explicable
to those who can only see therein a crude form of political or even of
metaphysical fermentation. The lowest estimate places the present number
of Babis in Persia at half a million. I am disposed to think, from
conversations with persons well qualified to judge, that the total is
nearer one million." "They are to be found," he adds, "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 Musulman priesthood
itself." "From the facts," is another testimony of his, "that Babism in
its earliest years found itself in conflict with the civil powers, and
that an attempt was made by Babis upon the life of the _Sh_ah, it has been
wrongly inferred that the movement was political in origin and Nihilist in
character... At the present time the Babis are equally loyal with any
other subjects of the Crown. Nor does there appear to be any greater
justice in the charges of socialism, communism and immorality that have so
freely been levelled at the youthful persuasion ...The only communism
known to and recommended by Him (the Bab) was that of the New Testament
and the early Christian Church, viz., the sharing of goods in common by
members of the Faith, and the exercise of alms-giving, and an ample
charity. 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 Bab, which in the oriental mind is scarcely
dissociable from profligacy of conduct." And, finally, the following
prognostication from his pen: "If Babism continues to grow at its present
rate of progression, a time may conceivably come when it will oust
Muhammadanism from the field in Persia. This, I think, it would be
unlikely to do, did it appear upon the ground under the flag of a hostile
faith. But 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."

Baha'u'llah's incarceration in the prison-fortress of Akka, the manifold
tribulations He endured, the prolonged ordeal to which the community of
His followers in Persia was being subjected, did not arrest, nor could
they even impede, to the slightest degree, the mighty stream of Divine
Revelation, which, without interruption, had been flowing from His pen,
and on which the future orientation, the integrity, the expansion and the