Well, then, it is reasonable to turn for guidance and help to the East. There was living quite lately a human being of such consummate excellence that many think it is both permissible and inevitable even to identify him mystically with the invisible Godhead. Let us admit, such persons say, that Jesus was the very image of God. But he lived for his own age and his own people; the Jesus of the critics has but little to say, and no redemptive virtue issues from him to us. But the 'Blessed Perfection,' as Baha'ullah used to be called, lives for our age, and offers his spiritual feast to men of all peoples. His story, too, is liable to no diminution at the hands of the critics, simply because the facts of his life are certain. He has now passed from sight, but he is still in the ideal world, a true image of God and a true lover of man, and helps forward the reform of all those manifold abuses which hinder the firm establishment of the kingdom of God. I shall return to this presently. Meanwhile, suffice it to say that though I entertain the highest reverence and love for Baha'ullah's son, Abdul Baha, whom I regard as a Mahatma--'a great-souled one'--and look up to as one of the highest examples in the spiritual firmament, I hold no brief for the Bahai community, and can be as impartial in dealing with facts relating to the Bahais as with facts which happen to concern my own beloved mother-church, the Church of England. I shall first of all ask, how it came to pass that so many of us are now seeking help and guidance from the East, some from India, some from Persia, some (which is my own case) from India and from Persia. BAHA'ULLAH'S PRECURSORS, _e.g._ THE BĀB, ṢUFISM, AND SHEYKH AḤMAD So far as Persia is concerned, the reason is that its religious experience has been no less varied than ancient. Zoroaster, Manes, Christ, Muḥammad, Dh'u-Nun (the introducer of Ṣufism), Sheykh Aḥmad (the forerunner of Babism), the Bāb himself and Baha'ullah (the two Manifestations), have all left an ineffaceable mark on the national life. The Bāb, it is true, again and again expresses his repugnance to the 'lies' of the Ṣufis, and the Bābīs are not behind him; but there are traces enough of the influence of Ṣufism on the new Prophet and his followers. The passion for martyrdom seems of itself to presuppose a tincture of Ṣufism, for it is the most extreme form of the passion for God, and to love God fervently but steadily in preference to all the pleasures of the phenomenal world, is characteristically Ṣufite. What is it, then, in Ṣufism that excites the Bāb's indignation? It is not the doctrine of the soul's oneness with God as the One Absolute Being, and the reality of the soul's ecstatic communion with Him. Several passages are quoted by Mons. Nicolas [Footnote: _Beyan arabe_, pp. 3-18.] on the attitude of the Bāb towards Ṣufism; suffice it here to quote one of them.