What most Westerners do not understand at all, is that at the same time a wave of expectancy swept through Islám. Emerson would have understood this, but few other Americans were prepared at the time to consider any other world faith with even a modicum of sympathy. Yet the fact remains that in Islám some students and theologians felt that Islamic prophecies indicated an end of the laws of the Qur’án and a beginning of a new spiritual age. The thinking of these theologians was that the “Lord of the Age”, to use the Islamic phrase, would appear.

In 1844 a young merchant of Shíráz named Siyyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad suddenly began to teach a new faith in Persia. He assumed the title of the Báb, which literally means “the Gate.” The force of the Báb’s character and utterance was like a bombshell in that backward, priest-ridden land. Pleasant academic discussion as to the meaning of the traditions of Islám were at an end. A flame of interest in the Báb and devoted acceptance of Him swept the country. The astonished priests reacted with orthodox fury. They arrested and imprisoned the Báb and instigated systematic massacres of His followers.

The Báb taught that a new spiritual era was at hand. He criticized vehemently the hypocricy and intellectual dishonesty of the Muslim clergy. He urged the highest standard of character. And He promised that within nineteen years “Him Whom God would make manifest” would begin to teach and bring to men the basic laws and principles for a new age. The degenerate