New Faith Head Heard

‘Abdu’l-Bahá Abbas at Clark College

TOUCHES BUT LIGHTLY ON RELIGION

Pays Tribute to Science and Universities

‘Abdu’l-Bahá Abbas, head of the Báb religion, the new Oriental faith which has already gained hundreds of thousands of converts in the United States, as well as millions in the near East, spoke yesterday afternoon in the Clark college gymnasium before an audience of 500 men and women interested in theology and philosophy.

The Báb, as the followers of the faith term the leader, was clothed in the flowing robes of his native country, Persia, and wore a gleaming white turban, which gave him an air peculiarly venerable and reverential.

He is 65 years old and has passed more than 50 years of his life in prison in Persia in the town of Akka. The religion of which he is the head had its start in 1844 in Persia in which country nearly 50 per cent of the people are members of the new faith. A Persian proclaimed himself the herald of the mighty one, who was to be the Báb and would embody the revelation of God for the present day.

The one who started the religion was executed in 1855.

Since then it is estimated that as many as 10,000 of his followers have suffered death by persecution. Soon after the death of the founder of the religion, one of his followers proclaimed himself as …