Bahai Bride

There stood last week in Manhattan before a small table on which gleamed two chaste candles, a man, Charles Clarke, and a woman, Elsie Benkard, step-daughter of onetime Lieutenant Governor Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler of New York. First socialite Manhattanites to be married according to the Bahai religion, they chanted:

"Verily, we are content with the will of God."

"Verily, we are satisfied with the desire of God."

Officiating was Mirzah Ahmad Sohrab, accredited U. S. leader of the Bahai cult. Stocky, moist-eyed, he adjured them:

"And you two, like unto sweet singing birds, perched on the highest branches of the Tree of Life, filling the air with songs of love and happiness-- "Let your ideals be the Bouquets of Love and your conversations the white pearls of the Ocean of Love."

Churched in so simple a fashion, the pair had ostensibly become one flesh. Not until one alert newsgatherer noticed that no license had been used during the ceremony was it discovered that Mr. & Mrs. Clarke had taken the precaution of being married at the municipal building chapel the morning before the Bahai wedding. Subsequent investigation proved that the judicious civil ceremony was quite in keeping with the gentle faith of Bahai, one of whose principal tenets is tolerance of established custom.

Like many an oriental cult, the Persian Bahai movement dates itself back to a ''forerunner," one Bab, who was martyred at the age of 31, "his breast becoming the target of a thousand bullets." Bab, in 1844, sagely predicted the coming of the Founder, Baha'u'llah. The Founder spent most of his life in banishment, gathering followers and codifying the cult's beliefs. When he died in 1892 he left the faith in the hands of his son, Abdul-Baha, the Expounder & Promoter, who languished in a Turkish gaol until the release of all political and religious prisoners in 1909.

Bahaism was originally introduced into the U. S. at the Chicago World's Fair Congress of Religion (1893). Mirzah Ahmad Sohrab, who assisted at the Manhattan ceremony last week, accompanied Abdul-Baha on U. S. visits during 1911-14 as his secretary. Today he is the leader of U. S. Bahaism, which differs slightly from the Persian. Some 6,000 U. S. cultists are spread throughout the country with centres in Boston, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco. Manhattan headquarters under the title of the New History Society are at the home of Mrs. Chanler, mother of last week's Bahai bride.

Every Sunday morning Manhattan converts assemble at the Ritz or Park Lane resolved upon "unfurling the Flag of Universal Peace," "the diffusion of the ideals of Love, Mercy, Justice, Right and Liberty," "the declaration of the Evangel of Happiness, and Joy."

Among famed Bahai communicants are: Queen Marie of Rumania; Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of the late great Russian novelist; Zog I of Albania.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.