It would indeed be no exaggeration to say that nowhere in the whole compass of the world’s religious literature, except in the Gospels, do we find any record relating to the death of any of the religion-founders of the past comparable to the martyrdom suffered by the Prophet of Shíráz. So strange, so inexplicable a phenomenon, attested by eye-witnesses, corroborated by men of recognized standing, and acknowledged by government as well as unofficial historians among the people who had sworn undying hostility to the Bábí Faith, may be truly regarded as the most marvelous manifestation of the unique potentialities with which a Dispensation promised by all the Dispensations of the past had been endowed. 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 role 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—
