Description

IT is a difficult task to form a just judgment of contemporaneous events. Time is required in the study of history to supply perspective, to reveal relationships and to disclose the real dimensions alike of movements and of men. It is not surprising, accordingly, that the movement to be discussed in this chapter is practically unknown, and that though it has shaped the lives of thousands and been sobered by many martyrdoms it has found no place as yet in our interest. Perhaps within the past three years, however, many who had never heard of the religion of the Bab in Persia, have at least been made aware of the existence of such a faith somewhere in the world, by reports of its spread in our own land, and have come thus, because it interested a few hundred of our own people, to take an interest in a movement which had already shaken a whole nation, and was slowly undermining there one branch of the most bitter and fanatical foe which Christianity confronts. Babism should be familiar to us because it is the chief concern in the lives of increasing multitudes in Persia. It is one of the most remarkable movements of our day, beside, because its object, however concealed and even unrecognized by Babis themselves, is "nothing less than the complete overthrow of Islam and the abrogation of its ordinances."

Missions and Modern History