Mrs. Bishop (better known, perhaps, as Miss Isabella Bird) gave
an interesting account on Tuesday of her visit last year to the Bakhtiari country, in South-West Persia. Perhaps the most interesting part of her remarks was her account of the Bakhtiari religion. The Bakhtiaris believe in a Supreme Being, and in an intercessor between themselves and that Being, in heaven and hell, in a second probation after death which may end better than the probation of this life, and in a final judg- ment. They define " sin" as " cowardice," and treat breaches of the Seventh Commandment as offences against tribal in- terests, rather than as wrongs to personal purity or to the feeling of individuals. They believe in the unity of God, but not in his fatherhood or the brotherhood of man. In many respects, therefore, the Bakhtiari religion seems to be rather unique and . . origmal. Only a very brave people could regard the essence of sin as consisting in cowardice, for men are very apt to think worse of the vices they despise than of the vices to which they recognise their own liability. Probably, if they only knew it, audacity and arrogance would be much more real and over- whelming sins to most Bakhtiaris, than cowardice itself.
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