The passion of Jesus Christ, and indeed His whole public
ministry, alone offer a parallel to the Mission and death of the Báb, a
parallel which no student of comparative religion can fail to perceive or
ignore. In the youthfulness and meekness of the Inaugurator of the Bábí Dispensation;
in the extreme brevity and turbulence of His public ministry; in the dramatic
swiftness with which that ministry moved towards its climax; in the apostolic
order which He instituted, and the primacy which He conferred on one of its
members; in the boldness of His challenge to the time-honored conventions,
rites and laws which had been woven into the fabric of the religion He Himself
had been born into; in the rôle which an officially recognized and firmly
entrenched religious hierarchy played as chief instigator of the outrages which
He was made to suffer; in the indignities heaped upon Him; in the suddenness of His arrest; in the interrogation to which He
was subjected; in the derision poured, and the scourging inflicted, upon Him;
in the public affront He sustained; and, finally, in His ignominious suspension
before the gaze of a hostile multitude—in all these we cannot fail to discern a
remarkable similarity to the distinguishing features of the career of Jesus
Christ.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By)
