, and have read several times, the three
> extracts from 'Abdu'l-Bahá's Message of Social Regeneration. Taken
> together, they form an unanswerable argument and plea for the only way that the
> world can be made over. If we could put into effect this program, we should
> indeed have a new world order.
> 
> "The morals of humanity must undergo change. New remedy and solution for human
> problems must be adopted. Human intellects themselves must change and be
> subject to the universal reformation." In these three sentences we really have
> it all. (Excerpt from personal letter dated May 18, 1934.)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY H. R. H. PRINCESS OLGA OF YUGOSLAVIA
> 
> H. R. H. Princess Olga, wife of H. R. H. Prince Regent Paul of
> Yugoslavia, daughter of H. R. H. Prince Nicholas of Greece and cousin of His
> Majesty George II of Greece, is deeply interested in religion and in education,
> and her wonderful kindnesses to every one have been commented upon beautifully
> in several English books and magazines as well as by the Balkan press.
> 
> "I like the Bahá'í Teachings for universal education and
> universal peace," said this gracious Princess in her charming villa on the Hill
> of Topcidor, Belgrade, on January 16, 1936, "I like the Bahá'í
> Movement and the Young Men's Christian Association, for both are programs to
> unite religions. Without unity no man can live in happiness." Princess though
> she is, she stressed the important truth that every man must do his job! "We
> are all sent into this world for a purpose and people are too apt to forget the
> Presence of God and true religion. I wish the Bahá'í Movement
> every success in the accomplishment of its high ideals."
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY EUGEN RELGIS
> 
> Excerpt from Cosmometapolis, 1935, pp. 108-109.
> 
> Nous avons tracé ces pages seulement la signification
> du Bahá'ísme, sans examiner tous ses principes et son programme pratique dans
> lequel sont harmonisées avec l'idéal religieux "les aspirations
> 
> Page 57
> 
> et les objectifs de la science sociale." Mais on doit attirer l'attention de
> tous les esprits libres sur ce mouvement, dont les promoteurs ont le
> mérite d'avoir contribué à la clarification de l'ancienne
> controverse entre la religion et la science-et d'avoir donné 'a maint
> homme un peu de leur tolerance et de leur optimisme: "L'humanité
> était jusqu'ici restée dans le stade de l'enfance; elle approche
> maintenant de la maturité" ('Abdu'l-Bahá, Washington, 1912).
> 
> Qui osera repeter aujourd'hui, dans la melée des haines nationales et
> sociales, cette sentence de progres? C'est un Oriental qui nous a dit cela,
> à nous, orgueilleux ou sceptiques Occidentaux. Nous voudrions voir
> adjourd'hui, dans l'Allemagne hitleriste, dans les pays terrorisés par
> le fascisme, paralysés par la dictature politique, -un spectacle
> décrit par le suisse Auguste Forel d'après l'anglais Sprague qui
> a vue en Birmanie et en Inde, des bouddhistes, des mahometans, des
> Chrètiens et des juifs, qui allaient bras-dessus brasdessous, comme des
> frères, "au grand étonnement de la population qui n'a jamais vu
> une chose pareille!"
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ARTHUR HENDERSON
> 
> Excerpt from a letter dated January 26, 1935
> 
> I have read the pamphlet on the "New World Order" by Shoghi Effendi.
> It is an eloquent expression of the doctrines which I have always associated
> with the Bahá'í Movement and I would like to express my greatest
> sympathy with the aspirations towards world unity which underlie his
> teaching.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. DR. V. LESNY
> 
> The conditions are so changed now, since the technique of the
> present time has destroyed the barriers between nations, that the world needs a
> uniting force, a kind of super-religion. I think Bahá'ísm could develop to such
> a kind of religion. I am quite convinced of it, so far as I know the Teachings
> of Bahá'u'lláh.... There are modern saviors and
> Bahá'u'lláh is a Savior of the twentieth century. Everything must
> be done on a democratic basis, there must be international brotherhood. We must
> learn to have confidence in ourselves and then in others. One way to learn this
> is through inner spiritual education, and a way to attain such an education may
> be through Bahá'ísm.
> 
> Page
> 58
> 
> I am still of the opinion that I had four years ago that the
> Bahá'í Movement can form the best basis for international
> goodwill, and that Bahá'u'lláh Himself is the Creator of an
> eternal bond between the East and the West.... The Bahá'í
> Teaching is a living religion, a living philosophy....
> 
> I do not blame Christianity, it has done a good work for culture in Europe,
> but there are too many dogmas in Christianity at the present time.... Buddhism
> was very good for India from the sixth century B.C. and the Teachings of Christ
> have been good for the whole world; but as there is a progress of mind there
> must be no stopping and in the Bahá'í Faith one sees the
> continued progress of religion.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PRINCESS MARIE ANTOINETTE DE BROGLIE AUSSENAC
> 
> À cette époque où l'humanité semble
> sortie d'un long sommeil pour revivre à l'Esprit, consciemment ou
> inconsciemment, l'homme cherche et s'élance à la poursuite de
> l'invisible et de sciences qui nous y conduisent.
> 
> L'angoisse religieuse aussi n'a jamais été plus intense.
> 
> Par sa grande evolution l'homme actuel est prêt à recevoir le
> grand message de Bahá'u'lláh dans son mouvement synthetique qui
> nous fait passer de l'ancienne comprehension des divisions à la
> comprehension moderne où nous cherchons à suivre les ondes qui se
> propagent traversant toute limitation humaine et de la création.
> 
> Chaque combat que nous livrons à nos penchants nous dégage des
> voiles qui séparent le monde visible du monde invisible et augmente en
> nous cette capacité de perception et de s'accorder aux longueurs d'ondes
> les plus variées, de vibrer au contact des rythmes les plus divers de la
> création.
> 
> Tout ce qui nous vient directement de la nature est toujours harmonie absolue.
> Le tout est de capter l'équilibre de toute chose et lui donner la voix
> au moyen d'un instrument capable d'émettre les mêmes harmonies que
> notre âme, ce qui nous fait vibrer et devenir le lien entre le
> passé et l'avenir en attaignant une nouvelle étape correspondant
> à l'évolution du monde.
> 
> En religion, la Cause de Bahá'u'lláh, qui est la grande
> revelation de notre époque, est la même que celle du Christ, son
> temple et son fondement les mêmes mis en harmonie avec le degré de
> maturité moderne.
> 
> Page 59
> 
> BY DAVID STARR JORDAN
> 
> Late President of Stanford University
> 
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá will surely unite the East and the West: for He
> treads the mystic way with practical feet.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. BOGDAN POPOVITCH
> 
> The Bahá'í Teaching carries in its Message a fine
> optimism-we must always in spite of everything be optimists; we must be
> optimists even when events seem to prove the contrary! And
> Bahá'ís can be hopeful, for there is a power in these Teachings
> to bring to humanity tranquillity, peace and a higher spirituality.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY EX-GOVERNOR WILLIAM SULZER
> 
> While sectarians squabble over creeds, the Bahá'í
> Movement goes on apace. It is growing by leaps and bounds. It is hope and
> progress. It is a world movement-and it is destined to spread its effulgent
> rays of enlightenment throughout the earth until every mind is free and every
> fear is banished. The friends of the Bahá'í Cause believe they
> see the dawn of the new day-the better day-the day of Truth; of Justice, of
> Liberty, of Magnanimity, of Universal Peace, and of International Brotherhood,
> the day when one shall work for all, and all shall work for one.
> 
> (Excerpt from the Roycroft Magazine)
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY LUTHER BURBANK
> 
> I am heartily in accord with the Bahá'í Movement,
> in which I have been interested for several years. The religion of peace is the
> religion we need and always have needed, and in this Bahá'í is
> more truly the religion of peace than any other.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROF. YONE NOGUCHI
> 
> I have heard so much about 'Abdu'l-Bahá, whom people
> call an idealist, but I should like to call Him a realist, because no idealism,
> when it is strong and true, exists without the endorsement of
> 
> Page 60
> 
> realism. There is nothing more real than His words on truth. His words are as
> simple as the sunlight; again like the sunlight, they are universal.... No
> Teacher, I think, is more important today than 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PROFESSOR RAYMOND FRANK PIPER
> 
> These writings (Bahá'í) are a stirring fusion of
> poetic beauty and religious insight. I, like another, have been "struck by
> their comprehensiveness." I find they have extraordinary power to pull aside
> the veils that darken my mind and to open new visions of verity and life.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ANGELA MORGAN
> 
> One reason I hail with thanksgiving the interpretation of
> religion known as the Bahá'í Faith and feel so deep a kinship
> with its followers is that I recognize in its Revelation an outreach of the
> Divine to stumbling humanity; a veritable thrust from the radiant Center of
> Life.
> 
> Every follower of this faith that I have ever met impressed me as a living
> witness to the glory at the heart of this universe. Each one seemed filled with
> a splendor of spirit so great that it overflowed all boundaries and poured
> itself out upon the world here in this moment of time, by some concentrated act
> of love toward another human being.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY ARTHUR MOORE
> 
> The lovely peace of Carmel, which still attracts mystics of
> different faiths, dominates Haifa. On its summit are the Druses in their two
> villages; at its feet the German Templars, whose avenue leads up to the now
> large and beautiful terraced property of the Persian Bahá'ís on the
> mountainside. Here the tombs of the Báb and of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, set
> in a fair garden, are a place of international pilgrimage. On Sundays and
> holidays the citizens of Haifa of all faiths come for rest and recreation where
> lie the bones of that young prophet of Shiraz who nearly a hundred years ago
> preached that all men are one and all the great religions true, and foretold
> the coming equality of men and women and the birth of the first League of
> Nations.
> 
> Page
> 61
> 
> BY PROF. DR. JAN RYPKA
> 
> The Bahá'ís of Iran are resolutely firm in their religion.
> Their firmness does not have its roots in ignorance. The Iranian inborn
> character causes them to see things somewhat too great, slightly exaggerated,
> and their dissensions with the ruling Islam make them a little bitter towards
> it. Everything else in their characters is accounted for as due to their
> Teachings; they are wonderfully ready to help and happy to sacrifice.
> Faithfully they fulfill their office and professional duties. Long ago they
> already solved the problem of the Eastern woman; their children are carefully
> educated. They are sometimes reproached for their lack of patriotism.
> Certainly, as specifically Iranian as the Shi'ih Faith, the
> Bahá'í Faith can never become; but the Bahá'í
> Religion like Christianity does not preclude the love of one's fatherland....
> Are the Europeans not sufficiently patriotic! According to my experiences, the
> Bahá'ís in that respect, are very unjustly criticized by their Muhammadan
> brothers. During the centuries the Shi'ih Religion has developed a deep
> national tradition; with this the universal Bahá'í Faith will
> have a hard battle. Nevertheless, the lack of so great numbers is richly
> recompensed by the fervor and the inner spirit of the Iranian
> Bahá'í Community. The Bahá'í world community will
> educate characters which will appear well worthy of emulation by people of
> other Faiths, yes, even by the world of those now enemies of the
> Bahá'í Cause.
> 
> The experience acquired in the West, for me was fully verified also in the
> Iranian Orient. The Bahá'í Faith is undoubtedly an immense
> cultural value. Could all those men whose high morality I admired and still
> admire have reached the same heights only in another way, without it? No,
> never! Is it based only on the novelty of the Teachings, and in the freshness
> of its closest followers?
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY A. L. M. NICOLAS
> 
> Je ne sais comment vous remercier ni comment vous exprimer la
> joie qui inonde mon coeur. Ainsi donc, il faut non seulement admettre mais
> aimer et admirer le Báb. Pauvre grand Prophete né au fin fond de
> la Perse sans aucun moyen d'instruction et qui seul au monde, entoure
> d'ennemis, arrive par la force de son genie à creer une religion
> universelle et sage. Que Bahá'u'lláh lui ait, par la suite,
> succedé, soit, mais je veux qu'on admire la sublimité du
> Báb, qui à d'ailleurs paye de sa vie, de son sang la reforme
> qu'il a
> 
> Page 62
> 
> prechée. Citez-moi un autre exemple, semblable. Enfin, je puis mourir
> tranquille. Gloire à Shoghi Effendi qui a calmé mon tourment et
> mes inquietudes, gloire a lui qui reconnais la valeur de Siyyid 'Ali-Muhammad
> dit le Báb.
> 
> Je suis si content que je baise vos mains qui ont tracé mon adresse sur
> l'enveloppe qui m'apporte le message de Shoghi. Merci, Mademoiselle. Merci du
> fond du coeur.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY PRESIDENT EDUARD BENES
> 
> I have followed it (the Bahá'í Cause) with deep
> interest ever since my trip to London to the First Races Congress in July,
> 1911, when I heard for the first time of the Bahá'í Movement and
> its summary of the principles for peace. I followed it during the war and after
> the war. The Bahá'í Teaching is one of the spiritual forces now
> absolutely necessary to put the spirit first in this battle against material
> forces.... The Bahá'í Teaching is one of the great instruments
> for the final victory of the spirit and of humanity.
> 
> 2.
> 
> The Bahá'í Cause is one of the great moral and
> social forces in all the world today. I am more convinced than ever, with the
> increasing moral and political crises in the world, we must have greater
> international co-ordination. Such a movement as the Bahá'í Cause
> which paves the way for universal organization of peace is necessary.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY SIR RONALD STORRS, V.C., M.G., C.B.E.
> 
> I met 'Abdu'l-Bahá first in 1900, on my way out from
> England and Constantinople through Syria to succeed Harry Boyle as Oriental
> Secretary to the British Agency in Cairo. (The episode is fully treated in my
> "Orientations" published by Ivor Nicholson and Watson.) I drove along the beach
> in a cab from Haifa to 'Akká and spent a very pleasant hour with the
> patient but unsubdued prisoner and exile.
> 
> When, a few years later, he was released and visited Egypt I had the honour of
> looking after Him and of presenting Him to Lord Kitchener who was deeply
> impressed by His personality, as who could fail to be? The war separated us
> again until Lord Allenby,
> 
> Page 63
> 
> after his triumphant drive through Syria, sent me to establish the government
> at Haifa and throughout that district. I called upon 'Abbas Effendi on the day
> I arrived and was delighted to find Him unchanged.
> 
> I never failed to visit Him whenever I went to Haifa. His conversation was
> indeed a remarkable planning, like that of an ancient prophet, far above the
> perplexities and pettiness of Palestine politics, and elevating all problems
> into first principles.
> 
> He was kind enough to give me one or two beautiful specimens of His own
> handwriting, together with that of Mishkin-Qalam, all of which, together with
> His large signed photograph, were unfortunately burned in the Cyprus fire.
> 
> I rendered my last sad tribute of affectionate homage when in 1921 I
> accompanied Sir Herbert Samuel to the funeral of 'Abbas Effendi. We walked at
> the head of a train of all religions up the slope of Mount Carmel, and I have
> never known a more united expression of regret and respect than was called
> forth by the utter simplicity of the ceremony.
> 
> ----------------
> 
> BY COL. RAJA JAI PRITHVI BAHADUR SINGH,
> 
> Raja Of Bajang (Nepal)
> 
> Even as early as 1929 or perhaps even a little earlier, I used
> to hear the names of Bahá'u'lláh and Bahá'ísm; and in 1929, when
> I undertook a lecturing tour in Europe on the humanistic methods of promoting
> peace and unity among races, nations and individuals my attention was once
> again drawn to Bahá'u'lláh and his teachings by my friend Lady
> Blomfield, who gave me some books too on the subject. But my eyes were then too
> weak to permit any reading, and the need and urgency of some expert treatment
> for my eyes was in fact an additional reason for my leaving for Europe.
> Besides, I was then too full of my own philosophy of "Humanism," and was too
> busy with my own programme of lectures for Europe, and did not acquaint myself
> with any full details about the Bahá'ís and their tenets and principles.
> Perhaps I imagined that the Bahá'ís were some sort of religious or
> philosophical mystics, and I was not particularly interested in any mere
> mysticism or in any merely theoretical creed, however much its conclusions
> might be logical and satisfying to the intellect.
> 
> Page 64
> 
> When afterwards, in 1933, the Second Parliament of Religions or the World
> Fellowship of Faiths was held in Chicago, a conference inspired by the high
> ideals of mutual understanding, good-will, co-operation and peace and progress,
> and I went there to attend and participate in the conference, my attention was
> again drawn to the Bahá'í Faith by some of its followers there,
> who took me to their temple at Wilmette, Illinois, which was then under
> construction but was nearly finished, and showed me the nine gates and chambers
> of worship for the nine principal religions of the world. Naturally enough, I
> took it that Bahá'ísm was something like theosophy, which is interested in
> studying and comparing the respective merits of religions and in recognising
> their respective greatness, and which can therefore appeal only to the
> intellectual section of mankind and hardly appeal to the masses.
> 
> Later, in 1936, however, while I was in Rangoon, I had an opportunity-rather,
> the opportunity was thrust upon me-to acquaint myself more fully with the
> tenets and teachings of Bahá'ísm. Mr. S. Schopflocher, a Bahá'í
> from Canada, who was on a lecturing tour, was then in Rangoon, and I was asked
> to introduce him to the public and to preside over a lecture of his. Therefore
> I secured a few books on the subject, and on reading them, I was struck with
> the remarkable fact that Bahá'ísm is a faith, which not merely recognises the
> respective merits of the world religions, but goes a step further and teaches
> that all religions are One, all the religious seers, saints and prophets are
> the religious seers, saints and prophets of One religion only, that all mankind
> is One, and that we must think and feel and act in terms of brotherhood. "We
> must realise," as a Bahá'í very beautifully puts it, "that, as
> the aeroplane, radio and other instruments have crossed the frontiers drawn
> upon the map, so our sympathy and spirit of one-ness should rise above the
> influences that have separated race from race, class from class, nation from
> nation and creed from creed. One destiny now controls all human affairs. The
> fact of world-unity stands out above all other interests and
> considerations."
> 
> Sometime back, in this year, Mr. N. R. Vakil, a Bahá'í gentleman
> of Surat, gave me a copy of the book, "The Bahá'í World:
> 1936-1938. Though I have not been able to read the whole book through, I find
> it is a mine of information, a regular cyclopaedia on the subject. It is
> interesting to read that the origin of the faith was in Persia, where a mystic
> prophet who took the name of "Báb" (which means "gate") began the
> mission among the Persians in the
> 
> Page 65
> 
> early part of the nineteenth century, that he and his disciples were persecuted
> by the Persian Government and were finally shot in 1850 that, notwithstanding
> the persecution, the movement spread under the able and inspiring leadership of
> Bahá'u'lláh, its principal prophet and exponent, that on his
> death in 1892 he was succeeded by his son, 'Abdu'l-Bahá, who continued
> the work till 1921, when, on his death his grandson, Shoghi Effendi, became the
> head of the community-a community now numbering nearly a million and spread in
> all the five continents of the world.
> 
> Though the traditionally orthodox Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc., may not
> agree to call themselves Bahá'ís or even to subscribe to its main tenet, viz.,
> that all religions are One, I think that the really enlightened among them can
> have no conscientious objection and will indeed wholeheartedly subscribe to
> it.
> 
> Another important aspect of the Bahá'í Faith is its absolutely
> non-political nature. In the "Golden Age of the Cause of
> Bahá'u'lláh" Shoghi Effendi categorically rules out any
> participation by adherents of the Faith, either individually or collectively,
> in any form of activity which might be interpreted as an interference in the
> political affairs of any particular government. So that, no government need
> apprehend any sort of danger or trouble from Bahá'ísm.
> 
> On the whole, the perusal of the book, "The Bahá'í World:
> 1936-1938, has deeply impressed me with the belief that the principles of
> Bahá'ísm, laying stress as they do on the One-ness of mankind, and being
> directed as they are towards the maintenance of peace, unity and co-operation
> among the different classes, creeds and races of people, will go a long way in
> producing a healthy atmosphere in the world for the growth of Fellowship and
> Brotherhood of Man. Further, I see no harm in the followers of other faiths
> accepting these main principles of Bahá'ísm, wherein, I think, they can find
> nothing against the teachings of their own prophets, saints and seers. I rather
> think that by accepting these main principles of Bahá'ísm they will help in
> hastening the establishment of a New World Order, an idea perhaps first clearly
> conceived by Bahá'u'lláh and which every thinking man will now
> endorse as a "consummation to be devoutly wished for."
> 
> An article in the January (1922) number of the Journal of the Royal
> Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland
> 
> The death of 'Abbas Effendi, better known since he succeeded
> his father, Bahá'u'lláh, thirty years ago as 'Abdu'l-Bahá,
> deprives
> 
> Page 66
> 
> Persia of one of the most notable of her children and the East of a remarkable
> personality, who has probably exercised a greater influence not only in the
> Orient but in the Occident, than any Asiatic thinker and teacher of recent
> times. The best account of him in English is that published in 1903 by G. P.
> Putnam's Sons under the title of the "Life and Teachings of 'Abbas Effendi"
> compiled by Myron H. Phelps chiefly from information by Bahiyyih Khanum. She
> states that her brother's birth almost coincided with the "manifestation" of
> Mirza 'Ali Muhammad the Báb (24th May, 1844), and that she was his
> junior by three years. Both dates are put three years earlier by another
> reputable authority, but in any case both brother and sister were mere children
> when, after the great persecution of the Bábís in 1852 their
> father Bahá'u'lláh and his family were exiled from Persia first
> to Baghdad (1852-63) then to Adrianople (1863-8), and lastly to 'Akká
> (St. Jean d'Acre) in Syria, where Bahá'u'lláh died on 28th May,
> 1892, and which his son 'Abdu'l-Bahá was only permitted to leave at will
> after the Turkish Revolution in 1908. Subsequently to that date he undertook
> several extensive journeys in Europe and America, visiting London and Paris in
> 1911, America in 1912, Budapest in 1913, and Paris, Stuttgart, Vienna, and
> Budapest in the early summer of 1914. In all these countries he had followers,
> but chiefly in America, where an active propaganda had been carried on since
> 1893 with very considerable success, resulting in the formation of important
> Bahá'í Centers in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and other
> cities. One of the most notable practical results of the Bahá'í
> ethical teaching in the United States has been, according to the recent
> testimony of an impartial and qualified observer, the establishment in
> Bahá'í circles in New York of a real fraternity between black and
> white, and an unprecedented lifting of the "color bar," described by the said
> observer as "almost miraculous."
> 
> Ample materials exist even in English for the study of the remarkable
> personality who has now passed from our midst and of the doctrines he taught;
> and especially authoritative are the works of M. Hippolyte Dreyfus and his wife
> (formerly Miss Laura Clifford Barney), who combine intimacy and sympathy with
> their hero with sound knowledge and wide experience. In their works and in that
> of Mr. Myron H. Phelps must be sought those particulars which it is impossible
> to include in this brief obituary notice.
> 
> [The following passage may
> contain scanning errors]
> [1] Un autre détail que je tiens de
> source première est celui-ci. Quelques sectaires, qu'on voulait amener i
> retractation, furent attachés à la gueule de canons amorcea d'une
> mêche longue et brulant lentement. On leur proposait de couper la
> mêche, s'ils reniaient le Báb. Eux, les bras tendus n le f~u, lé
> suppliaient de hater et de venir bien vité consommer leur bonheur.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views31789 views since posted 1999; last edit 2026-04-22 20:16 UTC;
> 
> previous at archive.org.../appreciations_bahai_faith_1941;
> URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
> Language
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> © BIC, public sharing permitted. See sources 1, 2, and 3.
> History
> Scanned 1999 by Duane Troxel; Formatted 1999 by Alex Christian; Proofread 1999 by Alex Christian.
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> 
> Shortlink: bahai-library.com/187
> Citation: ris/187
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