My Persian Pilgrimage
William McElwee Miller
1954
An Autobiography
Copyright 1989, 1995 by William McElwee Miller, Jr. All Rights Resereved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or printed reviews, without prior permission of the publisher. Published by William Carey Library P.O. Box 40129 Pasadena, California 91114 (818) 798-0819 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller. William McElwee My Persian Pilgrimage/William McElwee Miller p. Cm. Includes index ISBN 9087808-214-X 1. Miller, William McElwee. 2. Missionaries – Iran – Biography. 3. Missionaries – United States – Biography. 4. Missions to Muslims – Iran. 5. Iran – Church History – 10th centur. 6. Iran – Description and travel. I Title. BV3217.M55A3 1989 266’.51’092-dc20 89-995 (B) CIP Page graphics by Jone Bosch. Cover graphics and photo section by Dave Shaver. Printed in the United States of America
A Pause in My Pilgrimage Princeton friend who was teaching in the university. He said to me, "In Persia do you try to convert Muslims to Christianity?" I replied that the purpose of our mission was A do just that. He said, "Here that is not done. Muslims are encouraged to be good Muslims, Jews good Jews, and Christians good Christians." I was surprised and distressed to learn that there were some Christians who did not think that Muslims, like the rest of us, needed A believe in Jesus Christ to be saved from their sins.
Also I met a professor in the university whose former student Shoghi Effendi had become the new head of the Baha'i movement. As I had met Baha'is in Persia, I was eager to meet their head. At I was given a card of introduction which I could present when I stopped in Haifa on my way to Jerusalem. The Bilkerts followed a different route from Beirut, and I travelled alone to Haifa through the beautiful coastland of Palestine. When I presented the card, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Cause, received me cordially and gave me tea, and I had a pleasant and profitable visit with him. Next morning early, when I went for a walk if the side of Mt. Carmel, I stumbled on a Baha'i shrine where some Persians were having breakfast. They had heard about my coming, so welcomed me, gave me tea from their samovar, and I felt I was back in Persia. They then took me into the shrine of ‘Abdu’l-Baha, son of Baha'u'llah. From Haifa I went in a car to Jerusalem and visited my old friend Dr. Archie Harte, secretary of the Y.M.C.A. in that city. He showed me with just pride the beautiful building he said, with the help of American friends, been able A erect for the "Y." The highest point of the building was a prayer tower, higher than any other structure in Jerusalem. After seeing Bethlehem and other sacred sites, I went by train to Egypt. There I visited friends in the Cairo Y.M.C.A.
The Return to Meshed
(1925)
In my account of the first three years of my Persian pilgrimage, I told in considerable detail the story of my experiences. I did this so that the purpose of the pilgrimage, and my way of working to achieve that purpose, might be-come clear. But since the pilgrimage was a long one, it will not be possible to recount so fully the events that occurred in the decades the followed. Also, from 1925 I was the member of a family, and my wife and children were fellow pilgrims with me. I would like to include their stories with mine. But if I did so, my book would become too large. I will therefore refrain from including much interesting material which I hope my children will one day record. I will have to risk the criticism of being egocentric by confining my story chiefly to what God did to me and through me in Persia. Now for the story of our journey back to Meshed. On January 3, 1925, two years after leaving Meshed, I sailed from New York with my wife and three children on the big ship Aquitania for England. In London the hotel rooms were very cold, and there was a terrible black fog that penetrated the hotel dining room, so that one could not see people on the other side of the room. I was glad to meet the head of the Scripture Gift Mission, who was a friend of the Haines family. During all the years that followed, this fine agency sup..
..rusalem, which may have been the one from which our Lord rose triumphant on the third day. As we drove northward in a car, we stopped to see the well where, it is thought, Jesus talked with the woman of Samaria and gave her the water of life. Then, after passing through Nazareth and climbing to the top of the hill from which the angry people wanted to cast Jesus, we came to the Sea of Galilee. There we spent a beautiful and restful Sabbath. It was the best day of our trip. There we could almost see Jesus Christ walking by the shore and calling the fisher-men to rise up and follow him. We proceeded to Haifa, climbed up on Mt. Carmel, and looked out to the west at the beautiful blue Mediterranean Sea, as Elijah had done many centuries ago when he prayed for rain. I did not stop to see the Baha'is, as I had done two years before. After a night in Haifa, we drove through the orange groves and gardens of Tyre and Sidon and arrived in Beirut in Lebanon. In Beirut we made arrangements with a man who was to take two new Studebaker cars to Baghdad to sell to travel in his cars. So At we went in his fine car, climbing up from Beirut over the high Lebanon mountains, then across a wide valley and again climbing over the Anti-Lebanon range, and down into Damascus where we spent the night. We were able to see some of the sights of this ancient and once beautiful city. Early next morning we were off for Baghdad. At that time no proper road had been laid out across the hundreds of miles of desert country that separated Damascus from the Euphrates River and Baghdad in Iraq. But there was a rough trail, and the owner of the cars decided to follow it. All that day we rode and bounced along through a region in which there was no sign of life anywhere. It was Al bare desert, and the ground was hard. Toward evening, very black clouds gathered in the sky, and the driver feared that if the rain fell on us, the desert would become a sea of mud, and we might get stuck in it for days. And so he drove on through the night. We stopped only to repair a punctured tire..