Compare versions: Happiness and Health

The same event, told by different sources. The canonical version below is what we publish; the alternate accounts are preserved for scholarly comparison and for noticing where retellings differ.

Canonical version

Happiness and Health

Secondary RetellingVarious · bahaistories.com archive

To Mrs Smith, a new Bahá’í, who belonged to a distinguished Philadelphia family and who was suffering with a headache, the Master said, “You must be happy always. You must be counted among the people of joy and happiness and must be adorned with divine morals. In a large measure happiness keeps our health while depression of spirit begets diseases. The substance of eternal happiness is spirituality and divine morality, which has no sorrow to follow it.”

Source: Annamarie Honnold, Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Happiness and health”, p. 129. The meeting took place in New York on 19 June 1912, as recorded in Mahmúd’s Diary, where the Master also gives Mrs Smith the name Tábandih.

Collected from bahaistories.com.

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Alternate account · 93% similar

To Mrs Smith, a new Bahá’í, who belonged to a distinguished Philadelphia family

Various · bahaistories.com archive

To Mrs Smith, a new Bahá’í, who belonged to a distinguished Philadelphia family and who was suffering with a headache, the Master said, ‘You must be happy always. You must be counted among the people of joy and happiness and must be adorned with divine morals. In a large measure happiness keeps our health while depression of spirit begets diseases. The substance of eternal happiness is spirituality and divine morality, which has no sorrow to follow it.’

Source: Honnold, Annamarie, Vignettes from the Life of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, p. 129

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: depression).

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Why are alternate accounts kept? Different retellings of the same event often vary in emphasis, detail, and tone. Scholars and devotional readers can notice these differences and trace the trustworthiness of each retelling.