Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1901 — BABOSTS OF PERSIA. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BABOSTS OF PERSIA.

A committee of Americans with a remarkable religious purpose has waited on Herbert W. Bowen, lately United States minister to Ptrsia, now in Paris. That purpose was nothing less than to ask Mr. Bowen earnestly to petition the Shah for protection, freedom from persecution, for the Babists, the religious followers of the Bab, who have long been oppressed by the Shah. For the teachings of their creed differ in many important points from the doctrines of Shiism, the state religion of Persia, says a Paris cablegram. The faith is spreading among Americans here. Among those who have adopted it are Mrs. Hoar of New Jersey, Mrs. Virginia Trip and her daughter of Boston, Miss Fairfax, Clifford Barney of Bar Harbor and her daughter, Miss Natalie, who writes fine French poetry, and Mrs. John Jackeon of New York. Even the intellectual Miss Arline Peck is studying Bab-

ism, which in its early history has much in common with Christainlty, as also in its doctrines, emphasizing, as it does, the brotherhood of man and aspiring to a universal reign of peace.

love, freedom and unity of belief. And so earnest a disciple of the Bab is Miss Natalie Barney that, following its behests against vanity, she has given all her jewelry to the poor. Bablsm

welcomes women to its told; Indeed, it was one of the Bab's chlefest aims to ameliorate the condition of women in Persia. The religion opposes the plural marriages of Mahometlsm.

Miss .ARLINE.PECK.

Miss MATALIE BARNFY