REFERENCES TO THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH
Alphabetical List of Authors
Archduchess Anton of Austria
Charles Baudouin
President Eduard Beneš
Prof. Norman Bentwich, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Princess Marie Antoinette de Broglie Aussenac
Prof. E. G. Browne, M.A., M.B., Cambridge University
Luther Burbank
Dr. J. Estlin Carpenter, D.Litt., Manchester College, Oxford
General Renato Piola Caselli
Rev. T. K. Cheyne, D.Litt., D.D., Oxford University, Fellow of British Academy
Sir Valentine Chirol
Rev. K. T. Chung
Right Hon. The Earl Curzon of Kedleston
Prof. James Darmesteter, École des Hautes Études, Paris
Rev. J. Tyssul Davis, B. A.
Dr. Auguste Forel, University of Zurich
Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons
Arthur Henderson
Dr. Henry H. Jessup, D.D.
President David Starr Jordan
Prof. Jowett, Oxford University
Prof. Dimitry Kazarov, University of Sofia
Miss Helen Keller
Prof. Dr. V. Lesny
Harry Charles Lukach
Dowager Queen Marie of Rumania
Alfred W. Martin, Society for Ethical Culture, New York
President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia
Dr. Rokuichiro Masujima, Doyen of Jurisprudence of Japan
Mr. Renwick J. G. Millar
Prof. Herbert A. Miller, Bryn Mawr College
The Hon. Lilian Helen Montagu, J.P., D.H.L.
Arthur Moore
Angela Morgan
A. L. M. Nicholas
Prof. Yone Noguchi
Rev. Frederick W. Oakes
H.R.H. Princess Olga of Yugoslavia
Sir Flinders Petrie, Archeologist
Prof. R. F. Piper
Prof. B. Popovitch
Charles H. Prisk
Dr. Edmund Privat, University of Geneva
Herbert Putnam, Congressional Library, Washington, D. C.
Eugen Relgis
Ernest Renan
Prof. Dr. J. Rypka
Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Samuel, G.C.B., M.P.
Emile Schreiber, Publicist
Prof. Hari Prasad Shastri, D.Litt.
Rev. Griffith J. Sparham
Ex-Governor William Sulzer
Shri Purohit Swami
Leo Tolstoy
Prof. Arminius Vambéry, Hungarian Academy of Pesth
Sir Francis Younghusband, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E.
BY DOWAGER QUEEN MARIE OF RUMANIA
1.
A WOMAN1 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
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1Miss Martha L. Root.—Editor.
Facsimile of Autograph Letter addressed by Prof. Vambéry to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
(See translation, page 456.)
[Page 451]
and kindness, and of his
father the great teacher of international
good-will 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.)
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2.
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?
[Page 452]
“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 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.)
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3.
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, Muḥammad, 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.
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.)
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4.
“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.”
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5.
“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.
[Page 453]
“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.”
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6.
“The Bahá’í teaching brings peace to the soul and hope to the heart.
“To those in search of assurance the words of the Father are as a fountain in the desert after long wandering.”
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7.
“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.”
“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.”
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BY PROFESSOR E. G. BROWNE
1.
Introduction to Myron H. Phelps’ ‘Abbás Effendi, pages xv-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 doctrine, 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 Muḥammadan 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, 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 Muḥammadans to his faith: namely, that the former admits, while the latter rejects, the Divine inspiration of the Qur’án and the prophetic function of Muḥammad. 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 recognition of former prophetic dispensations (including the Jewish and the Christian) which Muḥammad and the Qur’án proclaim, and converts his Muslim antagonist not to Christianity, but to Skepticism or Atheism. What, indeed, could be more illogical on the part of Christian missionaries to Muḥammadan 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’án 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 Muḥammad was the prophet of God and that the Qur’án is the Word of God, denies nothing but their
[Page 454]
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.
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2.
Introduction to Myron H. Phelps’ 'Abbás 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.” Every one 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.
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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 countrywomen. Had the Bábí religion no other claim to greatness, this were sufficient—that it produced a heroine like Qurratu’l-‘Ayn.
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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 táj 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 hast attained! . . . Thou hast 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
[Page 455]
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 rate than on that which would conduce to the happiness of mankind. . . . These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family. . . . Let not a man glory in this that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this; that he loves his kind. . . .”
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.
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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 ‘Abbás Effendi, “The Master” ('Aghá) 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 Muḥammadans, 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, pages 70, 71—
From that subtle race issues the most remarkable movement which modern Muḥammadanism 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?
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 being1 of such consummate excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even to identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead. . . . His2 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.
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1Bahá’u’lláh.
2Báb.
[Page 456]
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
Shíráz.”
“ll sentait le besoin d’une réforme 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 martyre.” (Mons. Nicolas.)
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, 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, give here the outward framework of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life, and of his apostolic journeys, with the help of my friend Lutfulláh. . . .
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 VAMBÉRY
Testimonial to the Religion of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
- (Published in Egyptian Gazette, Sept. 24, 1913, by Mrs. J. Stannard.)—
I forward this humble petition to the sanctified and holy presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás, 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 Islám, 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, Muḥammadan 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.
I have seen the father of your Excellency
from afar. I have realized the self-sacrifice
[Page 457]
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.)
- VAMBÉRY.
- (Mamhenyn.)
- Your servant,
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 Shí’ihs, but including also many Sunnís from the Turkish Empire and North Africa, and not a few Brahmans, Buddists, 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 Muḥammadanism, 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 Islám, 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 Bábíism.)
When one has been like Sa‘di, 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 Shíráz 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? Have they not seen the Atábak-i-A‘zam twice hold sway as the Sháh’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 Bábíism. Chapter XI, page 120–
The Báb was dead, but not Bábíism. He was not the first, and still less the last, of a long line of martyrs who have testified that even in a country gangrened 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 Bábíism is the raising
of woman to
[Page 458]
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 Ṭihrán. No
memory is more deeply venerated or kindles
greater enthusiasm than hers, and
the influence which she yielded in
her lifetime still inures to her sex.
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 Bábite [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 Bábíism (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 selfsame 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 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 practised 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
[Page 459]
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 I, edited by G. K. Nariman. Published under patronage of the Írán League, Bombay, 1925. (The Marker Literary Series for Persia, No. 2.)—
The political reprieve brought about by the Ṣúfís 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 Muḥarram, when the son of ‘Alí breathed his last at Karbilá —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 Bábíism. Demoralized for centuries by ten foreign conquests, 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 re-make for herself a virile ideal. Bábíism has little of originality in its dogmas and mythology. Its mystic doctrine takes its rise from Ṣúfísm 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 Islám 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. Bábíism, 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 III, page 131. (Allan & 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 Romans. As Europeans we believe 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, 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
[Page 460]
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 Bábíist 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. . . .
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.
Convention of the Bahá’ís of 'Iráq.
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 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 macerations 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’s 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 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
[Page 463]
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. 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
Qaẓvín, Zarrín-Táj (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 Ṭíhrán, 100 in Hamadán, 50
in Káshán, and 75 per cent
of the Jews at Gulpáyigán. . . . The
two victims, whose names were Hájí
Mírzá Ḥasan and Hájí
Mírzá Ḥusayn, have been renamed by the
Bábís: Sultánu’sh-Shuhadá’,
or King of Martyrs, and Maḥbúbu’sh-Shuhadá’,
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 Iṣfahán.” . . .
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 Íránian 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
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 Ṭíhrán. 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 Bábíism 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 Sháh, 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 Bábíism continues to grow
at its present rate of progression, a time
may conceivably come when it will oust
Muḥammadanism 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 ignominious death, the heroism
and martyrdom
[Page 464]
of his followers,
will appeal to many others
who can find no similar phenomena in the
contemporaneous records of Islám. . . .
BY SIR FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND
Excerpts from The Gleam. (1923.)—
1.
The story of the Báb, as Mírzá ‘Alí Muḥammad 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 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.
————————
Excerpt from Modern Mystics. (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.
Ḥusayn had been slain in battle. Quddús
[Page 465]
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.
Under the wise control, and direction of Bahá’u’lláh from his prison-house, first at Baghdád 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, Mírzá Aḥmad Sohráb 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 the Bahá’í teaching. The movement sprung up during the middle of the last century in Persia, with the advent of a young Muḥammadan 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 Bábíism, 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 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 to 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
[Page 466]
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: (1) 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” (Phelps). 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 Islám. 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 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 hath 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
[Page 467]
teachings, as well as all the rationalistic
social religious teachings that have arisen
lately out of the original teachings of
Brahmanism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity
and Islám 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 Muḥammadan 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 Muḥammadan 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 Bábíism, 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 Bábíism 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 Muḥammadans.)
. . . 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 Muḥammadans 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 capacity of each soul to express His nature. This thought is implicit more or less clearly in all religions, and therefore in Muḥammadanism.
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 Islám, like all other religions, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, etc., it contains great basic truths but that these have become corrupted by superstition, and coarse interpretations and filled with unnecessary legendic descriptions. I have had much help in my researches to get clear upon Muḥammadanism by a splendid little book “The sayings of Muḥammad.”
The teachings of the Bábís which come to us out of Islám 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.
BY DR. AUGUSTE FOREL
. . . J’avais écrit les lignes qui précèdent en 1912.
Que dois-je ajouter aujour-d’hui
[Page 468]
en aoùt 1921, aprés les horribles
guerres qui viennent de mettre l’humanité
à feu et à sang, tout en dévoilant plus que
jamais la terrible férocité de nos passions
haineuses? Rien, sinon que nous devons demeurer
d’autant plus fermes, d’autant plus
inébranlables dans notre lutte pour le Bien
social. Nos enfants ne doivent pas se décourager;
ils doivent au contraire profiter du
chaos mondial actuel pour aider à la pénible
organisation supérieure et supranationale de
L’humanité, a l’aide d’une fédération
universelle des peuples.
“En 1920 seulement j’ai appris à connaître, à Karlsruhe, la religion supraconfessionnelle et mondiale des Bahá’ís fondée en Orient par le person Bahá’u’lláh il y a 70 ans. C’est la vraie religion du Bien social humain, sans dogmes, ni prêtres, reliant entre eux tous les hommes sur notre petit globe terrestre. Je suis devenu Bahá’í. Que cette religion vive et prospère pour le bien de L’humanité; c’est là mon voeu le plus ardent. . . .”
(Excerpt from Dr. Auguste Forel’s Will)
- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%***************+++++++++================
BY GENERAL RENATO PIOLA CASELLI
Having been engaged all of his life in the training of me, 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.
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
sight—seeing 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
[Page 469]
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 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 Ḥaḍrat-i-Bahá’u’lláh, have filled
me with real joy, as I see that this Movement,
so cosmopolitan in its appeal, and so
spiritual in its advocacy of Truth, is sure
[Page 470]
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.
BY THE RT. HON. SIR HERBERT SAMUEL, G.C.B., M.P.
In John O’London’s Weekly,
March 25th, 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.”
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 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
[Page 471]
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
Une des causes principales de la situation actuelle du monde c’est que l’humanité est trop en arriére encore dans son développement spirituel. Voila pourquoi tout enseignement qui a pour but a 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. II a ce mérite qu’en portant des principes qui sont communs de toutes les grands religions (et spécialement du christianisme) cherche a les adapter aux conditions de la vie actuelle et ‘a 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’étre autant une religion nouvelle qu’un trait d’union entre les grandes religions existants: ce sur quoi il insiste surtout ce n’est pas d’abandoner la religion a laquelle nous appartennons déja pour en chercher une autre, mais a faire une effort pour trouver dans cette méme religion 1’é1ément qui nous unit aux autres et d’en faire la force déterminante de notre conduite toute entiére. Cet élément (commun a toutes les grandes religions) c'est la conscience que nous sommes avant tout des étres spirituels, unis dans une méme entité spirituelle dont nous ne sommes que des parties-unies entre elles par l’attribut fondamental de cette entité spirituelle-a savoir Pamour. Manifester, réaliser, développer 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 manifesations de notre activité. C’est en méme temps le seule moyen par lequel nous pouvons esperer de réaliser une union parmi les hommes.
Le Bahá’ísme est un des enseignements qui cherche a éveiller chez nous—n’importe a 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 commence a publier un journal en esperanto sous le titre “Universala Unigo.” Le premier article du premier Numero de ce journal était consacré au Bahá’ísme et a son fondateur. Il me semble que ce fait est une preuve e'clatante de ce que jé viens de dire sur le Beha’isme.
————————————toujours grandissant
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 Muḥammadanism 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 tolerance. It accepts all the great religions as true and their scriptures as inspired.”
This, then, as he sees Bahá’ísm, is its
[Page 472]
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, 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 Apétrcs, P.” Edition Lévy, Paris, 1866
Notre siécle a vu des mouvements religieux tout aussi extraordinaires que ceux d’autrefois, mouvements qui ont provoqué autant d’enthousiasme, qui ont eu déja, proportion gardée, plus de martyrs, et dont l’avenir est encore incertain.
Je ne parle pas des Mormons, secte a quelques égards si sotte et si abjecte que 1’on hésite a la prendre au sérieux.
Il est instructif, cependant, de voir en plein 19éme siécle 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. 11 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 patience et d’abnégation; dans cinq cents ans des docteurs prouveront sa divinité par les merveilles de son établissement.
Le Babisme, en Perse, a été un phénomene autrement considérable. Un homme doux et sans aucune prétention, une sorte de Spinoza modeste et pieux, s’est vu, presque malgré lui, élevé 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 21 celle de l’Islam. Des milliers de martyrs sont accourus pour lui avec l’allégresse au-devant de la mort. Un jour sans pareil peut-étre dans l’historie du monde fut celui de la grande boucherie qui se fit des Babis, £1 Téhéran. “On vit ce jour-la dans les rues et les bazars de Téhéran, 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 matiére, on peut juger l’admiration mélée d’horreur que la foule éprouve et que les années n’ont pas diminuée. On vit s’avancer entre les bourreaux des enfants et des femmes les chairs ouvertes sur tout le corps, avec des méches allumées, flambantes, fichées dans les blessures. On trainait les victimes par des cordes et on les faisait marcher a coups de fouet. Enfants et femmes s’avancaient en
[Page 473]
REFERENCES TO THE Bahá’í
chantant un verset qui dit: En vérité nous
venons de Dieu et nous retoumons 51 Lui.
Leurs voix s’élevaient, éclatantes, au-dessus
du silence profond de la foule. Quand un
des suppliciés tombaitet qu’on le faisait
relever 2; 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 surcroit d’enthousiasme:
“En vérité nous sommes Ta Dieu et nous
retournons a Quelques-uns des enfants expirérent pendant le trajet; les
bourreaux jetérent leurs corps sous les pieds
de leurs péres et de leurs soeurs, qui marcherent fiérement dessus et ne leur donnérent pas
deux regards. Quand on arriva au lieu
d’exécution, on proposa encore aux victimes
la vie pour leur abjuration. Un bourreau
imagina de dire a un pere que, s’il ne cédait
pas, il couperait la gorge a ses deux fils sur
sa poitrine. C’étaient deux petits garcons
dont l’ainé avait 14 ans et qui, rouges de
leur sang, les chairs calcinées, écoutaient
froidement le dialogue; le pére répondit, en
se couchant par terre, qu’il était prét et
l’ainé des enfants, réclamant avec emportement son droit d’ainesse, demanda a étre
égorgé le premier.‘ Enfin tout fut
achevé. La nuit tomba sur un amas de
chairs informes; les tétes étaient attachées
en paquets au poteau justicier et les chiens
des faubourgs se dirigeaient par troupes de
ce c6te'.
Cela se passait en 1852. La secte de Mozdak sous Chosroés Nousch fut étouffée dans un pareil bain de sang. Le dévouement absolu est pour les nations naives la plus exquise des jouissances et une sorte de besoin. Dans 1’atfaire des Babis, on vit des gens qui étaient Ta peine de la secte, venir se dénoncer 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 Pappfit du martyre suflit pour faire croire.
lui.”
1Un autre détail que je tiens de source premiére cs: celui-ci: Quelques sectaires, qu'on voulait amener ‘a rétractation, furent attachés 5 la gueule de canons amorcés d'une méche longue et brfilanr lentement. On leur proposait de couper la méche, s’ils reniaient le Báb. Eux, les bras tendus vers le fen, le suppliaient de se hiter et de venir bien Vite consommer leur bonheur.
FAITH 473
Un disciple qui fut le campagnon de supplice du Bab, suspendu 2; cote de lui aux remparts de Tabríz et attendant la mort, n’avait qu’un mot 5 la bouche “Es-tu content de moi, maitre?”
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.)
BY EMILE SCHREIBER
1. Trois prophétes
Alors que le marxisme soviétique proclame le matérialisme historique, alors que les jeunes générations sionistes sont e'galement de plus en plus indifférentes aux croyances établies, une nouvelle religion est
[Page 474]
2...‘ ...
.... J v~.' -~ ,‘ ' V ffwenty-Si:-ih. Annual Conveniion of BAHRIIS .m,° B, of the um-ran s-nu-rs;s and cANAp.o. _ Burkc(< Koretke :1 flue Baha"|'s House of Worlhi . c Nu.” ' " ChlC'—':SC3‘ K3‘
’:."
Twenty-sixth Annual Convention of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada,
May 31, June 1. 2. 3 and 4, 1934.
[Page 475]
REFERENCES TO THE Bahá’í
née en Orient, et sa doctrine prend, dans les circonstances actuelles, un intérét d’autant plus grand que, s’écartant du domaine purement philosophique, elle préconise en économie politique des solutions qui coincident curieusement avec les préoccupations de notre époque.
Cette religion, de plus, est par essence antiraciste. Elle est née en Perse, vers 1840, et les trois prophétes successifs qui 1’ont préchée sont des Persans, c’est-a—dire des musulmans de naissance.
Le premier, le créateur, s’appelait le Báb. ll précha vers 1850, et préconisa, outre la réconciliation des différents cultes qui divisent l’humanité, la liberation de la femme, réduite aujourd’hui encore a 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, répondant au nom difficile a prononcer de Qourratou-’l‘Ain, l’accompagna dans ses reunions, n’hésitant pas, en donnant elle-meme 1’exemple, a préconiser la suppression du voile pour les femmes.
Le Bab et elle réussirent a convaincre, a l’époque, des dizaines de milliers de Persans et le shah de Perse les emprisonna l’un et 1’autre, ainsi que la plupart de leurs partisans. Le Bab fut pendu. Sa belle collaboratrice fut étranglée dans sa prison. Leurs disciples furent exilés £1 Saint—Jean-d’Acre, devenue, temple du “Bahá’í'sme.” C’est ainsi que j’ai visité la maison du successeur du Bab, Bahá’u’lláh, aujourd’l'1ui en temple du “Bahá’í'sme.” C’est ainsi que s’intitule cette religion, qui est plutot une doctrine philosophique, car elle ne comporte ni culte défini, ni surtout de clergé. Les prétres, disent les Baháistes, sont tentés de fausser, dans un but de lucre, 1’idéalisme désintéressé des créateurs de religions.
Bahá’u’lláh, le principal des trois prophétes, répandit sa doctrine non seulement en Orient, mais dans beaucoup de pays d’Europe, et surtout aux Etats-Unis oil son influence fut telle que le nombre des Bahaistes attient aujourd’hui plusieurs millions. I1 fut persecuté par les Perses et mourut en exil.
Son fils, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, lui succéda et formula, d’aprés les principes de son pére, la doctrine économique du Baháisme; elle in transformée
FAITH 47$
dique une prescience étonnante des événements qui se sont déroulés depuis: la guerre d’abord, la crise ensuite. Il mourut peu aprés la guerre, ayant vu la réalisation de la premiere partie de ses prophéties.
L’originalité du Bahaisme est de chercher a faire passer dans le domaine pratique, et plus particuliérement dans le domaine social, les principes essentiels du juda'1'sme, du catholicisme et de l’islamisme, en les combinant et en les adaptant aux besoins de notre epoque.
Le Baháisme proclame que les rapports sociaux deviennent fatalement impossibles dans une société ou l’idéalisme 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 menace, a beaucoup d’égards, son bien-étre et sa sécurité. La bonne volonté et 1’honnéteté, ne produisant plus dans sa vie et dans son travail le résultat qu’il attend, tendent 2; perdre pour lui toute valeur pratique. De la naissent, selon les caractéres, Pindifférence et le découragement, ou l’audace, le manque de scruples qui tendent 5 se procurer par tous les moyens, méme les plus répréhensibles, les bénéfices matériels nécessaires it l’existence.
La société, n’étant plus soumise a aucum contréle, ni politique ni moral, devient un vaisseau sans gouvernail oi‘: personne ne peut plus rien prévoir et qui est sujet £1 des crises de plus en plus fréquentes et de plus en plus violentes. L’époque actuelle, déclarent les prophétes persans, marque la fin d’une civilisation qui ne sert plus les intéréts de l’humanité.
Elle aboutit ‘a la faillite complete des institutions morales et matérielles destinées Ea assurer le bien-étre et la sécurité des hommes, c’est-a—dire l’Etat, l’Eglise, le Commerce et l’Industrie. Le principe fondamental d’oix peut venir le salut de la civilisation engagée dans des voies qui conduisent a sa destruction est la solidarité des nations et des races. Car Yinterpénétration des peuples est devenue telle qu’il leur est impossible de trouver isolément la voie de la prospérité.
Ces prophéties, qui pouvaient paraitre excessives et quelque peu pessimistes 5: l’époque of: elles ont été faites, vers 1890,
[Page 476]
476
ne sont pas, les événements l’ont prouvé, de simples jérémiades. Il reste a examiner comment, partant de ces données, qui ne sont que trop exactes, le Bahaisme, concu dans la Perse lointaine et si arriérée a l’époque, aboutit aux mémes 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 in la crise actuelle entrainant tous le peuples a une misére toujours plus grande.
(From LES EcHos, Paris, France, Septem ber 27, 1933.)
2 . Une religion "e'conomique”
Les principes du Baháisme, formulés par son principal prophéte, Bahá’u’lláh, peuvent paraitre sérieusement compromis en un temps ou la frénésie nationaliste, récemment aggravée de racisrne, semble en éloigner 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 résoudre le probléme non pas de la prospérité, mais simplement du logement et de la faim, dans les difiérentes nations qui nient par leurs theories et tous leurs actes la solidarité des peuples et des races.
Une nouvelle guerre mondiale sera sans doute nécessaire pour que l’humanité, qui n’a pas encore compris la legon de 1914, se rende enfin compte que les solutions de violence et de conquéte ne peuvent engendrer que la ruine générale, sans profit pour aucun des belligérants.
Quoi qu’il en soit, les principales pensées économiques de Bahá’u’lláh, telles qu’elles ont été formulées il y a un demisiécle, 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 Ea reculons.
Voici les principaux préceptes de ce moderne Marc-Aurele:
“L’évolution humaine se divise en cycles organiques, correspondant a la durée d’une religion, laquelle est d’environ un millier d’années. Un cycle social nouveau commence toutes les fois qu’apparait un prophéte
THE BAHA’
1 WORLD
dont l’influence et les enseignements renouVellent la vie intérieure de l’homme et font déferler a travers le monde une nouvelle vague de progrés.
“Chaque nouveau cycle détruit les croyances et les institutions usées du cycle précédent et fonde sur d’autres croyances, en étroite conformité, celles-la, avec les besoins actuels de l’humanité, une civilisation nouvelle.
“L’influence de chaque prophéte s’est, dans le passé, limitée a une race ou a une religion, en raison de l’isolement géographique des régions et des races, mais le siecle dans lequel nous entrons nécessite la création d’un ordre organique s’étendant au monde entier. Si le vieil esprit de tribu persiste, la science detruira le monde, ses forces destructrices ne pouvant étre contrélées que par une humanité unie travaillant pour la prospérité 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 coopération. Sous cette loi, l’individu jouira d’un statut beaucoup plus large que celui qui est accordé aux citoyens passifs du corps politique actuel. L’administration publique passera des mains de partisans politiques qui communiste plus ou moins théorique, mais d’hommes capables de considérer une charge publique comme une mission sacrée.
“La stabilité économique ne dépend 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 vivte.
“L’important n’est pas en une aveugle soumission générale :2. tel systéme politique, 51 tel reglement, qui ont pour efiet de supprimer chez l’individu tout sentiment de responsibilité morale, mais en un esprit d’entr’aide et de coopération. Ni le principe démocratique, ni le principe aristocratique ne peuvent fournir séparément a la société une base solide. La democratie est impuissante contre les querelles intestines et l’aristocratie ne subsiste que par la guerre. Une combinaison des deux principes est donc nécessaire.
[Page 477]
REFERENCES TO THE Bahá’í
“En cette période de transition entre le Vieil age de la concurrence et l’ére nouvelle de la cooperation, la vie méme 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 Ceux-ci devront mettre au point, au—dessus des égoismes particuliers, le noustatut 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 pére, concluait dans un discours prononcé a New-York en 1912:
"La civilisation matérielle a atteint, en Occident, le plus haut degré de son developpement. Mais c’est en Orient qu’a a pris naissance et que s’est développée la civilisation spirituelle. Un lien s’établira entre ces deux forces, et leur union est la condition de l’immense progres qui doit étre accompli.
“Hors de la, la sécurité et la confiance feront de plus en plus défaut, les luttes et les dissensions s’accroitront 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 prédit.
Mais ces paroles n’ont pas vieilli; elles pourraient, sans le moindre changement, étre répétées en 1933. Aujourd’hui, comme il y a vingt ans, la menace de la guerre est de nouveau suspendue au—dessus de nos tétes et les causes de haines et de conflits s’accumulent 51 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 pres de venir aux idées de coopération qui, seules, peuvent nous sauver.
(From LE5 ECHOS, Paris, France, Septem ber 28, 1933.)
nations.
VCEU
FAITH 477
3.
Malgré les tristesses de notre époque et peut—étre méme 51 cause d’elles, je reste convaincue que les idées 5; la fois divines et humaines qui sont l’essence du Baháisme finiront par triompher, pourvu que chacun de ceux qui en comprennent l’immense intérét continue quoi qu’il advienne £1 les défendre et 2‘: 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.”
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’í World, Vol. V: ”I like the Bahá’í Movement 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 [sic] 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 JUGOSLAVIA
H. R. H. Princess Olga, wife of H. R. H. Prince Regent Paul of Jugoslavia, daughter of H. R. H. Prince Nicholas of Greece and cousin of His Majesty King 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 sixteenth, 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 Cosmométapolis, 1935, pp. 108-109
Nous avons tracé dans ces pages seulement la signification du Bahaisme, sans examiner tous ses principes et son programme pratique dans lequel sont harmonisées avec l’idéal religieux “les aspirations et les objectifs de la science sociale.” Mais on doit attirér l’attention de tous les esprits libres sur ce mouvement, dont les promoteurs ont le mérite d’avoir contribué a 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 répéter aujourd’hui, dans la
mélée des haines nationales et sociales, cette
sentence de progres? C’est un Oriental qui
nous a dit cela, a nous, orgueilleux ou scep
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REFERENCES TO THE BAiHA’I FAITH
3; ‘r- .. .,, L
. .4. r 4!.
Bahá’í Friends gathered in Convention, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1934.
tiques Occidentaux. Nous voudrions voir aujourd’hui, dans l’Allemagne hitlériste, dans les pays terrorisés par le fascisme, paralysés par la dictature politique,—un spectacle décrit par le suisse Auguste Forel d’aprés l’anglais Sprague qui a vue en Birmanie et en Inde, des bouddhistes, des mahométans, des chrétiens et des juifs, qui allaient brasdessus bras-dessous, comme des fréres, “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 great sympathy with the aspirations towards world unity which underlie his teaching.
BY PROF. DR. V. LESNY
1.
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.
2.
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
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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
A cette époque on l’humanité semble sortie d’un long sommeil pour revivre a l’Esprit, consciemment ou inconsciemment, l’homme cherche et s’élance a 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 prét a recevoir le grand message de Bahá’u’lláh dans son mouvement synthétique qui nous fait passer de l’ancienne comprehension des divisions a la comprehension moderne ou nous cherchons £1 suivre les ondes qui se propagent traversant toute limitation humaine et de la creation.
Chaque combat que nous livrons :3. 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 longeurs 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’érnettre les mémes harmonies que notre fame, ce qui nous fait vibrer et devenir le lien entre le passé et l’avenir en attaignant une nouvelle étape correspondant i l’évolution du monde.
En religion, la Cause de Bahá’u’lláh, qui est la grande révélation de notre époque, est la méme que celle du Christ, son temple et son fondement les memes mis en harmonic avec le degré de maturité moderne.
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 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
[Page 481]
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 Shíráz 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.
BY PROF. DR. JAN RYPKA
The Bahá’ís of Írán are resolutely firm in their religion. Their firmness does not have its roots in ignorance. The Íránian inborn character causes them to see things somewhat too great, slightly exaggerated, and their dissensions with the ruling Islám 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 otfice 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 Íránian 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 Muḥammadan brothers. During the centuries the Shí‘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 Íránian 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 Íránian 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 an 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
Bab. Pauvre grand Prophete né au fin fond
de la Perse sans aucun moyen d’instruction
et qui seul au monde, entouré d’ennemis,
arrive par la force de son génie a créer une
religion universelle et sage. Que Bahá’u’lláh lui ait, par la suite, succédé, soit, mais
je veux qu’on admire la sublimité du Bab,
qui a d’ailleurs payé de sa vie, de son sang la
réforme qu’il a préchée. Citez-moi un autre example, semblable. Enfin, je puis
mourir tranquille. Gloire a Shoghi Effendi
qui a calmé mon tourment et mes inquié
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482
tudes, 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 BENEŠ
I have followed it (the Bahá’í Cause) with deep interest every 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.
