A Traveler's Narrative
page 17
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the traditions of the Holy Family? Where is that whereon the
Victorious Church is agreed? The matter is not outside one of
two alternatives: either we must repudiate the traditions of the
Holy Imáms, grow wearied of the Church of Ja'far, and
account the clear indications of the Imám as disturbed dreams;
or, in accordance with the primary and subsidiary doctrines of
the Faith and the essential and explicit declarations of the
most luminous Law, we must consider the repudiation, nay,
the destruction of this person as our chief duty. If so be that we
shut our eyes to these authentic traditions and obvious doctrines
universally admitted, no remnant will endure of the
fundamental basis of the Church of the immaculate Imám: we
shall neither be Sunnites, nor shall we be of the prevalent sect
to continue awaiting the promised Saint and believing in the
begotten Mihdí. (12) Otherwise we must regard as admissible the
opening of the Gate of Saintship, and consider that He Who is
to arise of the family of Muhammad possesses two signs: the
first condition, Holy Lineage; the second, [that He is divinely]
fortified with brilliant verses. What can we do with these
thousand-year-old beliefs of the delivered band of Shí'ites, or
what shall we say concerning their profound doctors and
preeminent divines? Were all these in error? Did they journey
in the vale of transgression? What an evidently false assertion
is this! By God, this is a thing to break the back! O people,
extinguish this fire and forget these words! Alas! woe to our
Faith, woe to our Law!"
Thus did they make complaint in mosques and chapels, in
pulpits and congregations.
But the Bábí chiefs composed treatises against them, and set
in order replies according to their own thought. Were these to
be discussed in detail it would conduce to prolixity, and our
object is the statement of history, not of arguments for believing
or rejecting; but of some of the replies the gist is this: that
12. The Shí'ites.
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