wounds. The victims sing : " In truth we come from God, and we return to him." A sufferer falls in the road ; he is raised by lashes and bayonet thrusts. But no apostate was found among the sufferers.
Babism, like Mohammedanism, asserts the absolute unity of God ; but the eternal unity, far from shut- ting himself up in himself, is, on the contrary, an ever-expanding principle of life. It is ceaselessly moving, acting, creating. God has created the world by means of seven words — Force, Power, Will, Action, Condescension, Glory, and Revelation — which words embrace the active plenitude of the virtues which they respectively represent. God possesses other virtues, even to infinity, but he manifests only these. The creature who emanates from God is distinguished from him by the privation of all emanatory action, but he is not altogether separated from him, and at the last day of judgment he will be confounded anew with him in the eternal unity. The Babist doctrine of revelation does not claim that the Bab has revealed the complete truth, but only as his predecessors, the prophets before him, have done — that portion of truth necessary for the age. The Bab is declared superior to Mohammed as Mohammed was to Jesus ; and another revelation, which will complete the Bab's, is announced as com- ing in the future. Nineteen is a sacred number, which the Bab declares ouuht to preside over every- thing. Originally, he says, the Unit}- was composed of nineteen persons, among whom the highest rank belongs to the Bab. All the prophets who have ap- peared are, like the world, manifestations of God ; di- vine words; not God, but beings who come from God more really than common men. At the death of a prophet or a saint, his soul does not quit the earth, but joins itself to some soul still in the flesh, who then completes his work. Babism enjoins few prayers, and only upon fixed occasions, and neither prescribes nor defends ablutions, so common in the religious rites of Mohammedanism. All the faithful wear amulets. Mendicancy, so much in honor among the Mussulman people, is forbidden. "Women are ordered to discard veils, and to share in the intercourse of social life, from which Persian usage excludes them.
"What will be the future of Babism it is difficult to tell. Since 1852 it has changed its character to a se- cret doctrine, which recruits its disciples in silence. The same Babists who before suffered martyrdom so courageously rather than deny their religion, now, obedient to the new order of their chief, conceal their faith with Oriental dissimulation. Babism is much more in harmony with the subtle and imaginative genius of the Persian people than the Shiite Moham- medanism. The growing spirit cf nationality makes their present religion and the present dynasty, both of which were established among them by foreign con- quest, less and less acceptable every year. The hour when the Bab shall send word from Bagdad that the time has come for the Babists to take up arms again will be a very critical one for the present dynasty of Persia and for Shiite Mohammedanism.
The first thorough work on the origin and the his- tory of the Babis is the one above referred to by Count Gobineau (formerly French minister in Teheran). Little had previously been published in Europe con- cerning the sect. (See Zatschrift tie)- dcittschen Mor- genldnd. Gesellschaft, vol. v ; Petermann, Rcisen im Orient, vol. ii.) The history of the Babis in Gobineau's work is followed by treatises on their doctrines, and, as a concluding appendix, he gives the sacred book of the Babis, "The Booh of Precepts." See also Polak (a German, court-physician of the shah, and director of a medical school at Teheran), Per sien. Das Land und seine Bewohncr (Leipzig, 18G5, 2 vols., vol. i, p. 350- 351). — Pierer, Universal Lerikon, ii, 117; The Nation, June 22, 18GG ; Avierican Ann. Cyclopaedia, 18C5, p. 698. Babington, Gervase, an eminent English prel- ate, was born at Nottingham in the year 1551. He
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was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became master of arts in 1578. He applied himself closely to theology, and became one of the most im- pressive and useful preachers of his da}'. In 1588 he was installed into the prebend of Wellington, in the cathedral of Hereford, and through the interest of the E.irl of Pembroke was advanced to the bishopric of Llandaff in 1591. In 1594 he was translated to the see of Exeter, from whence, in 1597, he was translated to Worcester. Bishop Babington was a man of emi- nent Christian character as well as scholarship. Ful- ler testifies that he " was not tainted with pride, idle- ness, or covetousness." He died 17th May, 1G10. His works are collected under the title " The Works of the Right Reverend Father in God, Gervase Babing- ton, late Bishop of Worcester" (Lond. 1C22, fob). They contain Notes on the Pentateuch, Exposition of the Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord's Prayer, with a Conference between Man's Frailty and Faith, and three sermons. — Jones, Christian Biography, p. 16; Hook, Eccl. Biog. i, 446.
Babylas, St., became bishop of Antioch about the year 230. When the Emperor Philip, who, in ascend- ing the throne, had murdered the young Emperor Gor- dian, came to Antioch on his way to Rome, about East- er, 244, Babylas repulsed him from the church door, and refused to permit him to join in worship. Philip, according to the legend, humbly confessed his sins, and appeared among the public penitents. After a time Decius robbed Philip of his empire and life, and stirred up a virulent persecution against the Chris- tians. Babylas, conspicuous from his lofty station, did not escape this storm, and about the end of the year 250 he was arrested and thrown into prison, where, in the following year, he died. The Latins commem- orate him on the 24th of January, the Greeks on the 4th of September. Chrvsostom has a homily in honor of Babylas (t. ii, 575, ed. Montf.). See Eusebius, Ch. Hist, vi, 39; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxiii.