The Call of Mt. Carmel
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Maude Holbach, The Call of Mt. Carmel, bahai-library.com.
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The Call of Mt. Carmel

Maude Holbach
published in Bible Ways in Bible Lands: An Impression of Palestine pp. 5, 6, 8, 9, 16

London: Kegan Paul, 1912

1. Text

[page 1]

I FIRST saw "Holy Land" from the deck of
the Dunottar Castle at anchor in the Bay
of Haifa. It was a cloudless spring morning,
and in the clear air of Syria the houses on
the shore, though really a mile distant,
seemed close by. I have an impression of
white houses with flat roofs backed by green
hills — a description which would fit many
a town in the East — yet Haifa does not look
wholly Eastern; it lacks the many minarets
of Oriental towns where Islam is paramount.
I felt before I landed that this was indeed
"the Holy Land!" I knew that though we

[page 2]

have no record that our Master [i.e., Jesus. -J.W.] ever walked
upon the seashore that lay between me and
the little town, or trod the streets of "Khof,"
or "Khafah" (referred to in the Book of
Judges as the "haven by the sea"), He
certainly wandered over the hills, then dotted
with prosperous towns and villages that lie
between here and the Lake of Galilee; for
His lowly home at Nazareth was only fifteen
miles away.

If I were going to live anywhere in
Palestine I should certainly choose Haifa, as
the cleanest town and the one most
beautifully situated in the whole country! It lies
between the mountains and the sea at the foot
of Mount Carmel, which is not, as I always
imagined before visiting it, a single mountain
but an extensive range, triangular in form.1

Some happy day when I revisit Palestine
I hope to pitch my camp upon the sacred
mountain, to explore its hills and valleys,

The eastern side from the apex of the triangle is thirteen
miles in length, the western twelve, and the base, which runs
parallel with the sea, nine.

[page 3]

wooded glens and wild gorges, and penetrate into the hidden caves which were such
secure hiding-places in Bible days, that they
are mentioned in the Book of Amos as an
illustration of the secrecy that God alone
could lay bare.

In those far-off times the mountain was
covered with a dense forest, now it is
covered in spring with flowers, and when I
visited it the slopes nearest to Haifa, which
are crowned by the world famous Carmelite
monastery, were aflame with the scarlet
anemone which is the "lily of the field"
of our authorised version, and to which
Solomon's royal robes were likened.

There is a charming legend about the
flower which may have been known to our
Lord, according to which Hiram King of
Tyre sent, with the cedar wood for the
building of the temple, a present to King
Solomon of a splendid scarlet robe, dyed
with the famous Tyrian dyes (which, by the
way, were made from a little shell-fish that
may still be picked up by hundreds on the

[page 4]

beach). The gorgeous colour delighted
Solomon's heart, till one day a child
brought him a bunch of the blossoms of
the scarlet anemone, and he saw that his
treasured garment looked but dull beside
the shining blossoms, and pointed out to
his courtiers how the work of men's hands
paled before God's handiwork.

Alas! I did but touch the fringe of Carmel!
It is still almost an unexplored country,
and wild life abounds — leopards, hyenas, wild
boar, and gazelle roam over its hills and
valleys — tourists who sleep at Haifa are
generally content to walk or drive to the
monastery and hasten on to the famous sites
of New Testament history at Nazareth and
Galilee — so the animals have the mountain
solitude to themselves.

Is it only coincidence that another school
of the "Sons of the Prophets" has established
itself upon Mount Carmel — that young men
are coming there from all over the Eastern
world to sit at the feet of the teacher who
believes it his divine mission to reform not

[page 5]

Islam alone, but the religions of the world?
I believe that portion of the western world
that has heard of the Persian teacher
"Abbas Effendi" (and it is an ever-increasing
portion, for his recent brief visit to England
drew the attention of our Press), with a few
exceptions of advanced thinkers who have
taken the trouble to study his doctrines,
looks upon him as the founder of a "new
religion." As such he was described to us by
an Englishman living in Palestine and
knowing him personally, but investigation since has
shown me the description was misleading.

If the author of "Life and Teachings of
Abbas Effendi,"1 who spent a month at Acre
to investigate the teaching of Bahaism at
the fountain head in December 1902, did
not view this remarkable religious movement
in too favourable a light it must inevitably
increase the spirituality of all who come
within its influence, whether Christian or
Moslem, for he tells us in his introductory
chapter: "It recognises every other religion

Myron H. Phelps of the New York Bar.

[page 6]

as equally divine in origin with itself. It
professes only to renew the message formerly
given by the Divine Messengers who
founded those religions ... no man is
asked to desert his own faith: but only to
look back to its fountain-head and discern,
through the mists and accumulations of
time, the true spirit of its founders." Is
not this the crying need of the world to-day,
that we all act up to the faith we profess?
What a wide step towards universal brotherhood to "recognise every other religion as
equally divine!"

Abbas Effendi once said in answer to an
enquirer, "The Spirit is the same
everywhere! Under whatsoever name men
address Him, He will respond to their call."
In other words, his mission is "not to
destroy but to fulfil," not to tell men that
they have prayed amiss, but to urge them
to live "more nearly as they pray." Abbas
Effendi is in line with the great spiritual
movement which has arisen in the West,
and found expression in Christian Science

[page 7]

and New Thought in the importance he
attaches to the power of thought. "Every
deed of life," he says, "is a thought expressing itself in action; it is the actual mirror
of the man within."

He is in line with our most advanced
thinkers, philosophers, and students of human
nature in the importance he attaches to
character building. "Therefore," he says,
"we must be active — we must be up and
doing. Our deeds build up our characters,
and the building of our characters is our
task. Life in this world is for this purpose.
. . . If heredity has not given us the
qualities of character necessary for our
high moral and spiritual advancement, we
must labour to build up a new structure
within ourselves which will be adequate to
that aim. Each man must look to himself
and within himself to find his errors and
weaknesses."

This is not the dreamy mysticism we
are apt to associate with an Eastern sage
— it is a philosophy of life calculated to

[page 8]

"strengthen the feeble knees," and make
us ashamed of pleading our environment
or ancestry as an excuse for our laziness —
it will not permit us to "put our ain burdens
on the Lord's back!"

And the teacher lives the life he preaches,
taking but four hours' rest in the twenty-four, and but one meal a day after his
cup of tea that follows his prayers at
sunrise. He labours incessantly — teaching,
distributing alms to the poor, and carrying
on a vast correspondence. An interesting
comparison may be drawn between Abbas
Effendi's life of rigid self-denial and work,
and that of the leader of a great religious
movement in the Western world. General
Booth, who likewise is, as all the world
knows, able to reduce his bodily needs to a
minimum, and yet has a capacity for work
far exceeding that of the average man of
far younger years.

Self-denying, however, as is Abbas
Effendi's life, he does not believe in the
rigid asceticism that cuts itself off from

[page 9]

mankind. He has left for a time his home
on the slopes of Carmel to come to the
Western world. When I was at Acre, he
was at Alexandria — that battle-ground of
the Church and the Philosophic Schools
in the first centuries of Christianity — now
he has come to the throbbing heart of our
own London, which needs his message
hardly less than his native Persia.

I must beg my readers pardon if I have
digressed too much from the beaten path
to dwell on the Sage of Haifa who in God's
Providence was so wonderfully brought as
a prisoner to Acre, and led to make his
home and teach his followers so near to the
Galilean Lake, which was the scene of our
Lord's earthly ministry.

The Sacred Mountain drew to it yet
another reformer who founded a colony
which has exerted an enormous influence for
good on the surrounding Arab population.
Just beyond the little town of Haifa, at
the foot of Mount Carmel, you come to a
suburb of attractive little homes; each in a

[page 10]

well-kept garden, surrounded by highly
cultivated cornfields and vineyards that are
an object lesson in the fertility of the soil
of Palestine when properly cultivated.

This is the German colony founded late in
the sixties by Professor Hoffman of Wurtemberg,
a University professor and minister of
the Lutheran Church. Professor Hoffman
was a reformer, and the fate of most reformers
was his; indeed, there is a certain likeness
in his story and that of the founder of the
Bahá'ís, Ali Mohammed. Both aimed to
reform the state religion of their country,
and both came into collision with the
ecclesiastical authorities. The Persian
reformer, in a semi-barbarous land, paid for
his opinions with his life; the German,
belonging to a civilised nation, was merely
expelled by the Lutheran Church, just as
its founder Luther had been from that of
Rome.

That Dr Hoffman, like Mohammed Ali,
had a large following, is proved by the
petition signed with twelve thousand names

[page 11]

he presented at the Diet of Frankfurt
praying for church reform. Perhaps if the crown
of martyrdom had been his, they would have
increased like the Bahá'ís; as it is they
are represented only by three colonies in
Palestine, originally composed of those who
followed their revered leader into exile, but
though small in numbers, the influence of
the three hundred German colonists at Haifa
on the surrounding Arab population has
been very great.

By the simplicity and sincerity of their
religion, the scrupulous honesty in their
dealings, and the industry and harmony of their
lives, this little band of men and women
have held high the standard of Christianity,
and commended their faith to the world.

Nor is the moral benefit of a business
and industrial community setting a living
example of practical Christianity all the
advantage that Haifa has denied from
the German colonists. Their industry has
been the corner stone on which the trade
of the port has been built up, till it has

[page 12]

become one of the most prosperous towns
on the coast. The Arabs have imitated the
improved methods of agriculture of the
German farmers, and land has increased
in value enormously. Before their coming
carts were unknown, and all inland transport
had to be carried on by means of beasts of
burden laden with pack saddles, as it is
in Morocco to-day.

The road from Haifa to Nazareth, one of
the first in Northern Palestine, was made by
the colonists at their own expense, and did
much to reconcile the local government to
the new comers, whom they at first treated
with marked hostility. Life was far from
a bed of roses for the Germans in the early
days of the colony, for though none of them
possessed much means, they were taxed three
and four times as much as the natives by
the unscrupulous Turkish officials.

The faith that the second advent of the
Messiah (which their leader's Bible studies had
brought him to the conclusion was approaching)
would occur in Palestine, sustained the

[page 13]

colonists in their struggle, and now, firmly
established with "their lamps burning," they
wait the coming of their Lord.

Strange and sad it is that even in religion
there should be rivalry; that all good
men working for the spiritual progress
of the world cannot join hands as brothers.
The monks of the Carmelite monastery
(which claims direct succession from the
School of Sons of the Prophets) overlook
from the lofty site of their beautiful
monastery the modest homes and smiling
fields of the German farmers, whose lands
join their own. Many good and noble men
there have been among the fathers, notably
that brave friar who, sustained by faith in
God, begged throughout Europe to raise
the money to rebuild the convent after its
destruction by the French, but local report
says they held aloof from, if they were
not "covertly hostile" to, the Protestant
Germans in their early struggles; and there
is a painful episode related by a modern
writer of something like a battle royal over

[page 14]

the boundaries, when the townspeople, aided
by the Germans, tried to pull down the wall
by which, they claimed, the monastery had
enclosed town lands, and the monks, "armed
only with spiritual weapons," held aloft a cross
and evoked a curse in German and Arabic on
those who intruded on their "sacred" ground!

The point at issue was, of course, whether
the documents by which the monks claimed
the land were legal, but that did not lessen
the pity of the quarrel between two "religious
communities," though such strife is, alas, too
common in Palestine.

Travellers are always warmly welcomed
at the monastery, in conformity with the old
time traditions of hospitality, and it is a
delightful place to stay a few days, being
perched 500 feet above the sea on a spur
of the mountains. No bill will be given
to you when you go, but universal custom
sanctions an offering in accordance with
your means.

Among the mystics who have been drawn
from their own land to Mount Carmel, the

[page 15]

brilliant gifted writer Laurence Oliphant,
and his high-born, delicately-nurtured, lovely
wife, who was content to labour at lowly
household work varied with kindly
ministrations to her humble neighbours for five long
years, will never be forgotten.

The story of the Oliphants' life at Haifa
is sympathetically told in the "Memoirs"
written by Margaret Oliphant. After his
strange meteoric career (in which place and
power as a statesman and leader of all that
was best in social life were sacrificed to a
religious principle which bade him go and
work as the meanest labourer in an obscure
community in America and consent to years
of separation from his devoted mother, Lady
Oliphant, and his adored wife), the happiest
years of Laurence Oliphant's life were
spent at Haifa in a house in the German
colony which is still pointed out. When
you see it, reflect that "the whole soul of
the two to whom the house belonged was
bent upon leavening the world with a
knowledge of the love of God . . . their

[page 16]

main object was to live a life like that
of Christ in the world!" By birth, petted
children of fortune, by early association,
accustomed to the intellectual life of London
and Paris, they were content with the society
of the homely, kindly Germans and the love
of "a little floating circle of friends and
disciples who circled around them." Not
a few travellers with names famous in
Europe, made a détour to visit that idyllic
home where the Oliphants lived the life
that they believed was the manifestation of
the highest truth, loving each other and
all the world, and "going about doing good."
Laurence Oliphant's first visit to Palestine
was to report on sites for the Jewish
Colonies, then about to be founded. During
his residence there, he was ever ready to
hold out the hand of friendship to the
poor wandering Jews who landed forlorn
strangers in the land of their fathers; but
his biographer says it was "more what
we call chance than any deliberate choice
that directed them towards Haifa, a small

[page 17]

bright Syrian town lying on the western
edge of the Bay of Acre, with a beautiful
view across the bay of that historic fortress
and the noble background of the hills of
Galilee." Was it chance? Was it not rather
the Divine Leader the Oliphants followed
so unswervingly that not even the disillusion
of finding the earthly leader they had half
deified had feet of clay, could shake their
faith, that led them to Mount Carmel?

All that was earthly of Alice Oliphant
rests in the German cemetery at the foot of
the sacred mountain, and men and women of
diverse tongues and creeds have shed tears
beside her grave.

Her death followed a trip to Tiberias,
which she describes in the letters as "the
happiest fortnight in my life," and was put
down to the fever-laden air of the low
ground by the lake where they camped.
Almost it seems as if that sweet spirit
had attained as near perfection as mortals
can in this world and so passed on.

She breathed her last on the heights

[page 18]

of Mount Carmel, which had been her
summer home, and the grief of the people
of the adjacent Druse villages was intense.
"If five of our best sheiks die village not
so sorry!" they said, and when bearers
were wanted to carry the corpse down the
mountains to the road where carriages could
meet the funeral cortege, fifty men vied for
the honour, where only eight were needed.
Two miles from the colony, all the principal
men of the German colony, and all the
foreign consuls and their dragoman and
cavasses met the bier with many Arabs
and a Moslem guard of honour sent by
the Governor. "Had she been a queen,"
her sister wrote, "she could not have been
received with more respectful homage — and
it was all a spontaneous expression of love
— personal love for her."

Does it not link modern life most wonderfully with Bible times, that the Mount of
Elijah has ever been, and still is in these
latter days, the home of saints and mystics
who count the world well lost for God.

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-- The Call of Mt. Carmel (Used by permission of the curator)