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To this the Russian Government was entirely favourable, because the Bahais were strictly forbidden by Baha-'ullah and by Abdul Baha to take part in any revolutionary enterprises. The temple took some years to build, but was finished at last, and two Persian workmen deserve the chief praise for willing self-sacrifice in the building.
Baha-'ullah, then, landed in Syria not merely as the leader of the greater part of the Bābīs at Baghdad, but as the representative of a wellnigh perfect humanity. He did not indeed assume the title 'The Point, but 'The Point' and 'Perfection' are equivalent terms. From the same source I quote the following.
It may be this to which allusion is made in a tradition preserved by Behîah Khanum, sister of Abbas Effendi Abdul Baha, that Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel claimed to be equal to his half-brother, and that he rested this claim on a vision. The implication is that Baha-'ullah was virtually the head of the Bābī community, and that Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel was wrapt up in dreams, and was really only a figurehead.
I am therefore not to be shaken by a reference to these words of the Bāb, quoted in substance by Mirza Abu'l Fazl, that after nine years all good will come to his followers, or by the Mirza's comment that it was nine years after the Bāb's Declaration that Baha-'ullah gathered together the Bābīs at Baghdad, and began to teach them, and that at the end of the nineteenth year from the Declaration of the Bāb, Baha-'ullah declared his Manifestation.
They must be rewritten, just as, I venture to think, the original story of the God-man Jesus was rewritten by being blended with the fragments of a biography of a great and good early Jewish teacher. The work will be hard, but Sister Nivedita and Miss Anthon have begun it. It must be taken as a part of the larger undertaking of a selection of rewritten myths. Is Baha-'ullah an avatâr?
It is, I fear, certain that Baha-'ullah is correct, and that Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel did attempt to poison his brother, who was desperately ill for twenty-two days. Another attempt on the life of the much-loved Master was prevented, it is said, by the faithfulness of the bath-servant.
Baha-'ullah and his son Abdul-Baha after him were personal centres of the new covenant; Paul was not.
The reference to Baha-'ullah is unmistakable. He is 'one like thee, i.e. Ezel's near kinsman, and is a consummate educator, and God's Manifestation. Another point is also important. The Bāb expressed a wish that his widow should not marry again. Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel, however, who was not, even in theory, a monogamist, lost no time in taking the lady for a wife. He cannot have been the Bāb's successor.
The example thus set will soon be followed by our kinsfolk in the United States. A large and beautiful site on the shores of Lake Michigan has been acquired, and the construction will speedily be proceeded with. It is, in fact, the outward sign of a new era. If Baha-'ullah be our guide, all religions are essentially one and the same, and all human societies are linked By a covenant of brotherhood.
Certainly he could never have promoted the claims of Ṣubḥ-i-Ezel, whose defects he had learned from that personage's secretary. He was well aware that Ezel was ambitious, and he thought that he had a better claim to the supremacy himself. He went at last to Baha-'ullah, and discussed the matter in all its bearings with him.
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