The Mission of Bahá’u’lláh/Nabíl’s History of the Báb

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ERE ONCE AGAIN in human history is the Light shining in a ]H[ darkness that comprehendeth it not! Here once again is Faith re—arisen upon the world, bringing a New Day, shedding a new glory, calling men from sleep to a

new life.

Here once again is Religion that men had thought sunk for ever in impotence—religion in its freshness, its purity and its power, religion reborn with all the magic of that ancient sweetness and beauty with which it was clothed in Holy Writ of old—religion warming men’s hearts with a new compassion and lovingkindness, melting all estrangements, uniting many wills in a common devotion, a common sympathy, giving to life a new completeness, transcending sorrow and pain and death!

We of the western world may be unable to trace in human affairs about us the providence of God, may not see His path opening before our feet, may not be aware of His activity and presence in our midst, we may be divided one against another, may be full of fears, devoid of love, laden with deepening doubt.

But here are men and women, boys and girls who through faith reborn became possessed of a knowledge to which we are strangers, entered into an experience which we hardly believe to exist, whose eyes were opened to the Light from heaven, who had ears to hear the voice of God, and being changed from their old selves, transformed into new creatures, translated to a new degree of life, were by divine grace endowed with a courage, an energy, a blissfulness which has no likeness on the earth and which no earthly privation can impair.

They had none of these things through which we of the West give expression to our religion: they had no systems of theology and ethics, no traditions, dogmas, creeds, institutions. Love and obedience and joy (love for God and His prophet, the joy of obeying the divine summons, even to the extent of sacrificing for

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love’s sake all they had and all they were)—these and these only were the marks of their religion.

All we have heard or read of the birth of a World Religion among men—of the Advent of a Divine Teacher, of the simple beginnings of His work, of the charm of His personality, of the love that He awakens in His followers, of His courage and authority, and His ability to overcome the whole world by the lonely-power of His word—all this is here again; and the facts and the details and the circumstances of His coming are transcribed into the pages of this chronicle. He calls on men to leave the idols and the torpors of the past, to awake and to greet the Dayspring from on High ; to join the legions of light and partake with him in the approaching world-triumph of God. Thousands upon thousands flocked to His banner, young and old, high and low, learned and unlearned, men and women, boys and girls. Thrilled with a new—bom faith, animated with a magical love they acclaimed His prophethood and Without reserve offered themselves as criers of the New Advent, torch-bearers of the New Revelation. When the envy of the mosque and the court stirred up far and Wide against them the latent fire of Muslim fanaticism, they found in the strain that was put upon them a means of showing forth before men what power of soul God gives in their extremity to those who love Him utterly before all else.

With eager courage they challenged every form of persecutionostracism, impoverishment, privation, beating, torture. Transported with a divine hope, sustained by an unshakeable resolution they counted suffering for God’s sake a supreme blessing, and measured the greatness of their spiritual privilege by the anguish of their bodily pain. They Welcomed martyrdom and endured its cruellest pangs with a serenity that moved their executioners to wonder and that bore immortal witness to the truth of the Faith for Which they died. They knew no fear, no doubt; weariness could not relax their resolution, nor cloud their confidence.

Throughout the entire length of the action of this narrative, in the darkest hour of tragedy and of defeat, there sounds the call of assured victory, of triumph and of celestial joy. No human circumstance, however desperate, can chill or depress the ardour

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of the faithful. No physical privation, no hunger, no pain, no bereavement, no sorrow nor the violent hand of death can blot from their vision the sweetness of the Beloved’s face or weaken the heart—beats of their impassioned adoration.

Here is no disquisition on the nature of Faith, no analysis of its elements. Here rather is Faith itself, Faith put to the proof, Faith in action, Faith naked, unarmed, alone, standing at bay against a thousand foes and remaining ever serene, unwavering, indomitable. Here is trust in God which impels not only the old but the young, to cast away their pleasures, their hopes, their careers, the joys of friendships and of home since thereby they can the better serve the will of Him Whom they love better than all mortal things. Eager, earnest, ardent, they find in the sacrifice they offer to their Beloved a sweeter, dearer happiness than otherwise is within the reach of created man.

Here once more is the Messenger of God, God’s image mirrored in an all-perfect Love, God’s power poured forth among men stirring them to a new spirituality, opening to them new reaches of consciousness. Here in very deed and in a form and fashion that none can gainsay or disown, is the Vindication of the reality of religion, the proof of its present power in this modern world. Here is the re—affirmation of the dignity of human nature and of the infinite greatness of the purpose of human life.

Not in the dream of a saint, nor the vision of a seer nor the imagination of a poet is this given, but in the prose of a chronicler who sets forth in detail the course of actual historical events in a contemporary record that bears its own mark of truthfulness and is corroborated by extraneous evidence from a hundred sources.

The author, known to history as Nabil, was himself a believer, a Persian, a follower of the Báb and afterwards of Him for Whose advent the Báb made ready the way. From the summer of 1849, at the time of the siege of Fort Tabarsi, he shared as an avowed believer in the dangers and adventures of his companions, and escaping with his life, he accumulated memories and made friendships which were to serve him well later in the compilation of material for this work. In the course of his narrative,* he tells

’The Dawnbrealzsrs: Nabil’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Revelation, translated by Shoghi Effendi. Bahá’í Publishing Committee, Wilmette, Illinois ‘

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how as a boy, while he tended his master’s sheep upon the Persian hills, he would dream of a religion more real than that in which he had been brought up and of a spirituality more pure than that of the ecclesiastics who were his appointed teachers.

When in the summer of 1847, at the age of fifteen, he heard of the Revelation of the Báb, he felt intuitively, at once, that here his dreams had come true and he had of a surety found the religion for which in the lonely thoughts of his heart he had so eagerly longed.

He made inquiries, he pursued his investigations, he pondered over what he learned, he felt that contagion of felicity Which marked the Bábis; and after two years, convinced of the truth of the Báb’s Prophethood, he openly espoused the Faith and spent the rest of his life in the hazards and vicissitudes of its service.

He was possessed of a vigorous and ready pen; and his ardour and constancy as a believer brought him the best of opportunities for composing such a recital of the deeds of the Babi pioneers as this. No detached observer or scholar, however inquisitive or industrious, could be in so favourable a position as this trusted Babi for collecting detailed and intimate information concerning the early believers and their doings. He stood close to the heart and centre of the Movement; he presented it with sympathy and understanding, and he gave his work a vividly dramatic quality by reflecting so clearly the spiritual experience of his heroes and by reproducing with power their feelings, their motives and their aspirations. He shared their enthusiasm and their high purpose in full measure; and his narration is sustained throughout by that profound impassioned love which gave to the crusade in those days its rushing irresistible force.

How wonderful the intuition that could reveal to him a truth utterly hidden from the learning and the culture of the great world in his day! How wonderful the steadfastness that could preserve him in his faith through a thousand adversities and sustain him through the long toils of preparing this invaluable compilation. He has his reward. This love-inspired tribute to the heroes he honoured before all on earth stands an immortal monument to his own illustrious memory, and in after ages Will draw to him an

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unfailing stream of grateful thoughts from the believers of many generations.

The volume of Nabil’s work now published in an English rendering recites the activities of the Báb during His ministry and pursues the fortunes of his followers for two years after His martyrdom. It covers a period of some eight years, and closes with the final expulsion of the Faith from the land of its origin. The narrative is intensely human, vivid, realistic. It presents a panorama of the entire movement in a series of pictures, incidents, episodes, some sketched in brief, some expanded in much detail, but all set forth in a style clear, graphic, powerful, glowing with the radiant fire of the author’s unfailing enthusiasm.

The date chosen by the Báb for making known His status as a World Prophet and for inaugurating His Ministry was May 23rd, 1844. The declaration was made in His house in Shíráz to Mullá Husayn, who became the first of His Apostles, or His “Letters of the Living Word,” with the particular designation of the “Bábu’lBáb,” or the Gate of the Gate.

The full account which Mullá Husayn gave of this momentous interview to Mirzá Ahmad-i-Qazvim', the martyr, has been preserved by Nabil, and it contains the following description of the irhmediate impression made by the Báb upon the first believer:

“This Revelation so suddenly and impetuously thrust upon me came as a thunderbolt Which for a time seemed to have benumbed my faculties. I was blinded by its dazzling splendour and overwhelmed by its crushing force. Excitement, joy, awe and wonder stirred the depths of my soul. Predominant among these emotions was a sense of gladness and strength which seemed to have transfigured me. How feeble and impotent, how dejected and timid I had felt previously! Then I could neither write nor walk, so tremulous were my hands and feet. Now, however, the knowledge of His Revelation had galvanised my being. I felt possessed of such courage and power that were the world, all its people and its potentates to rise against me, I would alone and undaunted withstand their

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onslaught. The universe seemed but a handful of dust in my

graspuI seemed to be the voice of Gabriel personified, calling

unto all mankind: “ ‘Awake, for 10! the morning Light has broken. Arise, for

His Cause is made manifest. The portal of His grace is open

wide; enter therein, O ye people of the world! For He, who is

your promised One, is come!’ ”

The call of Mullá Husayn was the opening of the Báb’s campaign.

As mysteriously Mullá Husayn had been drawn into the presence of the Báb, so the other disciples came to Him, spontaneously and of their own accord, within a few days of His Declaration. After brief instruction, He sent them out far and wide to bear His Message to various parts of the land. Each was to send back to Him the names of all the converts who definitely identified themselves with the New Faith: these the Báb would classify and record.

To Husayn He gave a special mission; and as soon as He was assured of its success, He set forth on October 10th, 1844, with Quddfis, the greatest of all the believers, on the distant and difficult mission He had reserved for Himself. He struck at the strategic centre of the Muhammadan Faith, and went on the pilgrimage to Mecca and to Medina, to reveal the Cause of God in those sacred spots and to rekindle there, in the spiritual heart of Islam, the Ancient Fire which had so completely disappeared from among men.

He chose, as the recipients of His Message, two individuals Whom He knew to be spiritually capable of appreciating it: Mirzá Muhit—i-Kirmani and the Sherif of Mecca. Both were men of distinction and influence. If they had the courage to follow the leading of their intuitions and to accept the Revelation, others would follow and the progress of the Cause would be rapid and wide.

Unfortunately for themselves and fdi‘their country, neither one nor the other of them proved willing to answer the divine summons. One evaded it, the other ignored it.

Bitterly disappointed, the Báb returned in June, 1845, to

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Persia. Already in many parts of the land the tidings of the New Faith had been spread by these eager apostles, and had been warmly welcomed by the people. Sundry officers of church and state were quick to suspect that this movement boded them no good and they took alarm from the first. When the Báb went to Shíráz and began there to propagate His Cause with immediate and marvellous success, the Governor of the Province, moved with envy, ordered his arrest, cast him into prison, and determined on his death. The Báb, however, was finally released and permitted to go to Iṣfahán. Here again He instantly won the hearts of the people. Thousands resorted to him to hear His Message. The priests were stung by jealousy and seventy of them in solemn conclave condemned Him to death for heresy. A friend, however, the Mu’tamadu’d—Dawla, had interested Muhammad Shah in the Báb’s Revelation, and by the Shah’s order the Báb was taken under escort to interview his Majesty in Tihran. Shortly before He reached the capital, He received from the Shah a letter, written under the influence of the Grand Vizier Haii Mirza Aqasi, in which the promised interview was indefinitely postponed, and the Báb was relegated to a lonely fortress in the wild mountains of northern Persia.

Now a deepening darkness rapidly gathered round the fading fortunes of the Prophet. After nine months’ incarceration in Mahki'l where His personality, as by magic, won over the people of the neighbourhood, His iailers, and the warden of the castle, He was transferred by His enemies, in April, 1848, to a still more rigorous imprisonment in Chihriq.

At the same time, the persecution of the Babis throughout the country was intensified and attacks upon their persons and their property grew more general and more Violent. In October of that year, a number of believers in Mazindaran seeking refuge from their assailants, withdrew to a disused fort, where they stood at bay for months before their enemies, who were supported by the regular army of the Shah. In May, 1849, being promised that persecution would cease, they gave themselves up and were at once seized and done to death by their perfidious foes. Nine of the Báb’s apostles, including Mullá Husayn and Quddfis, with

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numbers of other distinguished Babis, perished 1n this massacre.

In March of the following year occurred the death of the Seven Martyrs of Tihran, an episode which has become notorious on account of the prominence of the sufferers, their high character and the publicity of their execution.

Two months later, in Nayriz, a large party of Babis retreating before their tormentors were surrounded by their enemies and after a stout resistance were destroyed, in circumstances like those of their fellow-believers in Mazindarén. Their leader was Siyyid Yaḥyáy-i—Darabi, known as Vahid, one of the principal dignitaries of the Persian church, and the most learned of all the Báb’s followers.

At the same time in Zanjén, a similar investment of Babi refiigees occurred, but on a much larger scale. As many as seventeen regiments of theregular army, together with artillery, were employed on this occasion against the Bábis who were led by another brilliant divine of Islam, known among the Babis as Huijat.

The Grand Vizier Haji Aqasi, who had become the arch enemy of the Cause, now concluded that the spirit of the Bábis could not be broken nor the reform movement queued so long as its Author remained alive. He determined therefore to put the Báb Himself to death. Dispensing with the formalities of any legal process, he, by use of the weight of his official position, had the Báb removed from Chihriq to . Tabiiz and there summarily condemned to death without trial.

The sentence was carried out in the public square of the city, on July 9th, 1850. A curious circumstance delayed for a few minutes the actual execution. The Báb, with a follower who was to die with Him, was suspended by a rope to a wall, and the firing squad of 750 rifles delivered a volley at close range. The heavy smoke obscured completely the wall and those who hung upon it. When it cleared away, the two condemned men were found to have escaped injury. The rope which bound them had been cut, and the Báb’s companion was seen to be standing on the ground unhurt. The Báb had disappeared and was discovered in His prison, whither He had returned to finish a conversation which

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had been interrupted when his jailors came to lead Him out to execution.

The members of the firing party, terror—stricken at such a prodigy, refused to lift their rifles again against the person of the Prophet, and the authorities were obliged to summon another regiment to consummate their crime.

The news of their Lord’s martyrdom soon reached the Bábis standing at bay in Zanjan. They were stunned and horrified but not disheartened. Outnumbered, they held out to the last limit of their strength; and when by force and guile their resistance at last was crushed, hundreds of Bábis, men, women and children passed through the red gates of martyrdom to the Great Beyond, and then rejoined their beloved Master, who had travelled by the same road so short a time before.

By the early autumn of 18 50, the reactionaries had, as it seemed, cowed the main body of the believers and had destroyed every Bábi that had shown any capacity for leadership, except two only: Bahá’u’lláh who had espoused the Cause from the first, and Táhirih, the one woman—member of the nineteen apostles.

Through the efforts of these two, and especially the activity of Bahá’u’lláh, the Faith continued to make headway, until in August, 1852, an attack by a deranged Bábi on the person of the Shéh gave the authorities a pretext for a general slaughter of believers throughout the country, with the express aim of exterminating the Faith. Táhirih was martyred. Bahá’u’lláh with His dependents was exiled for life.

At this point, when all was at its darkest, and when to all except a few illumined spirits the light of the Cause of God seemed to be quenched for ever, the first volume of Nabil’s Narrative closes.

Faith in God and in His Prophet is the great ideal of the entire action——-the sure touchstone to distinguish good from evil, truth from untruth. Righteousness is extolled by the Báb and the highest standard of conduct demanded by Him of His followers, but the purpose of Nabfl was no more to deal in the principles and practice of ethics than to set forth a new theological system.

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His purpose was to show how Faith had come back into the world and had transformed those in Whose hearts its flame was kindled. If his story is epic in the elevation and sublimity of its subject matter, it is in its mood lyrical—a lyric of Faith and of the love that Faith awakes. In the central foreground stands the figure of the Báb. No space is given to sketching the historical, the social or political background. There is almost no setting to the incidents, the minimum of description, no account of the general circumstances of the time. All the figures in the story, and they are to be counted by hundreds, are grouped around the Báb. Those who choose to turn towards him are seen irradiated by the glory of their Lord; the intenser their Faith the more brilliant the light in which they are bathed. Those Who turn away from Him lie in the horror of a darkness which deepens with the gradations of their unbelief. If Nabil did not set himself to write a formally ordered history he produced a work which has the vital and informing unity that belong to a composition having a single hero, a single theme and one all-pervading dominant emotion. Everywhere in his book Nabil sets forth Faith as the first of virtues, the first step of man upon the highroad to the presence of God.

Deploring the failure of one of Shaykh Ahmad’s disciples to recognise the real dignity of a Prophet of God, he comments:

“His faith was weighed in the balance, and was found wanting, inasmuch as he failed to recognise that He Who must needs be made manifest is endowed with that sovereign power which no man dare question. His is the right ‘to command whatsoever He willeth and to decree that which He pleaseth.’ Whoever hesitates, whoever, though it be for the twinkling of an eye or less, questions His authority, is deprived of His grace and is accounted of the fallen.”

Mullá Husayn himself, the Gate of the Gate, hardly showed the requisite measure of submissiveness. He proposed to apply a test by which He would put the Báb to the proof. “Had you not been my guest,” said the Báb to him afterwaids, “your position would indeed have been a grievous one. The all—encompassing grace of God has saved you. It is for God to test His servants and not for

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His servants to judge Him in accordance With their deficient standards.”

He told the first of his apostles whom He sent out: “Your faith must be as immovable as the rock, must weather every storm and survive every calamity . . .”

In his address to the others He said: “The very members of your body must bear witness to the loftiness of your purpose, the integrity of your life, the reality of your faith, and the exalted character of your devotion . . . Heed not your weaknesses and frailty; fix your gaze upon the invincible power of the Lord, your God, the Almighty . . . Arise in his Name, put your trust wholly in Him, and be assured of ultimate victory.”

The apostles of the Báb spontaneously through the vigour of their own intuition recognised and adhered to Him. He Himself when in Mecca standing Within the most sacred shrine of Islam approached the famous divine Mirza Muhit-i—Kirméni, and put his faith to the test with a definite categorical demand . . . “Verily I declare,” He said, “none besides me in this day whether in the East or in the West can claim to be the Gate that leads men to the knowledge of God: My proof is none other than that proof whereby the truth of the prophet Muhammad was established. Ask me whatsoever you please: now at this very moment I pledge myself to reveal such verses as can demonstrate the truth of my mission. You must choose either to submit yourself unreservedly to my Cause or to repudiate it entirely. You have no other alternative. If you choose to reject my message, I will not let go your hand until you pledge your word to declare publicly your repudiation of the truth which I have proclaimed. Thus shall he who speaks the truth be made known, and he that speaks falsely shall be condemned to eternal misery and shame. Then shall the Way of Truth be revealed and made manifest to all men.”

The great churchman was broadminded enough to perceive the truth of the Báb’s pronouncement; else the Báb would not have approached him in that manner. He did not dare to deny it. But neither on the other hand did he dare to face the consequences of the public admission which the Báb demanded. He procrastinated. He pretended acceptance and promised submission;

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then broke his word and fled. “I shall never depart from Medina,” he assured the Báb, “whatever may betide, until I have fillfilled my covenant with you.” As the mote which is driven before the gale he, unable to withstand the sweeping majesty of the Revelation proclaimed by the Báb, fled in terror from before His face. He tarried awhile in Medina and, faithless to his pledge and disregardfill of the admonitions of his conscience,1eft for Karbilá.

Some years later the Muhit, still tormented in conscience, attempted to approach Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb being dead.

“Tell him,” was Bahá’u’lláh’s reply, “that in the days of my retirement in the mountains of Sulayméniyyih, I in a certain ode Which I composed set forth the essential requirements from every wayfarer who treads the path of search in his quest of truth. Share with him this verse from-that ode: ‘If thine aim be to cherish thy life, ’approach not our court, but if sacrifice be thy heart’s desire, come and let others come with thee. For such is the way of faith, if in thy heart thou seekest reunion with Bahá; shouldst thou refuse to read this path, why trouble us? Begone!’ If he be willing, he will openly and umeservedly hasten to meet me; if not I refuse to see him.”

Once again, the Muhit’s courage failed. He refused to face the consequences of a confession of faith, withdrew and died an unbeliever.

In prison, on the night before His martyrdom, the Báb subjected his three devoted companions to a test of the most extreme severity. He was in a strange elation of spirits. The sadness that for long had weighed him down on account of the death of so many of his followers had vanished. The joy of His approaching sacrifice, the sense of the certain triumph of God’s Cause, had dissipated every sorrow. Turning to His disciples He expressed regret that He was to die at the hand of an enemy instead of the hand of a friend. “Would that one of you,” He said, “might now arise and with his own hands end my life.” They shrank at the thought of taking a life so dear, so precious. Then one of them sprang to his feet and said that whatever the Báb commanded he would do. His companions interposed; and the Báb because he had shown himself ready to obey to the uttermost, chose him to

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share on the morrow the crown of martyrdom with his Lord. On the next morning, at the place of execution, he was tied in such a position that his head reposed on the breast of the Báb, and by the violence of the fusillade the two bodies were “shattered and blended into one mass of mingled flesh and bone.”

The New Revelation was oftentimes accepted not so much through intellectual submission to an argument as through the inspiration of a spiritual experience.

The Báb and His followers invited and welcomed scrutiny and careful examination of- His teachings; lectures by Bábis were frequently given and the faithful were always ready to meet anyone in intellectual controversy. In some important cases (as in that of the illustrious Vahid and of Nabil himself) investigation played a. great part in conversion. But logical conviction was always supported or anticipated by a strong intuitive impulse. In very many cases the divine illumination was seemingly perceived by the force of sheer insight.

In his account of the call of the Eighteen Apostles Nabil writes:

“Each of the twelve companions of Mullá ‘Ali in his turn and in his own unaided efforts, sought and found his Beloved. Some in sleep, others in waking, a few whilst in prayer, and still others in their moments of contemplation experienced the light of this Divine Revelation and were led to recognise the power of its glory.”

The conversion of Ismu’llahu’l—Asdaq, a distinguished Bábi of Iṣfahán, through a vision of the Báb (an experience not unparalleled in this chronicle) is quoted in his own words.

Hearing Mullá Husayn had come to Isféhénhe sought him out and met him at night in the home of Mirzá Muhammad-Aliy—jNahn.

“I asked Mullá Ḥusayn to divulge the name of him who claimed to be the Promised Manifestation. He replied, ‘To inquire about that name and to divulge it are alike forbidden.’ ‘Would it then be possible,’ I asked, ‘for me, even as the Letters of the Living, to seek independently the grace of the All Merciful and through prayer to discover his identity ?’ ‘The Door of his Grace,’ he

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replied, ‘is never closed before the face of him who seeks to find him.’ I immediately retired from his presence, and requested his host to allow me the privacy of a room in his house where alone and undisturbed I could commune with God. In the midst of my contemplation, I suddenly remembered the face of a youth whom I had often observed while in Karbflé, standing in an attitude of prayer, with his face bathed in‘tears, at the entrance of the shrine of the Imam Husayn. That same countenance now reappeared before mine eyes. In my vision I seemed to behold that same face, those same features, expressive of such joy as I could never describe. He smiled as he gazed at me. I went towards him, ready to throw myself at his feet. I was bending towards the ground, when 10! that radiant figure vanished from before me. Overpowered with joy and gladness I ran out to meet Mullá Husayn who, with transport received me and assured me that I had at last attained the object of my desire.”

Of the call of Quddfis, the last and greatest of the apostles, he writes: “The next day in the evening hour as the Báb followed by‘ Mullá Husayn was returning to His home there appeared a youth dishevelled and travel-stained . . . Fixing his gaze upon the Báb, he said to Mullá Ḥusayn: ‘Why seek you to hide Him from me P I can recognise Him by His gait. I confidently testify that none beside Him whether in the East or in the West can claim to be the Truth . . .’ ”

The narrative continues.

“ ‘Marvel not,’ observed the Báb, ‘at his strange behaviour. We have in the world of spirit been communing with that youth. We know him already. We indeed awaited his coming . . . ’ ”

Of the inclusion of Táhirih, the one woman among the apostles, Nabil records that “. . . we have seen how instinctively she had been led to discover the Revelation of the Báb and how spontaneously she had acknowledged its truth. Unwarned and uninvited, she perceived the dawning light of the promised Revelation breaking upon the city of Shíráz, and was prompted to pen her message and to plead her fidelity to him who was the revealer of that Light.”

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The Message which the Bábis proclaimed was primarily one of faith. “Raise the cry,” said the Báb to Mullá Husayn, as He sent him out on his first missionary journey; “Awake, awake! for 10! the Gate of God is open, and the morning Light is shedding its radiance upon all mankind. The Promised One is made manifest; prepare the way for Him, O people of the earth! Deprive not yourselves of its redeeming grace, nor close your eyes to its effulgent glory.”

The appeal which the Message made was felt to be quite extraordinary and to partake of the nature of pentecostal fire. Nabil expresses this very definitely in his account of the progress of the Bábi movement in the province of Khurésén.

“There blazed forth,” he writes, “in the heart of Khurésén a flame of such consuming intensity that the most formidable obstacles standing in the way of the ultimate recognition of the cause melted away and vanished. That fire caused such a conflagration in the hearts of men that the effects of its quickening power were felt in the most outlying provinces of Persia.”

Their hearts aflarne with this divinely kindled fire, the Bábis feared no danger, were daunted by no terror, and yielded under no adversity. They endured without a murmur manifold sorrows and sufferings. Indeed they counted it a high and precious privilege to go through tribulation of their Faith’s sake, and looked forward to persecution with joy.

“Ever since the beginning of this holy enterprise, upon Which I have embarked,” cried Mullá Husayn, “I have vowed to seal with my life blood my own destiny. For his sake I have welcomed immersion in an ocean of tribulation. I yearn not for the things of this world. I crave only the good pleasure of my beloved. Not until I shed my blood for his name will the fire that glows within me be quenched.”

Those chiefly responsible for the attacks on the Bábis were the officials of the state-church who owed their privilege and power to the ignorance and superstition of the people and were quick to see that the onrush of this crusading reformation movement would sweep them and all their depravities away for ever unless it

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was instantly and remorselessly strangled. They used their influence to rouse their fanatical followers in the name of orthodoxy against the innovators. A supine and apathetic government made no effort to quell disorder or to prevent violence. On the contrary, the officials of the state were inclined not only to wink at but even to take part in the riots, the plunderings and the massacres. The Babis had no protection, no redress, no assurance or hope of justice. Before them lay the clear prospect of ostracism, of spoliation and probably of torture and death.

As one of the Babis who were driven to bay in Zanjén stated in answer to the denunciations of the Amil-Tirman: “God knows that we are and will ever remain loyal and law—abiding subjects of our sovereign, with no other desire than to advance the true interests of his government and people.

“We have been grievously misrepresented by our ill-wishers. No one of the Shah’s representatives was inclined to protect or befriend us; no one was found to plead our cause before him. We repeatedly appealed to him, but he ignored our entreaty and was deaf to our call. Our enemies, emboldened by the indifference which characterised the attitude of the ruling authorities, assailed us from every side, plundered our property, violated the honour of our wives and daughters, and captured our children. Undefended by our government and encompassed by our foes we felt constrained to arise and defend our lives.”

Nothing that the armies of corruption could do acted as a deterrent to the Bábis. Faith had quickened in their hearts so impetuous and unquenchable a flame of heavenly love that earthly danger and suffering held no terrors for them. As love prompted them, as their master bade them, they went forward on their crusading way, proclaiming their belief, calling aloud the Glad Tidings, summoning all men to give heed and not to remain blind to the light of so glorious a Day. The foreknowledge of destruction heightened their enthusiasm and intensified their activity.

, Vahid from the day he gave his adhesion to the cause, yearned to lay down his life for his Lord’s sake, and testified to his joy

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when before the siege of Nayriz he saw the longed—for day was approaching.

Mullá Husayn when he had raised the Black Standard, before the siege of Mazindaran commenced, knew what the issue would be, and warned his followers in time.

“I together with seventy—two of my beloved companions shall suffer death for the sake of the Well-Beloved. Whoso is unable to renounce the world, let him now at this very moment depart, for later on he will be unable to escape.”

Huiiat shortly before his death, when he had just seen his own wife and child killed by the enemy, testified to his own premonitions of suffering for the Báb’s sake and to his joy therein.

“The day whereon I found Thy beloved one, Oh my God,” he cried, “and recognised in him the Manifestation of thine Eternal Spirit, I foresaw the woes that I should sufi‘er for thee. Great as have been until now my sorrows, they can never compare with the agonies that I would willingly suffer in thy name. How can this miserable life of mine, the loss of my wife and of my child, and the sacrifice of the band of my kindred and companions, compare with the blessings which the recognition of thy Manifestation has bestowed on me! Would that a myriad lives were mines, would that I possessed the riches of the whole earth and its glory, that I might resign them all freely and willingly in thy pa 3’

The Báb early in His ministry knew the fate that awaited Him at its end. On their return from the pilgrimage to Mecca, He said good-bye to His beloved companion Quddús and told him sadly that they would not see each other again on earth; that Quddús would soon meet a martyr’s death. “But,” He said, “on the shores of the Great Beyond, in the realm of immortality, the joy of an eternal Reunion awaits us . . . I, too, shall read the path of sacrifice . . .”

Nor was this high, heroic spirit of devotion found only in the leaders, or in the men; it was displayed likewise by women, by girls, by children, by all.

Táhirih, that outstanding star of Persian womanhood, the one

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woman-apostle of the Báb, of whom Professor Browne said that if the Bábi cause had done nothing else, to have produced such a woman as her in such a time and such a country would have made it illustrious—Te’mirih, beautiful, exquisite, learned, eloquent, showed a courage and enterprise in spite of the disability of her sex which made her conspicuous even among the Bábis; when her time of martyrdom drew near she met it with rapture and endured :1 painful death with dignity and calm.

Nabfl records how numbers of girls and boys and aged men in the siege of Tabarsi or Nayri’z or Zanjén played their full part With the other Bábis in the defence of the asylum to which they had been driven; how mothers would encourage their children to suffer and to die rather than repudiate their faith; how the protracted resistance of the Bábis at Zanjén was due in no small measure to the activity of the Bábi women who ministered to the sick and wounded, repaired the barricades, sewed garments, baked bread, cheered the faint—hearted and restored the faith of the wavering, while even the children showed the same enthusiasm as their elders and did what their tender strength permitted to the good of the common cause; and when at length the defenders were overwhelmed, the women endured with steadfastness the cruelties heaped upon them till they found release from their tormentors in a martyr’s death.

To the believer in the Báb and in Bahá’u’lláh this account of the Heroic Age of the Faith is precious and moving beyond words: it inspires, it stimulates, it fortifies.

But also to another class of readers (a class which at present, unfortunately for the world, is much larger) this work of Nabil’s has an extraordinary interest. It claims the particular regard and deserves the most patient study of every student of religious history and of everyone who believes in the reality of Divine Revelation. For here in Nabfl’s work is a direct account of one of those august events which occur at rate intervals in the progress of humanity and which are fraught always with the most momentous consequences: the birth of a new World Religion.

As the Bábi Faith is distinguished from all earlier religions in this respect, that the knowledge of it spread almost instantly from

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the East to the West; so this record which Nabil made of its beginnings, holds in the history of comparative religion a position in certain respects altogether unique.

The world (no doubt through its own fault) has to lament that there has been preserved so little authentic information as to the rise of the great Religions of ancient times, as to the life and death of their Founders, as to the efforts and heroisms and fate of their immediate f0110We1-s. In nothing is the sad truth that the world knows nothing of its greatest men more unhappily conspicuous than in the meagreness of testimony concerning the Authors of the successive World Revelations of the past.

The eager interest and loving reverence of the faithful have in later years made so much of the little information that is available; deficiencies, too, have been so well filled in by tradition, by legend or even by myth; and enthusiastic scholars have so often assumed an air of certitude about matters which prove on scrutiny to be merely conjectural, that there is current a gravely exaggerated idea as to our real knowledge of the rise of any of the world religions prior to Islam.

The personality and the philosophy of Buddha seem to have charmed the western world more than that of any other nonChristian prophet. Generous tributes to the beauty and sweetness of his character and to the loftiness of his spiritual wisdom are to be found in the writings of many a Christian divine, and his teachings are accessible to the English public in a variety of popular editions.

Yet the immensity of Buddhistic literature serves only to set off the paucity of contemporary or early written records and does not remove the obscurity which hangs about the details of the Prophet’s life or the origin of his teaching. The fact that some sceptical scholars have explained Buddha away as a sun-myth and have questioned the antiquity of the Buddhist tradition is of no great interest save as testifying to the uncertainty Which subsists about the whole matter. One of the best known English authorities (Mrs. Rhys Davies, Buddhism, pp. I7I-19) admits that the Pali Canon was not committed to writing till

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80 RC. (about one hundred and sixty years after the teaching had been introduced into Ceylon; and four hundred years after the death of Buddha himself). She concludes that the life of Buddha “as an historical fact is at least as well demonstrated as that of the founder of any other religion of antiquity” and that the story of his life “however draped and embroidered with myth and legend” cannot be dismissed as historically untrue without “extravagant recourse to forced interpretations and assumptions of improbable happenings.”

The New Testament has been the guide and inspiration of western religion for nineteen centuries ; but everybody must wish that extant accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ were less brief and fragmentary, and those who cherish this wish most warmly are those who love Him best and seek to discern and follow His way most earnestly. Of the early teachers of Christianity, the confessors and martyrs of the first three centuries of our Era, we know much less than about the Founder Himself. Many volumes were in those days written with fine art and preserved with zealous care concerning the history of Rome, the conquests of Caesar and the like; but the history of the Christian Faith was looked on as a wholly inconsiderable matter. The cultivated world of that period had not the least conception of the relative importance of the New Revelation. They did not trouble to make any note of its development nor in those unruly and indiscriminating times did they regard such records as the Christians themselves made to be of sufficient interest to be preserved.

The meagreness of the information we possess about the age of the Christian martyrs is lamented by the learned and conservative Mosheim. He writes: “The actions and sayings of those holy martyrs from the moment of their imprisonment to their last gasp were carefully recorded in order to be read on certain days and thus proposed as models to future ages. But few, however, of these ancient acts are come down to our times . . . From the eighth century downwards several Greek and Latin writers endeavoured to make up this loss by compiling with vast labour accounts of

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the lives and actions of the ancient martyrs. But most of them have given us little else than a series of fables adorned With a profusion of rhetorical flowers and striking images, as the wiser even among the Romish doctors frankly acknowledge. Nor are these records that pass under the name of martyrology worthy of superior credit since they bear the most evident marks both of ignorance and falsehood. So that upon the whole this part of ecclesiastical history for want of ancient and authentic monuments is extremely imperfect and necessarily attended with much obscurity.”

Gibbon remarks in the fifteenth chapter of his history: “the scanty and suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church,” and in a footnote to the sixteenth chapter: “In the various compilations of the Augustan history (a part of which was composed under the reign of Constantine) there are not six lines that relate to the Christians; nor has the diligence of Xiphilin discovered their name in the large history of Dion Cassius.”

Naturally we know more about the great figures of early Islam than about those of other religions, for the Faith arose in more recent times, its extension was amazingly rapid, and it developed within a very few centuries a culture of a most brilliantly intellectual type. But our information concerning Muhammad’s personality and His teaching, about His immediate companions and followers, seems to be scanty enough. It has not been sufficiently full or conclusive or authentic to prevent an extraordinary variety of interpretation and belief as to Muhammad’s character and actions, and little of it has till very recently been accessible to western readers. Gibbon scandalously caricatured the Prophet, Whom he called “an illiterate barbarian.” The genius of Carlyle moved him in 1840 to protest that “our current hypotheses about Mahomet that he was a scheming impostor, a Falsehood Incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to anyone. The lies which well meaning zeal has heaped round this man are disgraceful to ourselves only.” But this warning has been little heeded and Western scholars may be found to describe Muham [Page 40]40 THE MISSION OF Bahá’u’lláh

mad as “a brigand chief,” and the like, even in this present century.

More than twelve centuries elapsed between the rise of Muhammad and the rise of the Báb whom He foretold; worldconditions in the interval changed and progressed, and anyone who investigates the Bábi religion is enabled to learn the true facts concerning the Founder and His immediate followers with a degree of fullness and accuracy never before possible in human history. No earlier Revelation is so well documented as this. It came to mankind at the same time as the railway, the telegraph, the telephone. How great the significance of the little casual fact that one of the very earliest English references to the Babi Faith sets forth the execution of the Bábis in 1852 as given in the Teheran Gazette of that day!* The Báb’s crusade was so vigorous, and it was shared in by so many eminent persons, that it attained the widest publicity in Persia and threatened to shake the whole corrupt ecclesiastical system. Though the country was backward and weak, yet Britain and Russia had there important imperial interests which brought many foreign residents, official and otherwise, to the capital. Some of these were sufficiently interested in the Movement to spread the knowledge of it in Europe. Western references to the Báb date back as far as 1851, and have been (some on a large and some on a small scale) continuous since that time. Some of the more important of these references are to be found in Comte de Gobineau’s “Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale, ’ and in Lord Curzon’s “Persia and the Persian Question.”

Professor Browne, of Cambridge University, gives the names of four Persian histories as adverting to the religion, one of them at great length, and has himself in such works as A Traveller’s Narrative and Materials for the Study of the Bábz’ Religion, made public a large amount of early information on the progress of the Faith. Three volumes of the Báb’s own works have been translated by A. L. M. Nicolas and published in France.

Amid the great and ever—growing library of works on the Báb,

‘Lady Shiel’s Glimpxes of Life and Manners in Persia, 1856.

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the Chronicle of Nabil’s holds a most conspicuous place. While it is informal and unofficial; While it is not used by the Bahá’ís to determine any point of teaching, yet it is as nearly as may be the Babis’ own story of the Báb’s crusade. It is not in a philosophic sense a history: it is not an ordered exposition of the development of the Báb’s Revelation. Nabil is as much an editor as an author. He gathers items of information with care, industry and eager zeal for truth, and pieces them together in their proper chronological sequence. For the most part he sets forth this or that event as he had it from some believer who had taken part in it, or had witnessed it, or had heard of it from an eyewitness. He enjoyed in his labours the special help of some of the members of the inmost circle of the Faith, including the brother of Bahá’u’lláh and the amanuensis of the Báb. Bahá’u’lláh Himself saw a portion of the manuscript of Nabil and expressed His general approval and acceptance of it. It has in the fullest degree the character of a Babi Gospel. If we possessed an authorised and large scale account of the Acts of Jesus Christ written by one of the Twelve and preserved in the form in which it came from the author’s pen, we would have a Christian Gospel as authentic in its sphere as this of Nabil’s in its. Here with a distinctness and in a detail unequalled in any early literature of the world we can examine the manner in which a Great Revelation comes among men and can study the phenomena of a dawning Age of Faith before any system of theology or of organisation has taken shape and when the Prophet shows forth His majesty through the exertion of a quickening spiritual power which awakes in the true-hearted an altogether miraculous enthusiasm and courage and at the same time stirs the obscurantists and the vicious to deeds of hate and fear and cruelty.

In this respect, the value of Nabil’s work is enhanced by the fact that its composition is itself one of the products of the Prophet’s creative power. The spirit which impels the pen of Nabfl is the spirit of the other Bábis. His mental attitude as an author is the same as that of the heroes who form his subject. Faith in the Báb as the Prophet of God prompted him to undertake this work. Faith sustained him to its completion. Faith

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invigorates every sentence and word in it. As one reads one is conscious that the outlook, the mood, the style of the book reflect the same eager, buoyant, irresistible faith as inspires the lofty exploits it records. By a thousand proofs Nabil shows his desire to be fair and just to all; but at the same time he writes as an avowed and eager and determined participant in a life and death struggle in which neither side gives nor expects quarter, but which must be fought out to an end. The temper of the writing resembles that of a battle song in which (even in moments of what seem irredeemable defeat) the note of assured triumph transcends all other notes.

The future will be better able than we to set events in their true perspective, to appraise the value of the vast amount of historical material which the industry of Nabil has amassed and to judge the significance of these deeds of heroism and self—sacrifice.

Yet there is one respect in which this work has a particular timeliness now, which it will not have in the future. We live and long have lived in at twilight age, and with deepening fear have watched the darkness close in upon us. Religion, organised or not, has more and more lost its control over men’s conduct, its hold upon their hearts. Churchmen are as little able as statesmen to unravel the perplexities of the situation, to inspire hope for the future, to formulate a plan for staying the general disintegration and for reconstructing an adequate world order. Believers turn their sad thoughts back to the early days of the Christian Faith. They stretch their longing hands far across the intervening centuries to ancient Pentecosts—but in vain. They read in the Scriptures of the miracles of courage and achievement wrought by the power of divine faith in past ages. They turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews and light upon such a tribute to Faith as this:

“And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Iephthah; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets:

“Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. “Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword,

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out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,

turned to flight the armies of the aliens.

“Women received their dead raised to life again: and others

were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might

obtain a better resurrection:

“And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, year

moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

“They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted,

were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins

and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;

“(Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in

deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

(Hebr. XII. 7). 32-38.)

They wonder at the vision, the exultation, the prevailing power of the faithful ones of old who, though they were in their own time little noted and obscure, yet for all their apparent weakness could not be gainsaid but went forth in their Master’s cause, removed mountains of doubt, uplifted the characters of men and of peoples, and amid the ruins of an unhappy and decaying world inspired and initiated the building of a new and greater civilisation. Christians to-day long bitterly, despairingly, for that ancient Glory. But the chasm seems unbridgeable. Between us and the comrades of the Christ a great gulf is fixed which none may cross. Understanding and creative power were theirs. To us belong bewilderment, frustration and despair.

THE THEME Is VICTORY

But to read Nabil is to enter an utterly contrasted world. To peruse this chronicle of events not yet a century old, to feel the warm glow of love and faith and militant ardour with which the narration is suffused, to observe the character of the Báb, in which the sweetest charm and humility are mingled with majesty and power, is to pass suddenly into a realm of thought wholly different from that in which we of the West so long have lived. As we read, we realise we are following here the fortunes of people of our own time, whose outlook on life is exactly that which

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Christians once had but now have lost, exactly that of which we read in our Scriptures and for which we repine in vain. Here, indeed, in this record is darkness—spiritual darkness such as now gathers in the West, darkness awful and immeasurable. But it lies only at the far circumference, at the outer edges of the scene, not at the heart of things. It is darkness challenged, darkness routed, scattered, put to flight and to eternal shame. The central place is held by light; the theme is the victory of light. The darkness serves to set off the light by contrast. It cannot reach nor touch the souls of the Babis. In them there is no perplexity nor apprehension. Human pain and failure are for them overpassed and lost in a divine attainment. They did not trust human wisdom nor find as we have done that it betrayed them. They trusted God wholly and for love’s sake gave up all they had and were, that they might serve His Truth.

Whatever is base, unworthy, ignoble in human nature is not here glorified, extolled, palliated, but held up to execration, destined to final defeat and complete destruction. Glory and praise and dominion and the certainty of triumph belong here to whatever in human nature is most lovable, most noble, most sublime.

Here are men, women and children, a vast, motley, heterogeneous host of young and old, learned and unlearned, the rich man and the poor man, the aristocrat and the labourer: gathered into one indissoluble body not by any outward compulsion or constraint whatever, but of their own free act and eager choice. The tie that binds them is spiritual only—simply love for Godand is so strong that no enticement or repulsion of the earth can break or loosen it. Neither prison nor poverty, hunger nor thirst nor wounds could force them to desert their comrades, deny their Lord or abandon His cause: severally, or in multitudes together, they would face and welcome death, and give their lives, as their Beloved Lord gave His, simply to serve the cause of God among men.

We need not go back to ancient Scriptures or to distant times, to the early history of the Christian Church, to the Epistles to the Hebrews or to the Old Testament, to rediscover that faith in God

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which in our extremity seems lost beyond recall. We need not imagine that the outpourings of God’s manifest power, the open vision of His Beauty, the ecstasy of self-sacrifice in His cause, have passed away forever from the earth.

All these things are in our midst!