with it comes a high responsibility, from which there is no escape.
In the Palace of Behjeh or Delight, just outside the Fortress of Acre, on the Syrian coast, there died a few months since a famous Persian sage, the Babi Saint, named Bahá’u’lláh—the “Glory of God”— the Head of that vast reform party of Persian Moslems, 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 Christ-like, 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.”
XIII. Excerpts from “Persia,” by the Right Hon. The Earl Curzon. Vol. I, pp. 496-504. Written in 1892 A. D.
Beauty and the female sex also lent their consecration to the new creed and the heroism of the lovely but ill-fated poetess of Kasvin, Zerin-Taj (Crown of Gold) or Kurrat-el-Ain (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 estmlate places the present number of Babis 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 Syids, Hajis and Mullahs, i. e., persons who, either by descent, from pious inclination, or by profession, were intimately concerned with the Mohammedan creed; and it is among even the professed votaries of the faith that they continue to make their converts. . . . Quite recently the Babis 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 Teheran, 100 in Hamadan, 50 in Kashan, and 75 per cent. of the Jews at Gulpaigan.... The two victims, whose names were Haji Mirza Hasan and Haji Mirza Huseyn, have been renamed, by the Babis Sultanes-Shahada, or King of Martyrs, and Mahbub-es-Shahada, or Beloved of Martyrs—and their naked graves in the cemetery have become places of pilprimage 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 murmuring devotion has been inculcated by this new faith, whatever it be. There is, I believe, but one instance of a Babi 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 blood-stained pages of Babi 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 Teheran. 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 Babism in its earliest years found itself in conflict with the civil powers and that an attempt was made by Babis upcn 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 Mohammedanism 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 prevail. . . . The pure and suffering life of the Báb, his ignominous 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. . . .
XIV. Extracts from “The Gleam,” by Sir Francis Younghusband, 1923.
The story of the Báb, as Mirza Ali Mohammed called himself, was the story of spiritual heroism unsurpassed in Svabhava’s experience; and his own adventur-
