'Upon you all be the Glory of the Most Glorious One!'
Alas! the brightness of the day has been darkened for the Bahai Brotherhood all over the world. Words fail me for the adequate expression of my sorrow at the adjournment of the hope of Peace. Yet the idea has been expressed, and cannot return to the Thinker void of results. The estrangement of races and religions is only the fruit of ignorance, and their reconciliation is only a question of time. Sursum corda.
PART V
A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES BEARING ON COMPARATIVE RELIGION
A SERIES OF ILLUSTRATIVE STUDIES BEARING ON COMPARITIVE RELIGION
EIGHTEEN (OR, WITH THE BĀB, NINETEEN) LETTERS OF THE LIVING OF THE FIRST UNITY
The Letters of the Living were the most faithful and most gifted of the disciples of the so-called Gate or Point. See Traveller's Narrative, Introd. p. xvi.
Babu'l Bāb.
A. Muḥammad Hasan, his brother.
A. Muḥammad Baghir, his nephew.
A. Mulla Ali Bustani.
Janabe Mulla Khodabacksh Qutshani.
Janabe Hasan Bajastani.
Janabe A. Sayyid Hussain Yardi.
Janabe Mirza Muḥammad Ruzi Khan.
Janabe Sayyïd Hindi.
Janabe Mulla Maḥmud Khoyï.
Janabe Mulla Jalil Urumiyi.
Janabe Mulla Muḥammad Abdul Maraghaï.
Janabe Mulla Baghir Tabrizi.
Janabe Mulla Yusif Ardabili.
Mirza Hadi, son of Mirza Abdu'l Wahab Qazwini.
Janabe Mirza Muḥammad 'Ali Qazwini.
Janabi Tahirah.
Hazrati Quddus.
TITLES OF THE BĀB, ETC.
There is a puzzling variation in the claims of 'Ali Muḥammad. Originally he represented himself as the Gate of the City of Knowledge, or—which is virtually the same thing—as the Gate leading to the invisible twelfth Imâm who was also regarded as the Essence of Divine Wisdom. It was this Imâm who was destined as Ḳa'im (he who is to arise) to bring the whole world by force into subjection to the true God. Now there was one person who was obviously far better suited than 'Ali Muḥammad (the Bāb) to carry out the programme for the Ḳa'im, and that was Hazrat-i'-Ḳuddus (to whom I have devoted a separate section). For some time, therefore, before the death of Ḳuddus, 'Ali Muḥammad abstained from writing or speaking ex cathedra, as the returned Ḳa'im; he was probably called 'the Point.' After the death of this heroic personage, however, he undoubtedly resumed his previous position.