Three Days of Questions: Thomas Breakwell in Paris

A retelling drawn from Bahá'í Chronicles, which gathers the accounts of the heroes and heroines of the Faith, together with the recollections of May Maxwell preserved in early Bahá'í histories. Phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in those records.

In the summer of 1901 a young Englishman named Thomas Breakwell crossed the sea on his way to America, and on the way he stopped in Paris. He was, by every account, an exceptional young man — refined, sensitive, courteous, with the kind of fine and searching nature that is never quite at rest in the ordinary pleasures of the world. He had a good position and a comfortable income; he was on holiday; he had every reason to be content. And yet there was in him a question he could not have named, a readiness for something he had not yet found.

In Paris a friend, Mrs. Milner, introduced him to a young American woman, May Ellis Bolles — later known as May Maxwell — who had herself recently found the Bahá'í Faith and was teaching it quietly to the seekers who came her way. They met, and something stirred. At their second meeting, Thomas described an experience that had overtaken him: he had heard, he said, a voice of "indescribable sweetness and penetration" speak three words to his soul — "Christ has come again!" He did not yet fully understand what was happening to him. But he was ready, at last, to ask.

And ask he did. May Maxwell answered his questions — not in a sentence, not in an afternoon, but over the course of three days, telling him of the Báb, of Bahá'u'lláh, of the Day of God that had dawned and the new Revelation that had come into the world. Thomas listened with the whole of himself. He had carried his unspoken question a long way; now, when the answer was laid before him, he did not quibble or delay or demand more proofs than an honest heart requires. He recognized the truth he had been waiting for, and he accepted it.

His belief found immediate expression. He wrote to 'Abdu'l-Bahá a letter of only a few words — "My Lord, I believe; forgive me; Thy servant, Thomas Breakwell" — and in time there came back across the world the briefest of replies, an authorization to come: "You may leave Paris at any time." Soon afterward Thomas made the journey to 'Akká to attain the presence of the Master.

But there was one more question waiting for him, and it was the hardest of all — because it touched not his beliefs but his livelihood. Thomas Breakwell held a responsible and well-paid position connected with a cotton mill in one of the southern American states. And in those mills, he knew, children were put to labour. This was the source of the income on which his pleasant life rested. A man can hold many fine convictions in the abstract and never let them disturb his comfort. The real test of a seeker is whether he will follow the answer even when it costs him something. When Thomas, in the presence of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, spoke honestly of how he earned his living and of the child labour that made it possible, the Master's counsel was plain: "Cable your resignation." Thomas did not argue, did not bargain, did not plead the practicalities. He obeyed at once. He gave up the position and the income together, choosing the answer over his ease.

He had little time left to live it. Within months Thomas Breakwell fell ill, and on the thirteenth of June, 1902, he died in Paris of tuberculosis. He had been a Bahá'í for scarcely a year. He was about thirty years old. And yet 'Abdu'l-Bahá mourned him as few are mourned, calling him "a lamp amid the angels of high Heaven," and the memory of this gentle, ardent young Englishman — the first of the British believers — has been treasured ever since.

What the Feast of Masá'il can take from his short, bright story is this. Thomas Breakwell's whole life turned on questions honestly asked and honestly answered. He carried a wordless question across the world until he met someone who could answer it; he spent three days asking everything he needed to ask; and when the answers were clear, he let them remake his life — even to the surrender of his income. Seeking, in him, was never an idle exercise of the mind. It was a door he walked through. The question that is asked in earnest, and answered, and obeyed, is the question that sets a soul free.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Bahá'í Chronicles and the recollections of May Maxwell.

editors, B. C.. *Bahá'í Chronicles*. https://bahaichronicles.org/thomas-breakwell/