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.
XI. Dr. Henry H. Jessup, D.D.
From the World’s Parliament of Religions; 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 rising gradually toward that image, and we owe to our fellowmen to aid them in returning to it in the Glory of God and the Beauty of Holiness. 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.”
XII. By The Right Hon.
The Earl Curzon.
Excerpts from Persia, Vol. I, pages 496-504. (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 Qazvín, Zerin-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, Hájís and Mullás, i. e., persons who, either by descent, from pious inclination, or by profession, were intimately concerned with the Muḥammadan creed; and it is among even the professed votaries of 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 Ṭihrán, 100 in Hamadán, 50 in Káshán, and 75 per cent of the Jews at Gulpáyigán. . . . The two victims, whose names were Hájí Mírzá Hassan and Hájí Mírzá Ḥusayn, have been renamed by the Bábís: Sulṭánu’sh-Shuhadá’, or King of Martyrs, and Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá’, or Beloved of