Bahaism and Its Claims: A Study of the Religion Promulgated by Baha Ullah and Abdul BahaWilson, Samuel Graham
Religion
Bahaism and Its Claims: A Study of the Religion Promulgated by Baha Ullah and Abdul Baha
Wilson, Samuel Graham
Bahai Faith -- Controversial literature
Bahaism, as distinguished from Babism, was, to a certain extent,
introduced to public notice in America by Christian missionaries, who
reported about it as a movement likely to break the solidarity of
Shiahism and facilitate the evangelization of Persia. With the same
thought in mind, Professor Browne's translations of "The New History"
and "The Traveller's Narrative" attracted attention. In the Congress of
Religions, at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, the eminent missionary,
Rev. H. H. Jessup, D. D., described Baha Ullah as "a famous Persian
sage,--the Babi saint, named Baha Ullah (the glory of God), the head of
that vast reform party of Persian Moslems, 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."[604] Shortly after the
Exposition a Syrian, named Ibrahim G. Kheiralla, began a propaganda in
favour of Bahaism. He was of Christian parentage, born in Mount Lebanon,
and educated in Beirut College. At Cairo, under the tutelage of Mirza
Karim of Teheran, he accepted the Bahai faith. He was engaged in
business, to which he joined faith healing and lecturing. He was given a
fake degree of Doctor of something by a night school in Chicago. This he
rightly despised, but considered that he was entitled to the degree
because M. Mohammed Ali had addressed him as Doctor! I had several
interviews with him. He showed me a trunk full of Bahai manuscripts and
documents, and allowed me to read his translation into English of the
"Kitab-ul-Akdas." He is a man of strong mind, acute argumentative
faculties, fine conversational powers and altogether an interesting
personality. He first taught Bahaism in secret lessons, as a religion of
mysteries, a secret order, a doctrine for truth-seekers only, not for
the masses. "The secret teaching gives us the key to the truth."[605]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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