It is this moral transformation which vitiates
S??ubh??-i-Ezel's assertions. Can any one doubt this? Surely the best
authorities are agreed that the sense of historical truth is very
deficient among the Persians. Now S??ubh??-i-Ezel was in some respects
a typical Persian; that is how I would explain his deviations from
strict truth. It may be added that the detail of the crystal coffin
can be accounted for. In the Arabic Bayan, among other injunctions
concerning the dead, [Footnote: _Le Beyan Arabi_ (Nicolas),
p. 252; similarly, p. 54.] it is said: 'As for your dead, inter them
in crystal, or in cut and polished stones. It is possible that this
may become a peace for your heart.' This precept suggested to
S??ubh??-i-Ezel his extraordinary statement.
S??ubh??-i-Ezel had an imaginative and possibly a partly mystic
nature. As a Manifestation of God he may have thought himself entitled
to remove harmful people, even his own brother. He did not ask himself
whether he might not be in error in attaching such importance to his
own personality, and whether any vision could override plain
morality. He _was_ mistaken, and I hold that the Ba?„b was
mistaken in appointing (if he really did so) S??ubh??-i-Ezel as a
nominal head of the Ba?„bi?„s when the true, although temporary
vice-gerent was Baha-'ullah. For S??ubh??-i-Ezel was a consummate
failure; it is too plain that the Bab did not always, like Jesus and
like the Buddha, know what was in man.
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