, and Hell

An important part of the Bab's teaching is His explanation of the terms
Resurrection, Day of Judgment, Paradise and Hell. By the Resurrection is
meant, He said, the appearance of a new Manifestation of the Sun of Truth.
The raising of the dead means the spiritual awakening of those who are
asleep in the graves of ignorance, heedlessness and lust. The Day of
Judgment is the Day of the new Manifestation, by acceptance or rejection
of Whose Revelation the sheep are separated from the goats, for the sheep
know the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow Him. Paradise is the joy of
knowing and loving God, as revealed through His Manifestation, thereby
attaining to the utmost perfection of which one is capable, and, after
death, obtaining entrance to the Kingdom of God and the life everlasting.
Hell is simply deprivation of that knowledge of God with consequent
failure to attain divine perfection, and loss of the Eternal Favor. He
definitely declared that these terms have no real meaning apart from this;
and that the prevalent ideas regarding the resurrection of the material
body, a material heaven and hell, and the like, are mere figments of the
imagination. He taught that man has a life after death, and that in the
afterlife progress towards perfection is limitless.

Social and Ethical Teachings

In His Writings the Bab tells His followers that they must be
distinguished by brotherly love and courtesy. Useful arts and crafts must
be cultivated. Elementary education should be general. In the new and
wondrous Dispensation now commencing, women are to have fuller freedom.
The poor are to be provided for out of the common treasury, but begging is
strictly forbidden, as is the use of intoxicating liquors for beverage
purposes.

The guiding motive of the true Babi must be pure love, without hope of
reward or fear of punishment. Thus He says in the Bayan:--

So worship God that if the recompense of thy worship of Him were
to be the Fire, no alteration in thy worship of Him would be
produced. If you worship from fear, that is unworthy of the
threshold of the holiness of God.... So also, if your gaze is on
Paradise, and if you worship in hope of that; for then you have
made God's creation a Partner with Him.--Babis of Persia, II, Prof.
E. G. Browne, J.R.A.S., vol. xxi, p. 931.

Passion and Triumph

This last quotation reveals the spirit which animated the Bab's whole