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The Promised Day Is Come

by Effendi Shoghi · English · Gutenberg #19282 · 333,259 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Promised Day Is Come

Author: Effendi Shoghi


        
Release date: September 17, 2006 [eBook #19282]
                Most recently updated: June 26, 2020

Language: English

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The Promised Day Is Come


by Shoghi Effendi




Edition 1, (September 2006)





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                                 CONTENTS


Baha'i Terms of Use
Preface
The Promised Day Is Come
This Judgment of God
What Response to His Call?
Features of This Moving Drama
A World Receded from Him
Recipients of the Message
Tablets to the Kings
The Most Great Law Revealed
Revealed to the Pope
Let the Oppressor Desist
God's Vicar on Earth
Humiliation Immediate and Complete
The Rise of Bolshevism
End of the Holy Roman Empire
What of Turkey and Persia?
The Doom of Imperial Turkey
Divine Retribution on the Qajar Dynasty
The Decline in the Fortunes of Royalty
Recognition of Kingship
The Crumbling of Religious Orthodoxy
Words Addressed to Muslim Ecclesiastics
The Falling Fortunes of _Sh_i'ih Islam
The Collapse of the Caliphate
A Warning Unto All Nations
His Messages to Christian Leaders
Christian Nations against Christian Nations
The Continuity of Revelation
The Three False Gods
The Weakened Pillars of Religion
God's Purpose
The Great Age to Come
Religion and Social Evolution
The Wider, Inclusive Loyalty
World Commonwealth






PREFACE


The fundamental principle enunciated by Baha'u'llah ... is that religious
truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a continuous
and progressive process, that all the great religions of the world are
divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete harmony,
that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their teachings
are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, that
they differ only in the nonessential aspects of their doctrines, and that
their missions represent successive stages in the spiritual evolution of
human society....

...His mission is to proclaim that the ages of the infancy and of the
childhood of the human race are past, that the convulsions associated with
the present stage of its adolescence are slowly and painfully preparing it
to attain the stage of manhood, and are heralding the approach of that Age
of Ages when swords will be beaten into plowshares, when the Kingdom
promised by Jesus Christ will have been established, and the peace of the
planet definitely and permanently ensured. Nor does Baha'u'llah claim
finality for His own Revelation, but rather stipulates that a fuller
measure of the truth He has been commissioned by the Almighty to vouchsafe
to humanity, at so critical a juncture in its fortunes, must needs be
disclosed at future stages in the constant and limitless evolution of
mankind.

The Baha'i Faith upholds the unity of God, recognizes the unity of His
Prophets, and inculcates the principle of the oneness and wholeness of the
entire human race. It proclaims the necessity and the inevitability of the
unification of mankind, asserts that it is gradually approaching, and
claims that nothing short of the transmuting spirit of God, working
through His chosen Mouthpiece in this day, can ultimately succeed in
bringing it about. It, moreover, enjoins upon its followers the primary
duty of an unfettered search after truth, condemns all manner of prejudice
and superstition, declares the purpose of religion to be the promotion of
amity and concord, proclaims its essential harmony with science, and
recognizes it as the foremost agency for the pacification and the orderly
progress of human society....

Mirza Husayn-'Ali, surnamed Baha'u'llah (the Glory of God), a native of
Mazindaran, Whose advent the Bab [Herald and Forerunner of Baha'u'llah]
had foretold, ... was imprisoned in Tihran, was banished, in 1852, from
His native land to Ba_gh_dad, and thence to Constantinople and Adrianople,
and finally to the prison city of Akka, where He remained incarcerated for
no less than twenty-four years, and in whose neighborhood He passed away
in 1892. In the course of His banishment, and particularly in Adrianople
and Akka, He formulated the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation,
expounded, in over a hundred volumes, the principles of His Faith,
proclaimed His Message to the kings and rulers of both the East and the
West, both Christian and Muslim, addressed the Pope, the Caliph of Islam,
the Chief Magistrates of the Republics of the American continent, the
entire Christian sacerdotal order, the leaders of _Sh_i'ih and Sunni
Islam, and the high priests of the Zoroastrian religion. In these writings
He proclaimed His Revelation, summoned those whom He addressed to heed His
call and espouse His Faith, warned them of the consequences of their
refusal, and denounced, in some cases, their arrogance and tyranny....

The Faith which this order serves, safeguards and promotes is ...
essentially supernatural, supranational, entirely non-political,
non-partisan, and diametrically opposed to any policy or school of thought
that seeks to exalt any particular race, class or nation. It is free from
any form of ecclesiasticism, has neither priesthood nor rituals, and is
supported exclusively by voluntary contributions made by its avowed
adherents. Though loyal to their respective governments, though imbued
with the love of their own country, and anxious to promote at all times,
its best interests, the followers of the Baha'i Faith, nevertheless,
viewing mankind as one entity, and profoundly attached to its vital
interests, will not hesitate to subordinate every particular interest, be
it personal, regional or national, to the over-riding interests of the
generality of mankind, knowing full well that in a world of interdependent
peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the
advantage of the whole, and that no lasting result can be achieved by any
of the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are
neglected....

--Shoghi Effendi





THE PROMISED DAY IS COME


Friends and fellow-heirs of the Kingdom of Baha'u'llah:

A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course,
catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its
ultimate consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth. Its
driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum. Its
cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every passing
day. Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, is
smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury. It can neither perceive
its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome.
Bewildered, agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind
of God invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its
foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting
the homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its
kings, pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its
light, and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.

"The time for the destruction of the world and its people," Baha'u'llah's
prophetic pen has proclaimed, "hath arrived." "The hour is approaching,"
He specifically affirms, "when the most great convulsion will have
appeared." "The promised day is come, the day when tormenting trials will
have surged above your heads, and beneath your feet, saying: 'Taste ye
what your hands have wrought!'" "Soon shall the blasts of His chastisement
beat upon you, and the dust of hell enshroud you." And again: "And when
the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall
cause the limbs of mankind to quake." "The day is approaching when its
[civilization's] flame will devour the cities, when the Tongue of Grandeur
will proclaim: 'The Kingdom is God's, the Almighty, the All-Praised!'"
"The day will soon come," He, referring to the foolish ones of the earth,
has written, "whereon they will cry out for help and receive no answer."
"The day is approaching," He moreover has prophesied, "when the wrathful
anger of the Almighty will have taken hold of them. He, verily, is the
Omnipotent, the All-Subduing, the Most Powerful. He shall cleanse the
earth from the defilement of their corruption, and shall give it for an
heritage unto such of His servants as are nigh unto Him."

"As to those who deny Him Who is the Sublime Gate of God," the Bab, for
His part, has affirmed in the Qayyum-i-Asma, "for them We have prepared,
as justly decreed by God, a sore torment. And He, God, is the Mighty, the
Wise." And further, "O peoples of the earth! I swear by your Lord! Ye
shall act as former generations have acted. Warn ye, then, yourselves of
the terrible, the most grievous vengeance of God. For God is, verily,
potent over all things." And again: "By My glory! I will make the infidels
to taste, with the hands of My power, retributions unknown of anyone
except Me, and will waft over the faithful those musk-scented breaths
which I have nursed in the midmost heart of My throne."

Dear friends! The powerful operations of this titanic upheaval are
comprehensible to none except such as have recognized the claims of both
Baha'u'llah and the Bab. Their followers know full well whence it comes,
and what it will ultimately lead to. Though ignorant of how far it will
reach, they clearly recognize its genesis, are aware of its direction,
acknowledge its necessity, observe confidently its mysterious processes,
ardently pray for the mitigation of its severity, intelligently labor to
assuage its fury, and anticipate, with undimmed vision, the consummation
of the fears and the hopes it must necessarily engender.





THIS JUDGMENT OF GOD


This judgment of God, as viewed by those who have recognized Baha'u'llah
as His Mouthpiece and His greatest Messenger on earth, is both a
retributory calamity and an act of holy and supreme discipline. It is at
once a visitation from God and a cleansing process for all mankind. Its
fires punish the perversity of the human race, and weld its component
parts into one organic, indivisible, world-embracing community. Mankind,
in these fateful years, which at once signalize the passing of the first
century of the Baha'i Era and proclaim the opening of a new one, is, as
ordained by Him Who is both the Judge and the Redeemer of the human race,
being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and
is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape
the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. God, the
Vigilant, the Just, the Loving, the All-Wise Ordainer, can, in this
supreme Dispensation, neither allow the sins of an unregenerate humanity,
whether of omission or of commission, to go unpunished, nor will He be
willing to abandon His children to their fate, and refuse them that
culminating and blissful stage in their long, their slow and painful
evolution throughout the ages, which is at once their inalienable right
and their true destiny.

"Bestir yourselves, O people," is, on the one hand, the ominous warning
sounded by Baha'u'llah Himself, "in anticipation of the days of Divine
Justice, for the promised hour is now come." "Abandon that which ye
possess, and seize that which God, Who layeth low the necks of men, hath
brought. Know ye of a certainty that if ye turn not back from that which
ye have committed, chastisement will overtake you on every side, and ye
shall behold things more grievous than that which ye beheld aforetime."
And again: "We have fixed a time for you, O people! If ye fail, at the
appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent hold on
you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every
direction. How severe indeed is the chastisement with which your Lord will
then chastise you!" And again: "God assuredly dominateth the lives of them
that wronged Us, and is well aware of their doings. He will most certainly
lay hold on them for their sins. He, verily, is the fiercest of Avengers."
And finally: "O ye peoples of the world! Know verily that an unforeseen
calamity is following you and that grievous retribution awaiteth you.
Think not the deeds ye have committed have been blotted from My sight. By
My Beauty! All your doings hath My pen graven with open characters upon
tablets of chrysolite."

"The whole earth," Baha'u'llah, on the other hand, forecasting the bright
future in store for a world now wrapt in darkness, emphatically asserts,
"is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have
yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the
loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly
blessings." "The time is approaching when every created thing will have
cast its burden. Glorified be God Who hath vouchsafed this grace that
encompasseth all things, whether seen or unseen!" "These great
oppressions," He, moreover, foreshadowing humanity's golden age, has
written, "are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great Justice." This
Most Great Justice is indeed the Justice upon which the structure of the
Most Great Peace can alone, and must eventually, rest, while the Most
Great Peace will, in turn, usher in that Most Great, that World
Civilization which shall remain forever associated with Him Who beareth
the Most Great Name.

Beloved friends! Well nigh a hundred years have elapsed since the
Revelation of Baha'u'llah dawned upon the world--a Revelation, the nature
of which, as affirmed by Himself, "none among the Manifestations of old,
except to a prescribed degree, hath ever completely apprehended." For a
whole century God has respited mankind, that it might acknowledge the
Founder of such a Revelation, espouse His Cause, proclaim His greatness,
and establish His Order. In a hundred volumes, the repositories of
priceless precepts, mighty laws, unique principles, impassioned
exhortations, reiterated warnings, amazing prophecies, sublime
invocations, and weighty commentaries, the Bearer of such a Message has
proclaimed, as no Prophet before Him has done, the Mission with which God
had entrusted Him. To emperors, kings, princes and potentates, to rulers,
governments, clergy and peoples, whether of the East or of the West,
whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Zoroastrian, He addressed, for
well-nigh fifty years, and in the most tragic circumstances, these
priceless pearls of knowledge and wisdom that lay hid within the ocean of
His matchless utterance. Forsaking fame and fortune, accepting
imprisonment and exile, careless of ostracism and obloquy, submitting to
physical indignities and cruel deprivations, He, the Vicegerent of God on
earth, suffered Himself to be banished from place to place and from
country to country, till at length He, in the Most Great Prison, offered
up His martyred son as a ransom for the redemption and unification of all
mankind. "We verily," He Himself has testified, "have not fallen short of
Our duty to exhort men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God,
the Almighty, the All-Praised. Had they hearkened unto Me, they would have
beheld the earth another earth." And again: "Is there any excuse left for
anyone in this Revelation? No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne! My
signs have encompassed the earth, and My power enveloped all mankind, and
yet the people are wrapped in a strange sleep!"





WHAT RESPONSE TO HIS CALL?


How--we may well ask ourselves--has the world, the object of such Divine
solicitude, repaid Him Who sacrificed His all for its sake? What manner of
welcome did it accord Him, and what response did His call evoke? A clamor,
unparalleled in the history of _Sh_i'ih Islam, greeted, in the land of its
birth, the infant light of the Faith, in the midst of a people notorious
for its crass ignorance, its fierce fanaticism, its barbaric cruelty, its
ingrained prejudices, and the unlimited sway held over the masses by a
firmly entrenched ecclesiastical hierarchy. A persecution, kindling a
courage which, as attested by no less eminent an authority than the late
Lord Curzon of Kedleston, has been unsurpassed by that which the fires of
Smithfield evoked, mowed down, with tragic swiftness, no less than twenty
thousand of its heroic adherents, who refused to barter their newly born
faith for the fleeting honors and security of a mortal life.

To the bodily agonies inflicted upon these sufferers, the charges, so
unmerited, of Nihilism, occultism, anarchism, eclecticism, immorality,
sectarianism, heresy, political partisanship--each conclusively disproved
by the tenets of the Faith itself and by the conduct of its followers--were
added, swelling thereby the number of those who, unwittingly or
maliciously, were injuring its cause.

Unmitigated indifference on the part of men of eminence and rank;
unrelenting hatred shown by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Faith
from which it had sprung; the scornful derision of the people among whom
it was born; the utter contempt which most of those kings and rulers who
had been addressed by its Author manifested towards it; the condemnations
pronounced, the threats hurled, and the banishments decreed by those under
whose sway it arose and first spread; the distortion to which its
principles and laws were subjected by the envious and the malicious, in
lands and among peoples far beyond the country of its origin--all these are
but the evidences of the treatment meted out by a generation sunk in
self-content, careless of its God, and oblivious of the omens, prophecies,
warnings and admonitions revealed by His Messengers.

The blows so heavily dealt the followers of so precious, so glorious, so
potent a Faith failed, however, to assuage the animosity that inflamed its
persecutors. Nor did the deliberate and mischievous misrepresentations of
its fundamental teachings, its aims and purposes, its hopes and
aspirations, its institutions and activities, suffice to stay the hand of
the oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their
power to abolish its name and extirpate its system. The hand which had
struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and
servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest
blows.

The Bab--"the Point," as affirmed by Baha'u'llah, "round Whom the realities
of the Prophets and Messengers revolve"--was the One first swept into the
maelstrom which engulfed His supporters. Sudden arrest and confinement in
the very first year of His short and spectacular career; public affront
deliberately inflicted in the presence of the ecclesiastical dignitaries
of _Sh_iraz; strict and prolonged incarceration in the bleak fastnesses of
the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan; a contemptuous disregard and a cowardly
jealousy evinced respectively by the Chief Magistrate of the realm and the
foremost minister of his government; the carefully staged and farcical
interrogatory sustained in the presence of the heir to the Throne and the
distinguished divines of Tabriz; the shameful infliction of the bastinado
in the prayer house, and at the hands of the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam of that
city; and finally suspension in the barrack-square of Tabriz and the
discharge of a volley of above seven hundred bullets at His youthful
breast under the eyes of a callous multitude of about ten thousand people,
culminating in the ignominious exposure of His mangled remains on the edge
of the moat without the city gate--these were the progressive stages in the
tumultuous and tragic ministry of One Whose age inaugurated the
consummation of all ages, and Whose Revelation fulfilled the promise of
all Revelations.

"I swear by God!" the Bab Himself in His Tablet to Muhammad _Sh_ah has
written, "Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these four
years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, thou
wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God.... Alas, alas, for the things
which have touched Me!... I swear by the Most Great Lord! Wert thou to be
told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me would be
thyself. In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [Maku] ... the inmates
of which are confined to two guards and four dogs. Picture, then, My
plight.... In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come to such a
pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered,
nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!"

"How veiled are ye, O My creatures," He, speaking with the voice of God,
has revealed in the Bayan, "...who, without any right, have consigned Him
unto a mountain [Maku], not one of whose inhabitants is worthy of
mention.... With Him, which is with Me, there is no one except him who is
one of the Letters of the Living of My Book. In His presence, which is My
Presence, there is not at night even a lighted lamp! And yet, in places
[of worship] which in varying degrees reach out unto Him, unnumbered lamps
are shining! All that is on earth hath been created for Him, and all
partake with delight of His benefits, and yet they are so veiled from Him
as to refuse Him even a lamp!"

What of Baha'u'llah, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by the Bab,
is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the Babi
Dispensation? Was He not--He for Whom the Bab had suffered and died in such
tragic and miraculous circumstances--made, for nearly half a century and
under the domination of the two most powerful potentates of the East, the
object of a systematic and concerted conspiracy which, in its effects and
duration, is scarcely paralleled in the annals of previous religions?

"The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors," He Himself in His anguish has
cried out, "have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white. Shouldst thou
present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to recognize the
Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is altered and its
brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the infidels. I
swear by God! His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!" "Wert thou
to hear with Mine ear," He also declares, "thou wouldst hear how 'Ali [the
Bab] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how
Muhammad weepeth over Me in the all-highest Horizon, and how the Spirit
[Jesus] beateth Himself upon the head in the heaven of My decree, by
reason of what hath befallen this Wronged One at the hands of every
impious sinner." "Before Me," He elsewhere has written, "riseth up the
Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched to engulf Me, and behind Me stalketh
the lion of anger intent on tearing Me in pieces, and above Me, O My
Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree, raining upon Me the showers of
tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the spears of misfortune, ready
to wound My limbs and My body." "Couldst thou be told," He further
affirms, "what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into
the wilderness, and weep with a great weeping. In thy grief, thou wouldst
smite thyself on the head, and cry out as one stung by the sting of the
adder.... By the righteousness of God! Every morning I arose from My bed I
discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My door, and
every night when I lay down, lo! My heart was torn with agony at what it
had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes. With every piece of
bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh is coupled the assault of a fresh
affliction, and with every drop He drinketh is mixed the bitterness of the
most woeful of trials. He is preceded in every step He taketh by an army
of unforeseen calamities, while in His rear follow legions of agonizing
sorrows."

Was it not He Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously arose
to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent Cause of the
Bab? Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual leadership of a
proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His kindred, and His
possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the grave perils, the
bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious defamations of both
government and people? Was it not He--the Bearer of a Revelation, Whose day
"every Prophet hath announced," for which "the soul of every Divine
Messenger hath thirsted," and in which "God hath proved the hearts of the
entire company of His Messengers and Prophets"--was not the Bearer of such
a Revelation, at the instigation of _Sh_i'ih ecclesiastics and by order of
the _Sh_ah himself forced, for no less than four months, to breathe, in
utter darkness, whilst in the company of the vilest criminals and
freighted down with galling chains, the pestilential air of the
vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of Tihran--a place which, as He
Himself subsequently declared, was mysteriously converted into the very
scene of the annunciation made to Him by God of His Prophethood?

"We were consigned," He wrote in His "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,"
"for four months to a place foul beyond comparison. As to the dungeon in
which this Wronged One and others similarly wronged were confined, a dark
and narrow pit were preferable.... The dungeon was wrapped in thick
darkness, and Our fellow prisoners numbered nearly a hundred and fifty
souls: thieves, assassins, and highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other
outlet than the passage by which We entered. No pen can depict that place,
nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither
clothes nor bedding to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that
most foul-smelling and gloomy place!" "'Abdu'l-Baha," writes Dr. J.E.
Esslemont, "tells how one day He was allowed to enter the prison-yard to
see His beloved Father when He came out for His daily exercise.
Baha'u'llah was terribly altered, so ill He could hardly walk. His hair
and beard unkempt, His neck galled and swollen from the pressure of a
heavy steel collar, His body bent by the weight of His chains." "For three
days and three nights," Nabil has recorded in his chronicle, "no manner of
food or drink was given to Baha'u'llah. Rest and sleep were both
impossible to Him. The place was infested with vermin, and the stench of
that gloomy abode was enough to crush the very spirits of those who were
condemned to suffer its horrors." "Such was the intensity of His suffering
that the marks of that cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the
days of His life."

And what of the other tribulations which, before and immediately after
this dreadful episode, touched Him? What of His confinement in the home of
one of the kad-_kh_udas of Tihran? What of the savage violence with which
He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood of the village of
Niyala? What of His incarceration by the emissaries of the army of the
_Sh_ah in Mazindaran, and His receiving the bastinado by order, and in the
presence, of the assembled siyyids and mujtahids into whose hands He had
been delivered by the civil authorities of Amul? What of the howls of
derision and abuse with which a crowd of ruffians subsequently pursued
Him? What of the monstrous accusation brought against Him by the Imperial
household, the Court and the people, when the attempt was made on the life
of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah? What of the infamous outrages, the abuse and
ridicule heaped on Him when He was arrested by responsible officers of the
government, and conducted from Niyavaran "on foot and in chains, with
bared head and bare feet," and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer
sun, to the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran? What of the avidity with which corrupt
officials sacked His house and carried away all His possessions and
disposed of His fortune? What of the cruel edict that tore Him from the
small band of the Bab's bewildered, hounded, and shepherdless followers,
separated Him from His kinsmen and friends, and banished Him, in the depth
of winter, despoiled and defamed, to 'Iraq?

Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with
bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the
systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and the
people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive captivity
which that edict had formally initiated. Extending over a period of more
than forty years, and carrying Him successively to 'Iraq, Sulaymaniyyih,
Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of Akka, this
long banishment was at last ended by His death, at the age of over three
score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, in its range, its
duration and the diversity and severity of its afflictions, is unexampled
in the history of previous Dispensations.

No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light
on the moving annals of those years. No need to dwell on the character and
actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, and
contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the greatest
drama in the world's spiritual history.





FEATURES OF THIS MOVING DRAMA


To enumerate a few of the outstanding features of this moving drama will
suffice to evoke in the reader of these pages, already familiar with the
history of the Faith, the memory of those vicissitudes which it has
experienced, and which the world has until now viewed with such frigid
indifference. The forced and sudden retirement of Baha'u'llah to the
mountains of Sulaymaniyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed
from His two years' complete withdrawal; the incessant intrigues indulged
in by the exponents of _Sh_i'ih Islam in Najaf and Karbila, working in
close and constant association with their confederates in Persia; the
intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz
which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent members of the
exiled community; the enforcement of yet another banishment by order of
that same Sultan, this time to that far off and most desolate of cities,
causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to attempt suicide; the
unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected upon their arrival in
Akka, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two
years in the barracks of that town; the interrogatory to which the Turkish
pa_sh_a subsequently subjected his Prisoner at the headquarters of the
government; His confinement for no less than eight years in a humble
dwelling surrounded by the befouled air of that city, His sole recreation
being confined to pacing the narrow space of His room--these, as well as
other tribulations, proclaim, on the one hand, the nature of the ordeal
and the indignities He suffered, and point, on the other, the finger of
accusation at those mighty ones of the earth who had either so sorely
maltreated Him, or deliberately withheld from Him their succor.

No wonder that from the Pen of Him Who bore this anguish with such sublime
patience these words should have been revealed: "He Who is the Lord of the
seen and unseen is now manifest unto all men. His blessed Self hath been
afflicted with such harm that if all the seas, visible and invisible, were
turned into ink, and all that dwell in the kingdom into pens, and all that
are in the heavens and all that are on earth into scribes, they would, of
a certainty, be powerless to record it." And again: "I have been, most of
the days of My life, even as a slave, sitting under a sword hanging on a
thread, knowing not whether it would fall soon or late upon him." "All
this generation," He affirms, "could offer Us were wounds from its darts,
and the only cup it proffered to Our lips was the cup of its venom. On Our
neck We still bear the scar of chains, and upon Our body are imprinted the
evidences of an unyielding cruelty." "Twenty years have passed, O kings!"
He, addressing the kings of Christendom, at the height of His mission, has
written, "during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh
tribulation. No one of them that were before Us hath endured the things We
have endured. Would that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against
Us have put Us to death, have shed Our blood, have plundered Our property,
and violated Our honor. Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye,
nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not
your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal
equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully
demonstrated to all mankind?"

Who is the ruler, may it not be confidently asked, whether of the East or
of the West, who, at any time since the dawn of so transcendent a
Revelation, has been prompted to raise his voice either in its praise or
against those who persecuted it? Which people has, in the course of so
long a captivity, felt urged to arise and stem the tide of such
tribulations? Who is the sovereign, excepting a single woman, shining in
solitary glory, who has, in however small a measure, felt impelled to
respond to the poignant call of Baha'u'llah? Who amongst the great ones of
the earth was inclined to extend this infant Faith of God the benefit of
his recognition or support? Which one of the multitudes of creeds, sects,
races, parties and classes and of the highly diversified schools of human
thought, considered it necessary to direct its gaze towards the rising
light of the Faith, to contemplate its unfolding system, to ponder its
hidden processes, to appraise its weighty message, to acknowledge its
regenerative power, to embrace its salutary truth, or to proclaim its
eternal verities? Who among the worldly wise and the so-called men of
insight and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century,
to have disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered
impartially its claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its
literature, to have assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or
to have accorded its cause the treatment it merits? Where are the
preeminent exponents, whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception
of a few isolated cases, who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of
commendation, in either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has
conferred upon the world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long
and so grievously, and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a
promise for a world so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt?

To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the Bab, to the
long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Baha'u'llah, to the warnings
sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Baha'i Revelation, must
be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were
endured by 'Abdu'l-Baha, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in
the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly
threatened the whole of mankind. Born in the very year that witnessed the
inception of the Babi Revelation; baptized with the initial fires of
persecution that raged around that nascent Cause; an eyewitness, when a
boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His
Father had espoused; sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and
rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land to
countries far beyond its confines; arrested and forced to support, in a
dark cell, the indignity of imprisonment soon after His arrival in Akka;
the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual assaults
and insults under the despotic rule of Sultan 'Abdu'l-Hamid, and later
under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and merciless
Jamal Pa_sh_a--He, too, the Center and Pivot of Baha'u'llah's peerless
Covenant and the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, was made to taste, at
the hands of potentates, ecclesiastics, governments and peoples, the cup
of woe which the Bab and Baha'u'llah, as well as so many of their
followers, had drained.

With the warnings which both His pen and voice have given in countless
Tablets and discourses, during an almost lifelong incarceration and in the
course of His extended travels in both the European and American
continents, they who labor for the spread of His Father's Faith in the
Western world are sufficiently acquainted. How often and how passionately
did He appeal to those in authority and to the public at large to examine
dispassionately the precepts enunciated by His Father? With what precision
and emphasis He unfolded the system of the Faith He was expounding,
elucidated its fundamental verities, stressed its distinguishing features,
and proclaimed the redemptive character of its principles? How insistently
did He foreshadow the impending chaos, the approaching upheavals, the
universal conflagration which, in the concluding years of His life, had
only begun to reveal the measure of its force and the significance of its
impact on human society?

A co-sharer in the woeful trials and momentary frustrations afflicting the
Bab and Baha'u'llah; reaping a harvest in His lifetime wholly
incommensurate to the sublime, the incessant and strenuous efforts He had
exerted; experiencing the initial perturbations of the world-shaking
catastrophe in store for an unbelieving humanity; bent with age, and with
eyes dimmed by the gathering storm which the reception accorded by a
faithless generation to His Father's Cause was raising, and with a heart
bleeding over the immediate destiny of God's wayward children--He, at last,
sank beneath a weight of troubles for which they who had imposed them upon
Him, and upon those gone before Him, were soon to be summoned to a dire
reckoning.

"Hasten, O my God!" He cried, at a time when adversity had sore beset Him,
"the days of my ascension unto Thee, and of my coming before Thee, and of
my entry into Thy presence, that I may be delivered from the darkness of
the cruelty inflicted by them upon me, and may enter the luminous
atmosphere of Thy nearness, O my Lord, the All-Glorious, and may rest
under the shadow of Thy most great mercy." "Ya Baha'u'l-Abha [O Thou the
Glory of Glories]!" He wrote in a Tablet revealed during the last week of
His life, "I have renounced the world and the people thereof, and am
heartbroken and sorely afflicted because of the unfaithful. In the cage of
this world I flutter even as a frightened bird, and yearn every day to
take my flight unto Thy Kingdom. Ya Baha'u'l-Abha! Make me to drink of the
cup of sacrifice, and set me free. Relieve me from these woes and trials,
from these afflictions and troubles."

Dear friends! Alas, a thousand times alas, that a Revelation so
incomparably great, so infinitely precious, so mightily potent, so
manifestly innocent, should have received, at the hands of a generation so
blind and so perverse, so infamous a treatment! "O My servants!"
Baha'u'llah Himself testifies, "The one true God is My witness! This most
great, this fathomless and surging ocean is near, astonishingly near, unto
you. Behold it is closer to you than your life vein! Swift as the
twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this
imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this
most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty."





A WORLD RECEDED FROM HIM


After a revolution of well nigh one hundred years what is it that the eye
encounters as one surveys the international scene and looks back upon the
early beginnings of Baha'i history? A world convulsed by the agonies of
contending systems, races and nations, entangled in the mesh of its
accumulated falsities, receding farther and farther from Him Who is the
sole Author of its destinies, and sinking deeper and deeper into a
suicidal carnage which its neglect and persecution of Him Who is its
Redeemer have precipitated. A Faith, still proscribed, yet bursting
through its chrysalis, emerging from the obscurity of a century-old
repression, face to face with the awful evidences of God's wrathful anger,
and destined to arise above the ruins of a smitten civilization. A world
spiritually destitute, morally bankrupt, politically disrupted, socially
convulsed, economically paralyzed, writhing, bleeding and breaking up
beneath the avenging rod of God. A Faith Whose call remained unanswered,
Whose claims were rejected, Whose warnings were brushed aside, Whose
followers were mowed down, Whose aims and purposes were maligned, Whose
summons to the rulers of the earth were ignored, Whose Herald drained the
cup of martyrdom, over the head of Whose Author swept a sea of unheard-of
tribulations, and Whose Exemplar sank beneath the weight of lifelong
sorrows and dire misfortunes. A world that has lost its bearings, in which
the bright flame of religion is fast dying out, in which the forces of a
blatant nationalism and racialism have usurped the rights and prerogatives
of God Himself, in which a flagrant secularism--the direct offspring of
irreligion--has raised its triumphant head and is protruding its ugly
features, in which the "majesty of kingship" has been disgraced, and they
who wore its emblems have, for the most part, been hurled from their
thrones, in which the once all-powerful ecclesiastical hierarchies of
Islam, and to a lesser extent those of Christianity, have been
discredited, and in which the virus of prejudice and corruption is eating
into the vitals of an already gravely disordered society. A Faith Whose
institutions--the pattern and crowning glory of the age which is to
come--have been ignored and in some instances trampled upon and uprooted,
Whose unfolding system has been derided and partly suppressed and
crippled, Whose rising Order--the sole refuge of a civilization in the
embrace of doom--has been spurned and challenged, Whose Mother-Temple has
been seized and misappropriated, and Whose "House"--the "cynosure of an
adoring world"--has, through a gross miscarriage of justice, as witnessed
by the world's highest tribunal, been delivered into the hands of, and
violated by, its implacable enemies.

We are indeed living in an age which, if we would correctly appraise it,
should be regarded as one which is witnessing a dual phenomenon. The first
signalizes the death pangs of an order, effete and godless, that has
stubbornly refused, despite the signs and portents of a century-old
Revelation, to attune its processes to the precepts and ideals which that
Heaven-sent Faith proffered it. The second proclaims the birth pangs of an
Order, divine and redemptive, that will inevitably supplant the former,
and within Whose administrative structure an embryonic civilization,
incomparable and world-embracing, is imperceptibly maturing. The one is
being rolled up, and is crashing in oppression, bloodshed, and ruin. The
other opens up vistas of a justice, a unity, a peace, a culture, such as
no age has ever seen. The former has spent its force, demonstrated its
falsity and barrenness, lost irretrievably its opportunity, and is
hurrying to its doom. The latter, virile and unconquerable, is plucking
asunder its chains, and is vindicating its title to be the one refuge
within which a sore-tried humanity, purged from its dross, can attain its
destiny.

"Soon," Baha'u'llah Himself has prophesied, "will the present-day order be
rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead." And again: "By Myself!
The day is approaching when We will have rolled up the world and all that
is therein, and spread out a new Order in its stead." "The day is
approaching when God will have raised up a people who will call to
remembrance Our days, who will tell the tale of Our trials, who will
demand the restitution of Our rights, from them who, without a tittle of
evidence, have treated Us with manifest injustice."

Dear friends! For the trials which have afflicted the Faith of Baha'u'llah
a responsibility appalling and inescapable rests upon those into whose
hands the reins of civil and ecclesiastical authority were delivered. The
kings of the earth and the world's religious leaders alike must primarily
bear the brunt of such an awful responsibility. "Everyone well knoweth,"
Baha'u'llah Himself testifies, "that all the kings have turned aside from
Him, and all the religions have opposed Him." "From time immemorial," He
declares, "they who have been outwardly invested with authority have
debarred men from setting their faces towards God. They have disliked that
men should gather together around the Most Great Ocean, inasmuch as they
have regarded, and still regard, such a gathering as the cause of, and the
motive for, the disruption of their sovereignty." "The kings," He moreover
has written, "have recognized that it was not in their interest to
acknowledge Me, as have likewise the ministers and the divines,
notwithstanding that My purpose hath been most explicitly revealed in the
Divine Books and Tablets, and the True One hath loudly proclaimed that
this Most Great Revelation hath appeared for the betterment of the world
and the exaltation of the nations." "Gracious God!" writes the Bab in the
Dala'il-i-Sab'ih (Seven Proofs) with reference to the "seven powerful
sovereigns ruling the world" in His day, "None of them hath been informed
of His [the Bab's] Manifestation, and if informed, none hath believed in
Him. Who knoweth, they may leave this world below full of desire, and
without having realized that the thing for which they were waiting had
come to pass. This is what happened to the monarchs that held fast unto
the Gospel. They awaited the coming of the Prophet of God [Muhammad], and
when He did appear, they failed to recognize Him. Behold how great are the
sums which these sovereigns expend without even the slightest thought of
appointing an official charged with the task of acquainting them in their
own realms with the Manifestation of God! They would thereby have
fulfilled the purpose for which they have been created. All their desires
have been and are still fixed upon leaving behind them traces of their
names." The Bab, moreover, in that same treatise, censuring the failure of
the Christian divines to acknowledge the truth of Muhammad's mission,
makes this illuminating statement: "The blame falleth upon their doctors,
for if these had believed, they would have been followed by the mass of
their countrymen. Behold then, that which hath come to pass! The learned
men of Christendom are held to be learned by virtue of their safeguarding
the teaching of Christ, and yet consider how they themselves have been the
cause of men's failure to accept the Faith and attain unto salvation!"





RECIPIENTS OF THE MESSAGE


It should not be forgotten that it was the kings of the earth and the
world's religious leaders who, above all other categories of men, were
made the direct recipients of the Message proclaimed by both the Bab and
Baha'u'llah. It was they who were deliberately addressed in numerous and
historic Tablets, who were summoned to respond to the Call of God, and to
whom were directed, in clear and forcible language, the appeals, the
admonitions and warnings of His persecuted Messengers. It was they who,
when the Faith was born, and later when its mission was proclaimed, were
still, for the most part, wielding unquestioned and absolute civil and
ecclesiastical authority over their subjects and followers. It was they
who, whether glorying in the pomp and pageantry of a kingship as yet
scarcely restricted by constitutional limitations, or entrenched within
the strongholds of a seemingly inviolable ecclesiastical power, assumed
ultimate responsibility for any wrongs inflicted by those whose immediate
destinies they controlled. It would be no exaggeration to say that in most
of the countries of the European and Asiatic continents absolutism, on the
one hand, and complete subservience to ecclesiastical hierarchies, on the
other, were still the outstanding features of the political and religious
life of the masses. These, dominated and shackled, were robbed of the
necessary freedom that would enable them to either appraise the claims and
merits of the Message proffered to them, or to embrace unreservedly its
truth.

Small wonder, then, that the Author of the Baha'i Faith, and to a lesser
degree its Herald, should have directed at the world's supreme rulers and
religious leaders the full force of Their Messages, and made them the
recipients of some of Their most sublime Tablets, and invited them, in a
language at once clear and insistent, to heed Their call. Small wonder
that They should have taken the pains to unroll before their eyes the
truths of Their respective Revelations, and should have expatiated on
Their woes and sufferings. Small wonder that They should have stressed the
preciousness of the opportunities which it was in the power of these
rulers and leaders to seize, and should have warned them in ominous tones
of the grave responsibilities which the rejection of God's Message would
entail, and should have predicted, when rebuffed and refused, the dire
consequences which such a rejection involved. Small wonder that He Who is
the King of kings and Vicegerent of God Himself should, when abandoned,
contemned and persecuted, have uttered this epigrammatic and momentous
prophecy: "From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and
ecclesiastics."

As to the kings and emperors who not only symbolized in their persons the
majesty of earthly dominion but who, for the most part, actually held
unchallengeable sway over the multitudes of their subjects, their relation
to the Faith of Baha'u'llah constitutes one of the most illuminating
episodes in the history of the Heroic and Formative Ages of that Faith.
The Divine summons which embraced within its scope so large a number of
the crowned heads of both Europe and Asia; the theme and language of the
Messages that brought them into direct contact with the Source of God's
Revelation; the nature of their reaction to so stupendous an impact; and
the consequences which ensued and can still be witnessed today are the
salient features of a subject upon which I can but inadequately touch, and
which will be fully and befittingly treated by future Baha'i historians.

The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the
European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of the
highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both temporal
and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian Empire,
Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose sovereignty extended over
the greatest political combination the world has witnessed; William I, the
conqueror of Napoleon III, King of Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch
of a unified Germany; Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire;
the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power
vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Nasiri'd-Din
_Sh_ah, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of
_Sh_i'ih Islam--in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and
of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Baha'u'llah's
special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the
weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.

It should be borne in mind, however, that Baha'u'llah has not restricted
the delivery of His Message to a few individual sovereigns, however potent
the scepters they severally wielded, and however vast the dominions which
they ruled. All the kings of the earth have been collectively addressed by
His Pen, appealed to, and warned, at a time when the star of His
Revelation was mounting its zenith, and whilst He lay a prisoner in the
hands, and in the vicinity of the court, of His royal enemy. In a
memorable Tablet, designated as the Suriy-i-Muluk (Surih of Kings) in
which the Sultan himself and his ministers, and the kings of Christendom,
and the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to the Sublime Porte,
and the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople, and its wise men
and its inhabitants, and the people of Persia, and the philosophers of the
world have been specifically addressed and admonished, He thus directs His
words to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West:





TABLETS TO THE KINGS


"O kings of the earth! Give ear unto the Voice of God, calling from this
sublime, this fruit-laden Tree, that hath sprung out of the Crimson Hill,
upon the holy Plain, intoning the words: 'There is none other God but He,
the Mighty, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.'... Fear God, O concourse of
kings, and suffer not yourselves to be deprived of this most sublime
grace. Fling away, then, the things ye possess, and take fast hold on the
Handle of God, the Exalted, the Great. Set your hearts towards the Face of
God, and abandon that which your desires have bidden you to follow, and be
not of those who perish. Relate unto them, O servant, the story of 'Ali
[the Bab], when He came unto them with truth, bearing His glorious and
weighty Book, and holding in His hands a testimony and proof from God, and
holy and blessed tokens from Him. Ye, however, O kings, have failed to
heed the Remembrance of God in His days and to be guided by the lights
which arose and shone forth above the horizon of a resplendent Heaven. Ye
examined not His Cause when so to do would have been better for you than
all that the sun shineth upon, could ye but perceive it. Ye remained
careless until the divines of Persia--those cruel ones--pronounced judgment
against Him, and unjustly slew Him. His spirit ascended unto God, and the
eyes of the inmates of Paradise and the angels that are nigh unto Him wept
sore by reason of this cruelty. Beware that ye be not careless henceforth
as ye have been careless aforetime. Return, then, unto God, your Maker,
and be not of the heedless.... My face hath come forth from the veils, and
shed its radiance upon all that is in heaven and on earth; and yet, ye
turned not towards Him, notwithstanding that ye were created for Him, O
concourse of kings! Follow, therefore, that which I speak unto you, and
hearken unto it with your hearts, and be not of such as have turned aside.
For your glory consisteth not in your sovereignty, but rather in your
nearness unto God and your observance of His command as sent down in His
holy and preserved Tablets. Should any one of you rule over the whole
earth, and over all that lieth within it and upon it, its seas, its lands,
its mountains, and its plains, and yet be not remembered by God, all these
would profit him not, could ye but know it.... Arise, then, and make
steadfast your feet, and make ye amends for that which hath escaped you,
and set then yourselves towards His holy Court, on the shore of His mighty
Ocean, so that the pearls of knowledge and wisdom, which God hath stored
up within the shell of His radiant heart, may be revealed unto you....
Beware lest ye hinder the breeze of God from blowing over your hearts, the
breeze through which the hearts of such as have turned unto Him can be
quickened...."

"Lay not aside the fear of God, O kings of the earth," He, in that same
Tablet has revealed, "and beware that ye transgress not the bounds which
the Almighty hath fixed. Observe the injunctions laid upon you in His
Book, and take good heed not to overstep their limits. Be vigilant, that
ye may not do injustice to anyone, be it to the extent of a grain of
mustard seed. Tread ye the path of justice, for this, verily, is the
straight path. Compose your differences, and reduce your armaments, that
the burden of your expenditures may be lightened, and that your minds and
hearts may be tranquilized. Heal the dissensions that divide you, and ye
will no longer be in need of any armaments except what the protection of
your cities and territories demandeth. Fear ye God, and take heed not to
outstrip the bounds of moderation, and be numbered among the extravagant.
We have learned that you are increasing your outlay every year, and are
laying the burden thereof on your subjects. This, verily, is more than
they can bear, and is a grievous injustice. Decide justly between men, and
be ye the emblems of justice amongst them. This, if ye judge fairly, is
the thing that behooveth you, and beseemeth your station.

"Beware not to deal unjustly with anyone that appealeth to you, and
entereth beneath your shadow. Walk ye in the fear of God, and be ye of
them that lead a godly life. Rest not on your power, your armies, and
treasures. Put your whole trust and confidence in God, Who hath created
you, and seek ye His help in all your affairs. Succor cometh from Him
alone. He succoreth whom He willeth with the hosts of the heavens and of
the earth.

"Know ye that the poor are the trust of God in your midst. Watch that ye
betray not His trust, that ye deal not unjustly with them and that ye walk
not in the ways of the treacherous. Ye will most certainly be called upon
to answer for His trust on the day when the Balance of Justice shall be
set, the day when unto everyone shall be rendered his due, when the doings
of all men, be they rich or poor, shall be weighed.

"If ye pay no heed unto the counsels which, in peerless and unequivocal
language, We have revealed in this Tablet, Divine chastisement shall
assail you from every direction, and the sentence of His justice shall be
pronounced against you. On that day ye shall have no power to resist Him,
and shall recognize your own impotence. Have mercy on yourselves and on
those beneath you, and judge ye between them according to the precepts
prescribed by God in His most holy and exalted Tablet, a Tablet wherein He
hath assigned to each and every thing its settled measure, in which He
hath given, with distinctness, an explanation of all things, and which is
in itself a monition unto them that believe in Him.

"Examine Our Cause, inquire into the things that have befallen Us, and
decide justly between Us and Our enemies, and be ye of them that act
equitably towards their neighbors. If ye stay not the hand of the
oppressor, if ye fail to safeguard the rights of the downtrodden, what
right have ye then to vaunt yourselves among men? What is it of which ye
can rightly boast? Is it on your food and your drink that ye pride
yourselves, on the riches ye lay up in your treasuries, on the diversity
and the cost of the ornaments with which ye deck yourselves? If true glory
were to consist in the possession of such perishable things, then the
earth on which ye walk must needs vaunt itself over you, because it
supplieth you, and bestoweth upon you, these very things, by the decree of
the Almighty. In its bowels are contained, according to what God hath
ordained, all that ye possess. From it, as a sign of His mercy, ye derive
your riches. Behold then your state, the thing in which ye glory! Would
that ye could perceive it! Nay! By Him Who holdeth in His grasp the
kingdom of the entire creation! Nowhere doth your true and abiding glory
reside except in your firm adherence unto the precepts of God, your
wholehearted observance of His laws, your resolution to see that they do
not remain unenforced, and to pursue steadfastly the right course...."

And again in that same Tablet: "Twenty years have passed, O kings, during
which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation. No one
of them that were before Us hath endured the things We have endured. Would
that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against Us, have put Us to
death, have shed Our blood, have plundered Our property, and violated Our
honor. Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have
failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not your clear duty to
restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your
subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all
mankind?

"God hath committed into your hands the reins of the government of the
people, that ye may rule with justice over them, safeguard the rights of
the downtrodden, and punish the wrongdoers. If ye neglect the duty
prescribed unto you by God in His Book, your names shall be numbered with
those of the unjust in His sight. Grievous, indeed, will be your error.
Cleave ye to that which your imaginations have devised, and cast behind
your backs the commandments of God, the Most Exalted, the Inaccessible,
the All-Compelling, the Almighty? Cast away the things ye possess, and
cling to that which God hath bidden you observe. Seek ye His grace, for he
that seeketh it treadeth His straight Path.

"Consider the state in which We are, and behold ye the ills and troubles
that have tried Us. Neglect Us not, though it be for a moment, and judge
ye between Us and Our enemies with equity. This will, surely, be a
manifest advantage unto you. Thus do We relate to you Our tale, and
recount the things that have befallen Us, that ye might take off Our ills
and ease Our burden. Let him who will, relieve Us from Our trouble; and as
to him that willeth not, my Lord is assuredly the best of Helpers.

"Warn and acquaint the people, O Servant, with the things We have sent
down unto Thee, and let the fear of no one dismay Thee, and be Thou not of
them that waver. The day is approaching when God will have exalted His
Cause and magnified His testimony in the eyes of all who are in the
heavens and all who are on the earth. Place, in all circumstances, Thy
whole trust in Thy Lord, and fix Thy gaze upon Him, and turn away from all
them that repudiate His truth. Let God, Thy Lord, be Thy sufficing
Succorer and Helper. We have pledged Ourself to secure Thy triumph upon
earth and to exalt Our Cause above all men, though no king be found who
would turn his face towards Thee...."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), that priceless treasury
enshrining for all time the brightest emanations of the mind of
Baha'u'llah, the Charter of His World Order, the chief repository of His
laws, the Harbinger of His Covenant, the Pivotal Work containing some of
His noblest exhortations, weightiest pronouncements, and portentous
prophecies, and revealed during the full tide of His tribulations, at a
time when the rulers of the earth had definitely forsaken Him--in such a
Book we read the following:

"O kings of the earth! He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come. The
Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting. Worship
none but God, and, with radiant hearts, lift up your faces unto your Lord,
the Lord of all names. This is a Revelation to which whatever ye possess
can never be compared, could ye but know it. We see you rejoicing in that
which ye have amassed for others, and shutting out yourselves from the
worlds which naught except My Guarded Tablet can reckon. The treasures ye
have laid up have drawn you far away from your ultimate objective. This
ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it. Wash your hearts from all
earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the Kingdom of your Lord, the
Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the world to tremble, and all its
peoples to wail, except them that have renounced all things and clung to
that which the Hidden Tablet hath ordained...."





THE MOST GREAT LAW REVEALED


And further: "O kings of the earth! The Most Great Law hath been revealed
in this Spot, this Scene of transcendent splendor. Every hidden thing hath
been brought to light, by virtue of the Will of the Supreme Ordainer, He
Who hath ushered in the Last Hour, through Whom the Moon hath been cleft,
and every irrevocable decree expounded.

"Ye are but vassals, O kings of the earth! He Who is the King of Kings
hath appeared, arrayed in His most wondrous glory, and is summoning you
unto Himself, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Take heed lest pride
deter you from recognizing the Source of Revelation; lest the things of
this world shut you out as by a veil from Him Who is the Creator of
heaven. Arise, and serve Him Who is the Desire of all nations, Who hath
created you through a word from Him, and ordained you to be, for all time,
the emblems of His sovereignty.

"By the righteousness of God! It is not Our wish to lay hands on your
kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men. Upon them
the eyes of Baha are fastened. To this testifieth the Kingdom of Names,
could ye but comprehend it. Whoso followeth his Lord, will renounce the
world and all that is therein; how much greater, then, must be the
detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station! Forsake your palaces,
and haste ye to gain admittance into His Kingdom. This, indeed, will
profit you both in this world and in the next. To this testifieth the Lord
of the realm on high, did ye but know it.

"How great is the blessedness that awaiteth the king who will arise to aid
My Cause in My Kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but Me! Such
a king is numbered with the companions of the Crimson Ark, the Ark which
God hath prepared for the people of Baha. All must glorify his name, must
reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities with the keys of
My Name, the omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit the visible and
invisible kingdoms. Such a king is the very eye of mankind, the luminous
ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the
whole world. Offer up, O people of Baha, your substance, nay your very
lives, for his assistance."

And further, this evident arraignment in that same Book: "We have asked
nothing from you. For the sake of God We, verily, exhort you, and will be
patient as We have been patient in that which hath befallen Us at your
hands, O concourse of kings!"

Moreover, in His Tablet to Queen Victoria Baha'u'llah thus addresses all
the kings of the earth, summoning them to cleave to the Lesser Peace, as
distinct from that Most Great Peace which those who are fully conscious of
the power of His Revelation and avowedly profess the tenets of His Faith
can alone proclaim and must eventually establish:

"O kings of the earth! We see you increasing every year your expenditures,
and laying the burden thereof on your subjects. This, verily, is wholly
and grossly unjust. Fear the sighs and tears of this Wronged One, and lay
not excessive burdens on your peoples. Do not rob them to rear palaces for
yourselves; nay rather choose for them that which ye choose for
yourselves. Thus We unfold to your eyes that which profiteth you, if ye
but perceive. Your people are your treasures. Beware lest your rule
violate the commandments of God, and ye deliver your wards to the hands of
the robber. By them ye rule, by their means ye subsist, by their aid ye
conquer. Yet, how disdainfully ye look upon them! How strange, how very
strange!

"Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, hold ye fast unto this,
the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own
condition and that of your dependents.

"O rulers of the earth! Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may need
no more armaments save in a measure to safeguard your territories and
dominions. Beware lest ye disregard the counsel of the All-Knowing, the
Faithful.

"Be united, O kings of the earth, for thereby will the tempest of discord
be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest, if ye be of them that
comprehend. Should anyone among you take up arms against another, rise ye
all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice."

To the Christian kings Baha'u'llah, moreover, particularly directs His
words of censure, and, in a language that cannot be mistaken, He discloses
the true character of His Revelation:

"O kings of Christendom! Heard ye not the saying of Jesus, the Spirit of
God, 'I go away, and come again unto you'? Wherefore, then, did ye fail,
when He did come again unto you in the clouds of heaven, to draw nigh unto
Him, that ye might behold His face, and be of them that attained His
Presence? In another passage He saith: 'When He, the Spirit of Truth, is
come, He will guide you into all truth.' And yet, behold how, when He did
bring the truth, ye refused to turn your faces towards Him, and persisted
in disporting yourselves with your pastimes and fancies. Ye welcomed Him
not, neither did ye seek His Presence, that ye might hear the verses of
God from His own mouth, and partake of the manifold wisdom of the
Almighty, the All-Glorious, the All-Wise. Ye have, by reason of your
failure, hindered the breath of God from being wafted over you, and have
withheld from your souls the sweetness of its fragrance. Ye continue
roving with delight in the valley of your corrupt desires. Ye and all ye
possess shall pass away. Ye shall, most certainly, return to God, and
shall be called to account for your doings in the presence of Him Who
shall gather together the entire creation...."

The Bab, moreover, in the Qayyum-i-Asma, His celebrated commentary on the
Surih of Joseph, revealed in the first year of His Mission, and
characterized by Baha'u'llah as "the first, the greatest, and mightiest of
all books" in the Babi Dispensation, has issued this stirring call to the
kings and princes of the earth:

"O concourse of kings and of the sons of kings! Lay aside, one and all,
your dominion which belongeth unto God.... Vain indeed is your dominion,
for God hath set aside earthly possessions for such as have denied Him....
O concourse of kings! Deliver with truth and in all haste the verses sent
down by Us to the peoples of Turkey and of India, and beyond them, with
power and with truth, to lands in both the East and the West.... By God!
If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do well; and if ye deny God and
His signs, We, in very truth, having God, can well dispense with all
creatures and all earthly dominion."

And again: "Fear ye God, O concourse of kings, lest ye remain afar from
Him Who is His Remembrance [the Bab], after the Truth hath come unto you
with a Book and signs from God, as spoken through the wondrous tongue of
Him Who is His Remembrance. Seek ye grace from God, for God hath ordained
for you, after ye have believed in Him, a Garden the vastness of which is
as the vastness of the whole of Paradise."

So much for the epoch-making counsels and warnings collectively addressed
by the Bab and Baha'u'llah to the sovereigns of the earth, and more
particularly directed to the kings of Christendom. I would be failing to
do justice to my theme were I to ignore, or even to dismiss briefly, those
audacious, fate-laden apostrophes to individual monarchs who, whether as
kings or emperors, have either viewed with cold indifference the
tribulations, or rejected with contempt the warnings, of the twin Founders
of our Faith. I can neither quote as fully as I should from the two
thousand and more verses that have streamed from the pen of Baha'u'llah
and, to a lesser extent, from that of the Bab, addressed to individual
monarchs in Europe and Asia, nor is it my purpose to expatiate upon the
circumstances that have provoked, or the consequences that have flowed
from, those astounding utterances. The historian of the future, viewing
more widely and in fuller perspective the momentous happenings of the
Apostolic and Formative Ages of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, will no doubt be
able to evaluate accurately and to describe in a circumstantial manner the
causes, the implications and the effects of these Divine Messages which,
in their scope and effectiveness, have certainly no parallel in the
religious annals of mankind.

To the French Emperor, Napoleon III, Baha'u'llah addressed these words: "O
King of Paris! Tell the priest to ring the bells no longer. By God, the
True One! The Most Mighty Bell hath appeared in the form of Him Who is the
Most Great Name, and the fingers of the will of thy Lord, the Most
Exalted, the Most High, toll it out in the heaven of Immortality, in His
Name, the All-Glorious. Thus have the mighty verses of thy Lord been again
sent down unto thee, that thou mayest arise to remember God, the Creator
of earth and heaven, in these days when all the tribes of the earth have
mourned, and the foundations of the cities have trembled, and the dust of
irreligion hath enwrapped all men, except such as thy Lord, the
All-Knowing, the All-Wise, was pleased to spare.... Give ear, O King, unto
the Voice that calleth from the Fire which burneth in this Verdant Tree,
upon this Sinai which hath been raised above the hallowed and snow-white
Spot, beyond the Everlasting City: 'Verily, there is none other God but
Me, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most Merciful!' We, in truth, have sent Him
Whom We aided with the Holy Spirit [Jesus], that He may announce unto you
this Light that hath shone forth from the horizon of the will of your
Lord, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, and Whose signs have been
revealed in the West, that ye may set your faces towards Him
[Baha'u'llah], on this Day which God hath exalted above all other days,
and whereon the All-Merciful hath shed the splendor of His effulgent glory
upon all who are in heaven and all who are on earth. Arise thou to serve
God and help His Cause. He, verily, will assist thee with the hosts of the
seen and unseen, and will set thee king over all that whereon the sun
riseth. Thy Lord, in truth, is the All-Powerful, the Almighty.... Attire
thy temple with the ornament of My Name, and thy tongue with remembrance
of Me, and thine heart with love for Me, the Almighty, the Most High. We
have desired for thee naught except that which is better for thee than
what thou dost possess and all the treasures of the earth. Thy Lord,
verily, is knowing, informed of all....

"O King! We heard the words thou didst utter in answer to the Czar of
Russia, concerning the decision made regarding the war [Crimean War]. Thy
Lord, verily, knoweth, is informed of all. Thou didst say: 'I lay asleep
upon my couch, when the cry of the oppressed, who were drowned in the
Black Sea, wakened me.' This is what we heard thee say, and, verily, thy
Lord is witness unto what I say. We testify that that which wakened thee
was not their cry, but the promptings of thine own passions, for We tested
thee, and found thee wanting. Comprehend the meaning of My words, and be
thou of the discerning.... Hadst thou been sincere in thy words, thou
wouldst have not cast behind thy back the Book of God, when it was sent
unto thee by Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Wise. We have proved thee
through it, and found thee other than that which thou didst profess.
Arise, and make amends for that which escaped thee. Erelong the world and
all that thou possessest will perish, and the kingdom will remain unto
God, thy Lord and the Lord of thy fathers of old. It behooveth thee not to
conduct thine affairs according to the dictates of thy desires. Fear the
sighs of this Wronged One, and shield Him from the darts of such as act
unjustly. For what thou hast done, thy kingdom shall be thrown into
confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thine hands, as a punishment
for that which thou hast wrought. Then wilt thou know how thou hast
plainly erred. Commotions shall seize all the people in that land, unless
thou arisest to help this Cause, and followest Him Who is the Spirit of
God [Jesus] in this, the straight Path. Hath thy pomp made thee proud? By
My Life! It shall not endure; nay, it shall soon pass away, unless thou
holdest fast by this firm Cord. We see abasement hastening after thee,
while thou art of the heedless.... Abandon thy palaces to the people of
the graves, and thine empire to whosoever desireth it, and turn, then,
unto the Kingdom. This, verily, is what God hath chosen for thee, wert
thou of them that turn unto Him.... Shouldst thou desire to bear the
weight of thy dominion, bear it then to aid the Cause of thy Lord.
Glorified be this station which whoever attaineth thereunto hath attained
unto all good that proceedeth from Him Who is the All-Knowing, the
All-Wise.... Exultest thou over the treasures thou dost possess, knowing
they shall perish? Rejoicest thou in that thou rulest a span of earth,
when the whole world, in the estimation of the people of Baha, is worth as
much as the black in the eye of a dead ant? Abandon it unto such as have
set their affections upon it, and turn thou unto Him Who is the Desire of
the world. Whither are gone the proud and their palaces? Gaze thou into
their tombs, that thou mayest profit by this example, inasmuch as We made
it a lesson unto every beholder. Were the breezes of Revelation to seize
thee, thou wouldst flee the world, and turn unto the Kingdom, and wouldst
expend all thou possessest, that thou mayest draw nigh unto this sublime
Vision."





REVEALED TO THE POPE


To Pope Pius IX, Baha'u'llah revealed the following: "O Pope! Rend the
veils asunder. He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with
clouds, and the decree hath been fulfilled by God, the Almighty, the
Unrestrained.... He, verily, hath again come down from Heaven even as He
came down from it the first time. Beware that thou dispute not with Him
even as the Pharisees disputed with Him [Jesus] without a clear token or
proof. On His right hand flow the living waters of grace, and on His left
the choice Wine of justice, whilst before Him march the angels of
Paradise, bearing the banners of His signs. Beware lest any name debar
thee from God, the Creator of earth and heaven. Leave thou the world
behind thee, and turn towards thy Lord, through Whom the whole earth hath
been illumined.... Dwellest thou in palaces whilst He Who is the King of
Revelation liveth in the most desolate of abodes? Leave them unto such as
desire them, and set thy face with joy and delight towards the Kingdom....
Arise in the name of thy Lord, the God of Mercy, amidst the peoples of the
earth, and seize thou the Cup of Life with the hands of confidence, and
first drink thou therefrom, and proffer it then to such as turn towards it
amongst the peoples of all faiths....

"Call thou to remembrance Him Who was the Spirit [Jesus], Who, when He
came, the most learned of His age pronounced judgment against Him in His
own country, whilst he who was only a fisherman believed in Him. Take
heed, then, ye men of understanding heart! Thou, in truth, art one of the
suns of the heaven of His names. Guard thyself, lest darkness spread its
veils over thee, and fold thee away from His light.... Consider those who
opposed the Son [Jesus], when He came unto them with sovereignty and
power. How many the Pharisees who were waiting to behold Him, and were
lamenting over their separation from Him! And yet, when the fragrance of
His coming was wafted over them, and His beauty was unveiled, they turned
aside from Him and disputed with Him.... None save a very few, who were
destitute of any power amongst men, turned towards His face. And yet today
every man endowed with power and invested with sovereignty prideth himself
on His Name! In like manner, consider how numerous, in these days, are the
monks who, in My Name, have secluded themselves in their churches, and
who, when the appointed time was fulfilled, and We unveiled Our beauty,
knew Us not, though they call upon Me at eventide and at dawn....

"The Word which the Son concealed is made manifest. It hath been sent down
in the form of the human temple in this day. Blessed be the Lord Who is
the Father! He, verily, is come unto the nations in His most great
majesty. Turn your faces towards Him, O concourse of the righteous!
...This is the day whereon the Rock [Peter] crieth out and shouteth, and
celebrateth the praise of its Lord, the All-Possessing, the Most High,
saying: 'Lo! The Father is come, and that which ye were promised in the
Kingdom is fulfilled!...' My body longeth for the cross, and Mine head
waiteth the thrust of the spear, in the path of the All-Merciful, that the
world may be purged from its transgressions....

"O Supreme Pontiff! Incline thine ear unto that which the Fashioner of
moldering bones counseleth thee, as voiced by Him Who is His Most Great
Name. Sell all the embellished ornaments thou dost possess, and expend
them in the path of God, Who causeth the night to return upon the day, and
the day to return upon the night. Abandon thy kingdom unto the kings, and
emerge from thy habitation, with thy face set towards the Kingdom, and,
detached from the world, then speak forth the praises of thy Lord betwixt
earth and heaven. Thus hath bidden thee He Who is the Possessor of Names,
on the part of thy Lord, the Almighty, the All-Knowing. Exhort thou the
kings and say: 'Deal equitably with men. Beware lest ye transgress the
bounds fixed in the Book.' This indeed becometh thee. Beware lest thou
appropriate unto thyself the things of the world and the riches thereof.
Leave them unto such as desire them, and cleave unto that which hath been
enjoined upon thee by Him Who is the Lord of creation. Should anyone offer
thee all the treasures of the earth, refuse to even glance upon them. Be
as thy Lord hath been. Thus hath the Tongue of Revelation spoken that
which God hath made the ornament of the book of creation.... Should the
inebriation of the wine of My verses seize thee, and thou determinest to
present thyself before the throne of thy Lord, the Creator of earth and
heaven, make My love thy vesture, and thy shield remembrance of Me, and
thy provision reliance upon God, the Revealer of all power.... Verily, the
day of ingathering is come, and all things have been separated from each
other. He hath stored away that which He chose in the vessels of justice,
and cast into fire that which befitteth it. Thus hath it been decreed by
your Lord, the Mighty, the Loving, in this promised Day. He, verily,
ordaineth what He pleaseth. There is none other God save He, the Almighty,
the All-Compelling."

In the Tablet addressed to the Czar of Russia, Alexander II, we read: "O
Czar of Russia! Incline thine ear unto the voice of God, the King, the
Holy, and turn thou unto Paradise, the Spot wherein abideth He Who, among
the Concourse on high, beareth the most excellent titles, and Who, in the
kingdom of creation, is called by the name of God, the Effulgent, the
All-Glorious. Beware lest thy desire deter thee from turning towards the
face of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Most Merciful. We, verily, have
heard the thing for which thou didst supplicate thy Lord, whilst secretly
communing with Him. Wherefore, the breeze of My loving-kindness wafted
forth, and the sea of My mercy surged, and We answered thee in truth. Thy
Lord, verily, is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise. Whilst I lay chained and
fettered in the prison, one of thy ministers extended Me his aid.
Wherefore hath God ordained for thee a station which the knowledge of none
can comprehend except His knowledge. Beware lest thou barter away this
sublime station.... Beware lest thy sovereignty withhold thee from Him Who
is the Supreme Sovereign. He, verily, is come with His Kingdom, and all
the atoms cry aloud: 'Lo! The Lord is come in His great majesty!' He Who
is the Father is come, and the Son [Jesus], in the holy vale, crieth out:
'Here am I, here am I, O Lord, My God!', whilst Sinai circleth round the
House, and the Burning Bush calleth aloud: 'The All-Bounteous is come
mounted upon the clouds! Blessed is he that draweth nigh unto Him, and woe
betide them that are far away.'

"Arise thou amongst men in the name of this all-compelling Cause, and
summon, then, the nations unto God, the Exalted, the Great. Be thou not of
them who called upon God by one of His names, but who, when He Who is the
Object of all names appeared, denied Him and turned aside from Him, and,
in the end, pronounced sentence against Him with manifest injustice.
Consider and call thou to mind the days whereon the Spirit of God [Jesus]
appeared, and Herod gave judgment against Him. God, however, aided Him
with the hosts of the unseen, and protected Him with truth, and sent Him
down unto another land, according to His promise. He, verily, ordaineth
what He pleaseth. Thy Lord truly preserveth whom He willeth, be he in the
midst of the seas, or in the maw of the serpent, or beneath the sword of
the oppressor....

"Again I say: Hearken unto My voice that calleth from My prison, that it
may acquaint thee with the things that have befallen My Beauty, at the
hands of them that are the manifestations of My glory, and that thou
mayest perceive how great hath been My patience, notwithstanding My might,
and how immense My forebearance, notwithstanding My power. By My life!
Couldst thou but know the things sent down by My Pen, and discover the
treasures of My Cause, and the pearls of My mysteries which lie hid in the
seas of My names and in the goblets of My words, thou wouldst, in thy love
for My name, and in thy longing for My glorious and sublime Kingdom, lay
down thy life in My path. Know thou that though My body be beneath the
swords of My foes, and My limbs be beset with incalculable afflictions,
yet My spirit is filled with a gladness with which all the joys of the
earth can never compare.

"Set thine heart towards Him Who is the Point of adoration for the world,
and say: O peoples of the earth! Have ye denied the One in Whose path He
Who came with the truth, bearing the announcement of your Lord, the
Exalted, the Great, suffered martyrdom? Say: This is an Announcement
whereat the hearts of the Prophets and Messengers have rejoiced. This is
the One Whom the heart of the world remembereth, and is promised in the
Books of God, the Mighty, the All-Wise. The hands of the Messengers were,
in their desire to meet Me, upraised towards God, the Mighty, the
Glorified.... Some lamented in their separation from Me, others endured
hardships in My path, and still others laid down their lives for the sake
of My Beauty, could ye but know it. Say: I, verily, have not sought to
extol Mine Own Self, but rather God Himself, were ye to judge fairly.
Naught can be seen in Me except God and His Cause, could ye but perceive
it. I am the One Whom the tongue of Isaiah hath extolled, the One with
Whose name both the Torah and the Evangel were adorned. ...Blessed be the
king whose sovereignty hath withheld him not from his Sovereign, and who
hath turned unto God with his heart. He, verily, is accounted of those
that have attained unto that which God, the Mighty, the All-Wise, hath
willed. Erelong will such a one find himself numbered with the monarchs of
the realms of the Kingdom. Thy Lord is, in truth, potent over all things.
He giveth what He willeth to whomsoever He willeth, and withholdeth what
He pleaseth from whomsoever He willeth. He, verily, is the All-Powerful,
the Almighty."

To Queen Victoria Baha'u'llah has written: "O Queen in London! Incline
thine ear unto the voice of thy Lord, the Lord of all mankind, calling
from the Divine Lote-Tree: Verily, no God is there but Me, the Almighty,
the All-Wise! Cast away all that is on earth, and attire the head of thy
kingdom with the crown of the remembrance of thy Lord, the All-Glorious.
He, in truth, hath come unto the world in His most great glory, and all
that hath been mentioned in the Gospel hath been fulfilled. The land of
Syria hath been honored by the footsteps of its Lord, the Lord of all men,
and north and south are both inebriated with the wine of His presence.
Blessed is the man that inhaled the fragrance of the Most Merciful, and
turned unto the Dawning-Place of His Beauty, in this resplendent Dawn. The
Mosque of Aqsa vibrateth through the breezes of its Lord, the
All-Glorious, whilst Batha [Mecca] trembleth at the voice of God, the
Exalted, the Most High. Whereupon every single stone of them celebrateth
the praise of the Lord, through this Great Name.

"Lay aside thy desire, and set then thine heart towards thy Lord, the
Ancient of Days. We make mention of thee for the sake of God, and desire
that thy name may be exalted through thy remembrance of God, the Creator
of earth and heaven. He, verily, is witness unto that which I say. We have
been informed that thou hast forbidden the trading in slaves, both men and
women. This, verily, is what God hath enjoined in this wondrous
Revelation. God hath, truly, destined a reward for thee, because of this.
He, verily, will pay the doer of good his due recompense, wert thou to
follow what hath been sent unto thee by Him Who is the All-Knowing, the
All-Informed. As to him who turneth aside, and swelleth with pride, after
that the clear tokens have come unto him, from the Revealer of signs, his
work shall God bring to naught. He, in truth, hath power over all things.
Man's actions are acceptable after his having recognized [the
Manifestation]. He that turneth aside from the True One is indeed the most
veiled amongst His creatures. Thus hath it been decreed by Him Who is the
Almighty, the Most Powerful.

"We have also heard that thou hast entrusted the reins of counsel into the
hands of the representatives of the people. Thou, indeed, hast done well,
for thereby the foundations of the edifice of thine affairs will be
strengthened, and the hearts of all that are beneath thy shadow, whether
high or low, will be tranquilized. It behooveth them, however, to be
trustworthy among His servants, and to regard themselves as the
representatives of all that dwell on earth. This is what counseleth them,
in this Tablet, He Who is the Ruler, the All-Wise.... Blessed is he that
entereth the assembly for the sake of God, and judgeth between men with
pure justice. He, indeed, is of the blissful....

"Turn thou unto God and say: O my Sovereign Lord! I am but a vassal of
Thine, and Thou art, in truth, the King of kings. I have lifted my
suppliant hands unto the heaven of Thy grace and Thy bounties. Send down,
then, upon me from the clouds of Thy generosity that which will rid me of
all save Thee, and draw me nigh unto Thyself. I beseech Thee, O my Lord,
by Thy name, which Thou hast made the king of names and the manifestation
of Thyself to all who are in heaven and on earth, to rend asunder the
veils that have intervened between me and my recognition of the
Dawning-Place of Thy signs and the Dayspring of Thy Revelation. Thou art,
verily, the Almighty, the All-Powerful, the All-Bounteous. Deprive me not,
O my Lord, of the fragrances of the Robe of Thy mercy in Thy days, and
write down for me that which Thou hast written down for Thy handmaidens
who have believed in Thee and in Thy signs, and have recognized Thee, and
set their hearts towards the horizon of Thy Cause. Thou art truly the Lord
of the worlds and of those who show mercy the Most Merciful. Assist me,
then, O my God, to remember Thee amongst Thy handmaidens, and to aid Thy
Cause in Thy lands. Accept, then, that which hath escaped me when the
light of Thy countenance shone forth. Thou, indeed, hast power over all
things. Glory be to Thee, O Thou in Whose hand is the kingdom of the
heavens and of the earth."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book, Baha'u'llah thus addresses the
German Emperor, William I: "Say: O King of Berlin! Give ear unto the Voice
calling from this manifest Temple: Verily, there is none other God but Me,
the Everlasting, the Peerless, the Ancient of Days. Take heed lest pride
debar thee from recognizing the Dayspring of Divine Revelation, lest
earthly desires shut thee out, as by a veil, from the Lord of the Throne
above and of the earth below. Thus counseleth thee the Pen of the Most
High. He, verily, is the Most Gracious, the All-Bountiful. Do thou
remember the one whose power transcended thy power [Napoleon III], and
whose station excelled thy station. Where is he? Whither are gone the
things he possessed? Take warning, and be not of them that are fast
asleep. He it was who cast the Tablet of God behind him, when We made
known unto him what the hosts of tyranny had caused Us to suffer.
Wherefore, disgrace assailed him from all sides, and he went down to dust
in great loss. Think deeply, O King, concerning him, and concerning them
who, like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men. The
All-Merciful brought them down from their palaces to their graves. Be
warned, be of them who reflect."

And further, in that same Book, this remarkable prophecy: "O banks of the
Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of
retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And
We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous
glory."

Again in the Kitab-i-Aqdas these words, directed to Emperor Francis
Joseph, are recorded: "O Emperor of Austria! He who is the Dayspring of
God's Light dwelt in the prison of Akka, at the time when thou didst set
forth to visit the Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem]. Thou passed Him by, and
inquired not about Him, by Whom every house is exalted, and every lofty
gate unlocked. We, verily, made it [Jerusalem] a place whereunto the world
should turn, that they might remember Me, and yet thou hast rejected Him
Who is the Object of this remembrance, when He appeared with the Kingdom
of God, thy Lord and the Lord of the worlds. We have been with thee at all
times, and found thee clinging unto the Branch and heedless of the Root.
Thy Lord, verily, is a witness unto what I say. We grieved to see thee
circle round Our Name, whilst unaware of Us, though We were before thy
face. Open thine eyes, that thou mayest behold this glorious Vision, and
recognize Him Whom thou invokest in the daytime and in the night season,
and gaze on the Light that shineth above this luminous Horizon."

In the Suriy-i-Muluk Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz is addressed in the following
terms: "Hearken, O king, to the speech of Him that speaketh the truth, Him
that doth not ask thee to recompense Him with the things God hath chosen
to bestow upon thee, Him Who unerringly treadeth the straight Path. He it
is Who summoneth thee unto God, thy Lord, Who showeth thee the right
course, the way that leadeth to true felicity, that haply thou mayest be
of them with whom it shall be well.... He that giveth up himself wholly to
God, God shall, assuredly, be with him; and he that placeth his complete
trust in God, God shall, verily, protect him from whatsoever may harm him,
and shield him from the wickedness of every evil plotter.

"Wert thou to incline thine ear unto My speech and observe My counsel, God
would exalt thee to so eminent a position that the designs of no man on
the whole earth could ever touch or hurt thee. Observe, O king, with thine
inmost heart and with thy whole being, the precepts of God, and walk not
in the paths of the oppressor. Seize thou, and hold firmly within the
grasp of thy might, the reins of the affairs of thy people, and examine in
person whatever pertaineth unto them. Let nothing escape thee, for therein
lieth the highest good.

"Render thanks unto God for having chosen thee out of the whole world, and
made thee king over them that profess thy faith. It well beseemeth thee to
appreciate the wondrous favors with which God hath favored thee, and to
magnify continually His name. Thou canst best praise Him if thou lovest
His loved ones, and dost safeguard and protect His servants from the
mischief of the treacherous, that none may any longer oppress them. Thou
shouldst, moreover, arise to enforce the law of God amongst them, that
thou mayest be of those who are firmly established in His law.

"Shouldst thou cause rivers of justice to spread their waters amongst thy
subjects, God would surely aid thee with the hosts of the unseen and of
the seen, and would strengthen thee in thine affairs. No God is there but
Him. All creation and its empire are His. Unto Him return the works of the
faithful.

"Place not thy reliance on thy treasures. Put thy whole confidence in the
grace of God, thy Lord. Let Him be thy trust in whatever thou doest, and
be of them that have submitted themselves to His Will. Let Him be thy
helper and enrich thyself with His treasures, for with Him are the
treasuries of the heavens and of the earth. He bestoweth them upon whom He
will, and from whom He will He withholdeth them. There is none other God
but Him, the All-Possessing, the All-Praised. All are but paupers at the
door of His mercy; all are helpless before the revelation of His
sovereignty, and beseech His favors.

"Overstep not the bounds of moderation, and deal justly with them that
serve thee. Bestow upon them according to their needs, and not to the
extent that will enable them to lay up riches for themselves, to deck
their persons, to embellish their homes, to acquire the things that are of
no benefit unto them, and to be numbered with the extravagant. Deal with
them with undeviating justice, so that none among them may either suffer
want, or be pampered with luxuries. This is but manifest justice. Allow
not the abject to rule over and dominate them who are noble and worthy of
honor, and suffer not the high-minded to be at the mercy of the
contemptible and worthless, for this is what We observed upon Our arrival
in the City [Constantinople], and to it We bear witness....

"Set before thine eyes God's unerring Balance and, as one standing in His
Presence, weigh in that balance thine actions every day, every moment of
thy life. Bring thyself to account ere thou art summoned to a reckoning,
on the Day when no man shall have strength to stand for fear of God, the
Day when the hearts of the heedless ones shall be made to tremble....

"Thou art God's shadow on earth. Strive, therefore, to act in such a
manner as befitteth so eminent, so august a station. If thou dost depart
from following the things We have caused to descend upon thee and taught
thee, thou wilt, assuredly, be derogating from that great and priceless
honor. Return, then, and cleave wholly unto God, and cleanse thine heart
from the world and all its vanities, and suffer not the love of any
stranger to enter and dwell therein. Not until thou dost purify thine
heart from every trace of such love can the brightness of the light of God
shed its radiance upon it, for to none hath God given more than one heart.
This, verily, hath been decreed and written down in His ancient Book. And
as the human heart, as fashioned by God, is one and undivided, it
behooveth thee to take heed that its affections be, also, one and
undivided. Cleave thou, therefore, with the whole affection of thine
heart, unto His love, and withdraw it from the love of anyone besides Him,
that He may aid thee to immerse thyself in the ocean of His unity, and
enable thee to become a true upholder of His oneness....





LET THE OPPRESSOR DESIST


"Let thine ear be attentive, O King, to the words We have addressed thee.
Let the oppressor desist from his tyranny, and cut off the perpetrators of
injustice from among them that profess thy faith. By the righteousness of
God! The tribulations We have sustained are such that any pen that
recounteth them cannot but be overwhelmed with anguish. No one of them
that truly believe and uphold the unity of God can bear the burden of
their recital. So great have been Our sufferings that even the eyes of our
enemies have wept over Us, and beyond those of every discerning person.
And to all these trials have We been subjected, in spite of Our action in
approaching thee, and in bidding the people to enter beneath thy shadow,
that thou mightest be a stronghold unto them that believe in and uphold
the unity of God.

"Have I, O King, ever disobeyed thee? Have I, at any time, transgressed
any of thy laws? Can any of thy ministers that represent thee in 'Iraq
produce any proof that can establish My disloyalty to thee? No, by Him Who
is the Lord of all worlds! Not for one short moment did We rebel against
thee, or against any of thy ministers. Never, God willing, shall We revolt
against thee, though We be exposed to trials more severe than any We
suffered in the past. In the daytime and in the night season, at even and
at morn, We pray to God on thy behalf, that He may graciously aid thee to
be obedient unto Him and to observe His commandments, that He may shield
thee from the hosts of the evil ones. Do, therefore, as it pleaseth thee,
and treat Us as befitteth thy station and beseemeth thy sovereignty. Be
not forgetful of the law of God in whatever thou desirest to achieve, now
or in the days to come. Say: Praise be to God, the Lord of all worlds!"

Moreover, in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, is this vehement apostrophe to
Constantinople: "O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!
The throne of tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the
flame of hatred hath been kindled within thy bosom, in such wise that the
Concourse on high and they who circle around the Exalted Throne have
wailed and lamented. We behold in thee the foolish ruling over the wise,
and darkness vaunting itself against the light. Thou art indeed filled
with manifest pride. Hath thine outward splendor made thee vainglorious?
By Him Who is the Lord of mankind! It shall soon perish, and thy daughters
and thy widows and all the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament.
Thus informeth thee the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."

As to Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, the Lawh-i-Sultan, despatched to him from Akka
and constituting Baha'u'llah's lengthiest Epistle to any single sovereign,
proclaims: "O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch,
when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught
Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but
from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me lift up My voice
between earth and heaven, and for this there befell Me what hath caused
the tears of every man of understanding to flow. The learning current
amongst men I studied not; their schools I entered not. Ask of the city
wherein I dwelt, that thou mayest be well assured that I am not of them
who speak falsely. This is but a leaf which the winds of the will of thy
Lord, the Almighty, the All-Praised, have stirred. Can it be still when
the tempestuous winds are blowing? Nay, by Him Who is the Lord of all
Names and Attributes! They move it as they list. The evanescent is as
nothing before Him Who is the Ever-Abiding. His all-compelling summons
hath reached Me, and caused Me to speak His praise amidst all people. I
was indeed as one dead when His behest was uttered. The hand of the will
of thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful, transformed Me. Can anyone
speak forth of his own accord that for which all men, both high and low,
will protest against him? Nay, by Him Who taught the Pen the eternal
mysteries, save him whom the grace of the Almighty, the All-Powerful, hath
strengthened. The Pen of the Most High addresseth Me saying: Fear not.
Relate unto His Majesty the _Sh_ah that which befell thee. His heart,
verily, is between the fingers of thy Lord, the God of Mercy, that haply
the sun of justice and bounty may shine forth above the horizon of his
heart. Thus hath the decree been irrevocably fixed by Him Who is the
All-Wise.

"Look upon this Youth, O King, with the eyes of justice; judge thou, then,
with truth concerning what hath befallen Him. Of a verity, God hath made
thee His shadow amongst men, and the sign of His power unto all that dwell
on earth. Judge thou between Us and them that have wronged Us without
proof and without an enlightening Book. They that surround thee love thee
for their own sakes, whereas this Youth loveth thee for thine own sake,
and hath had no desire except to draw thee nigh unto the seat of grace,
and to turn thee toward the right hand of justice. Thy Lord beareth
witness unto that which I declare.

"O King! Wert thou to incline thine ear unto the shrill of the Pen of
Glory and the cooing of the Dove of Eternity which, on the branches of the
Lote-Tree beyond which there is no passing, uttereth praises to God, the
Maker of all names and Creator of earth and heaven, thou wouldst attain
unto a station from which thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught
save the effulgence of the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty
as the most contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever
might desire it, and setting thy face toward the Horizon aglow with the
light of His countenance. Neither wouldst thou ever be willing to bear the
burden of dominion save for the purpose of helping thy Lord, the Exalted,
the Most High. Then would the Concourse on high bless thee. O how
excellent is this most sublime station, couldst thou ascend thereunto
through the power of a sovereignty recognized as derived from the Name of
God!...

"O King of the age! The eyes of these refugees are turned towards and
fixed upon the mercy of the Most Merciful. No doubt is there whatever that
these tribulations will be followed by the outpourings of a supreme mercy,
and these dire adversities be succeeded by an overflowing prosperity. We
fain would hope, however, that His Majesty the _Sh_ah will himself examine
these matters, and bring hope to the hearts. That which We have submitted
to thy Majesty is indeed for thine highest good. And God, verily, is a
sufficient witness unto Me....

"O would that thou wouldst permit Me, O _Sh_ah, to send unto thee that
which would cheer the eyes, and tranquilize the souls, and persuade every
fair-minded person that with Him is the knowledge of the Book.... But for
the repudiation of the foolish and the connivance of the divines, I would
have uttered a discourse that would have thrilled and carried away the
hearts unto a realm from the murmur of whose winds can be heard: 'No God
is there but He!'...

"I have seen, O _Sh_ah, in the path of God what eye hath not seen nor ear
heard.... How numerous the tribulations which have rained, and will soon
rain, upon Me! I advance with My face set towards Him Who is the Almighty,
the All-Bounteous, whilst behind Me glideth the serpent. Mine eyes have
rained down tears until My bed is drenched. I sorrow not for Myself,
however. By God! Mine head yearneth for the spear out of love for its
Lord. I never passed a tree, but Mine heart addressed it saying: 'O would
that thou wert cut down in My name, and My body crucified upon thee, in
the path of My Lord!'... By God! Though weariness lay Me low, and hunger
consume Me, and the bare rock be My bed, and My fellows the beasts of the
field, I will not complain, but will endure patiently as those endued with
constancy and firmness have endured patiently, through the power of God,
the Eternal King and Creator of the nations, and will render thanks unto
God under all conditions. We pray that, out of His bounty--exalted be He--He
may release, through this imprisonment, the necks of men from chains and
fetters, and cause them to turn, with sincere faces, towards His Face, Who
is the Mighty, the Bounteous. Ready is He to answer whosover calleth upon
Him, and nigh is He unto such as commune with Him."

In the Qayyum-i-Asma the Bab, for His part, thus addresses Muhammad
_Sh_ah: "O King of Islam! Aid thou, with the truth, after having aided the
Book, Him Who is Our Most Great Remembrance, for God hath, in very truth,
destined for thee, and for such as circle round thee, on the Day of
Judgment, a responsible position in His Path. I swear by God, O _Sh_ah! If
thou showest enmity unto Him Who is His Remembrance, God will, on the Day
of Resurrection, condemn thee, before the kings, unto hellfire, and thou
shalt not, in very truth, find on that Day any helper except God, the
Exalted. Purge thou, O _Sh_ah, the Sacred Land [Tihran] from such as have
repudiated the Book, ere the day whereon the Remembrance of God cometh,
terribly and of a sudden, with His potent Cause, by the leave of God, the
Most High. God, verily, hath prescribed to thee to submit unto Him Who is
His Remembrance, and unto His Cause, and to subdue, with the truth and by
His leave, the countries, for in this world thou hast been mercifully
invested with sovereignty, and will, in the next, dwell, nigh unto the
Seat of Holiness, with the inmates of the Paradise of His good pleasure.
Let not thy sovereignty deceive thee, O _Sh_ah, for 'every soul shall
taste of death,' and this, in very truth, hath been written down as a
decree of God."

In His Tablet to Muhammad _Sh_ah the Bab, moreover, has revealed: "I am
the Primal Point from which have been generated all created things. I am
the Countenance of God Whose splendor can never be obscured, the Light of
God Whose radiance can never fade.... All the keys of heaven God hath
chosen to place on My right hand, and all the keys of hell on My left....
I am one of the sustaining pillars of the Primal Word of God. Whosoever
hath recognized Me, hath known all that is true and right, and hath
attained all that is good and seemly.... The substance wherewith God hath
created Me is not the clay out of which others have been formed. He hath
conferred upon Me that which the worldly-wise can never comprehend, nor
the faithful discover....

"By My life! But for the obligation to acknowledge the Cause of Him Who is
the Testimony of God ... I would not have announced this unto thee.... In
that same year [year 60] I despatched a messenger and a book unto thee,
that thou mightest act towards the Cause of Him Who is the Testimony of
God as befitteth the station of thy sovereignty....

"I swear by the truth of God! Were he who hath been willing to treat Me in
such a manner to know who it is whom he hath so treated, he, verily, would
never in his life be happy. Nay--I, verily, acquaint thee with the truth of
the matter--it is as if he hath imprisoned all the Prophets, and all the
men of truth, and all the chosen ones.... Woe betide him from whose hands
floweth evil, and blessed the man from whose hands floweth good....

"I swear by God! I seek no earthly goods from thee, be it as much as a
mustard seed.... I swear by the truth of God! Wert thou to know that which
I know, thou wouldst forego the sovereignty of this world and of the next,
that thou mightest attain My good pleasure, through thine obedience unto
the True One.... Wert thou to refuse, the Lord of the world would raise up
one who will exalt His Cause, and the Command of God will, verily, be
carried into effect."





GOD'S VICAR ON EARTH


Dear friends! How vast a panorama these gemlike, these soul-searching
divinely uttered pronouncements outspread before our eyes! What memories
they evoke! How sublime the principles they inculcate! What hopes they
engender! What apprehensions they excite! And yet how fragmentary must
these above-quoted words, suited as they are to the immediate purpose of
my theme, appear when compared with the torrential majesty which only the
reading of the full text can disclose! He Who was God's Vicar on earth,
addressing, at the most critical moment when His Revelation was attaining
its zenith, those who concentrated in their persons the splendor, the
sovereignty, and the strength of earthly dominion, could certainly not
subtract one jot or tittle from the weight and force which the
presentation of so historic a Message demanded. Neither the perils which
were fast closing in upon Him, nor the formidable power with which the
doctrine of absolute sovereignty invested, at that time, the emperors of
the West and the potentates of the East, could restrain the Exile and
Prisoner of Adrianople from communicating the full blast of His Message to
His twin imperial persecutors as well as to the rest of their
fellow-sovereigns.

The magnitude and diversity of the theme, the cogency of the argument, the
sublimity and audacity of the language, arrest our attention and astound
our minds. Emperors, kings and princes, chancellors and ministers, the
Pope himself, priests, monks and philosophers, the exponents of learning,
parliamentarians and deputies, the rich ones of the earth, the followers
of all religions, and the people of Baha--all are brought within the
purview of the Author of these Messages, and receive, each according to
their merits, the counsels and admonitions they deserve. No less amazing
is the diversity of the subjects touched upon in these Tablets. The
transcendent majesty and unity of an unknowable and unapproachable God is
extolled, and the oneness of His Messengers proclaimed and emphasized. The
uniqueness, the universality and potentialities of the Baha'i Faith are
stressed, and the purpose and character of the Babi Revelation unfolded.
The significance of Baha'u'llah's sufferings and banishments is disclosed,
and the tribulations rained down upon His Herald and upon His Namesake
recognized and lamented. His own yearning for the crown of martyrdom,
which they both so mysteriously won, is voiced, and the ineffable glories
and wonders in store for His own Dispensation foreshadowed. Episodes, at
once moving and marvelous, at various stages of His ministry, are
recounted, and the transitoriness of worldly pomp, fame, riches, and
sovereignty, repeatedly and categorically asserted. Appeals for the
application of the highest principles in human and international relations
are forcibly and insistently made, and the abandonment of discreditable
practices and conventions, detrimental to the happiness, the growth, the
prosperity and the unity of the human race, enjoined. Kings are censured,
ecclesiastical dignitaries arraigned, ministers and plenipotentiaries
condemned, and the identification of His advent with the coming of the
Father Himself unequivocally admitted and repeatedly announced. The
violent downfall of a few of these kings and emperors is prophesied, two
of them are definitely challenged, most are warned, all are appealed to
and exhorted.

In the Lawh-i-Sultan (Tablet to the _Sh_ah of Persia) Baha'u'llah
declares: "Would that the world-adorning wish of His Majesty might decree
that this Servant be brought face to face with the divines of the age, and
produce proofs and testimonies in the presence of His Majesty the _Sh_ah!
This Servant is ready, and taketh hope in God, that such a gathering may
be convened in order that the truth of the matter may be made clear and
manifest before His Majesty the _Sh_ah. It is then for thee to command,
and I stand ready before the throne of thy sovereignty. Decide, then, for
Me or against Me."

And moreover, in the Lawh-i-Ra'is, Baha'u'llah, recalling His conversation
with the Turkish officer charged with the task of enforcing His banishment
to the fortress-town of Akka, has written: "There is a matter, which, if
thou findest it possible, I request thee to submit to His Majesty the
Sultan, that for ten minutes this Youth be enabled to meet him, so that he
may demand whatsoever he deemeth as a sufficient testimony and regardeth
as proof of the veracity of Him Who is the Truth. Should God enable Him to
produce it, let him, then, release these wronged ones, and leave them to
themselves." "He promised," Baha'u'llah adds in that Tablet, "to transmit
this message, and to give Us his reply. We received, however, no news from
him. Although it becometh not Him Who is the Truth to present Himself
before any person, inasmuch as all have been created to obey Him, yet in
view of the condition of these little children and the large number of
women so far removed from their friends and countries, We have acquiesced
in this matter. In spite of this nothing hath resulted. Umar himself is
alive and accessible. Inquire from him, that the truth may be made known
unto you."

Referring to these Tablets addressed to the sovereigns of the earth, and
which 'Abdu'l-Baha has acclaimed as a "miracle," Baha'u'llah has written:
"Each one of them hath been designated by a special name. The first hath
been named 'The Rumbling,' the second, 'The Blow,' the third, 'The
Inevitable,' the fourth, 'The Plain,' the fifth, 'The Catastrophe,' and
the others, 'The Stunning Trumpet Blast,' 'The Near Event,' 'The Great
Terror,' 'The Trumpet,' 'The Bugle,' and their like, so that all the
peoples of the earth may know, of a certainty, and may witness, with
outward and inner eyes, that He Who is the Lord of Names hath prevailed,
and will continue to prevail, under all conditions, over all men.... Never
since the beginning of the world hath the Message been so openly
proclaimed.... Glorified be this Power which hath shone forth and
compassed the worlds! This act of the Causer of Causes hath, when
revealed, produced two results. It hath at once sharpened the swords of
the infidels, and unloosed the tongues of such as have turned towards Him
in His remembrance and praise. This is the effect of the fertilizing
winds, mention of which hath been made aforetime in the Lawh-i-Haykal. The
whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it
will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth
the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly
blessings. Immeasurably exalted is the breeze that wafteth from the
garment of thy Lord, the Glorified! For lo, it hath breathed its fragrance
and made all things new! Well it is with them that comprehend. It is
indubitably clear and evident that in these things He Who is the Lord of
Revelation hath sought nothing for Himself. Though aware that they would
lead to tribulations, and be the cause of troubles and afflictive trials,
He, solely as a token of His loving-kindness and favor, and for the
purpose of quickening the dead and of manifesting the Cause of the Lord of
all Names and Attributes, and of redeeming all who are on earth, hath
closed His eyes to His own well-being and borne that which no other person
hath borne or will bear."

The most important of His Tablets addressed to individual sovereigns
Baha'u'llah ordered to be written in the form of a pentacle, symbolizing
the temple of man, including therein, as a conclusion, the following words
which reveal the importance He attached to those Messages, and indicate
their direct association with the prophecy of the Old Testament: "Thus
have We built the Temple with the hands of power and might, could ye but
know it. This is the Temple promised unto you in the Book. Draw ye nigh
unto it. This is that which profiteth you, could ye but comprehend it. Be
fair, O peoples of the earth! Which is preferable, this, or a temple which
is built of clay? Set your faces towards it. Thus have ye been commanded
by God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. Follow ye His bidding, and
praise ye God, your Lord, for that which He hath bestowed upon you. He,
verily, is the Truth. No God is there but He. He revealeth what He
pleaseth, through His words 'Be and it is.'"

Referring to this same subject, He, in one of His Tablets, thus addresses
the followers of Jesus Christ: "O concourse of the followers of the Son!
Verily, the Temple hath been built with the hands of the will of your
Lord, the Almighty, the All-Bounteous. Bear, then, witness, O people, unto
that which I say: Which is preferable, that which is built of clay, or
that which is built by the hands of your Lord, the Revealer of verses?
This is the Temple promised unto you in the Tablets. It calleth aloud: 'O
followers of religions! Haste ye to attain unto Him Who is the Source of
all causes, and follow not every infidel and doubter.'"

It should not be forgotten that, apart from these specific Tablets in
which the kings of the earth are severally and collectively addressed,
Baha'u'llah has revealed other Tablets--the Lawh-i-Ra'is being an
outstanding example--and interspersed the mass of His voluminous writings
with unnumbered passages, in which direct addresses, as well as
references, have been made to ministers, governments, and their accredited
representatives. I am not concerned, however, with such addresses and
references, which, vital as they are, cannot be regarded as being endowed
with that peculiar pregnancy which direct and specific messages, voiced by
the Manifestation of God and directed to the world's Chief Magistrates in
His day, must possess.

Dear friends! Enough has been said to portray the tribulations which, for
so long a time, overwhelmed the Founders of so preeminent a Revelation,
and which the world has so disastrously ignored. Sufficient attention has
also been directed to the Messages addressed to those sovereign rulers
who, either in the exercise of their unconditioned authority, have
deliberately provoked these sufferings, or could have, in the plenitude of
their power, arisen to mitigate their effect or deflect their tragic
course. Let us now consider the consequences that have ensued. The
reaction of these monarchs was, as already stated, varied and unmistakable
and, as the march of events has gradually unfolded, disastrous in its
consequences. One of the most outstanding amongst these sovereigns treated
the Divine Summons with gross disrespect, dismissing it with a curt and
insolent reply, written by one of his ministers. Another laid violent hold
on the bearer of the Message, tortured, branded, and brutally slew him.
Others preferred to maintain a contemptuous silence. All failed completely
in their duty to arise and extend their assistance. Two of them, in
particular, prompted by the dual impulse of fear and anger, tightened
their grip on the Cause they had jointly resolved to uproot. The one
condemned his Divine Prisoner to yet another banishment, to "the most
unsightly of cities in appearance, the most detestable in climate, and the
foulest in water," whilst the other, powerless to lay hands on the Prime
Mover of a hated Faith, subjected its adherents under his sway to abject
and savage cruelties. The recital of Baha'u'llah's sufferings, embodied in
those Messages, failed to evoke compassion in their hearts. His appeals,
the like of which neither the annals of Christianity nor even those of
Islam have recorded, were disdainfully rejected. The dark warnings He
uttered were haughtily scorned. The bold challenges He issued were
ignored. The chastisements He predicted they derisively brushed aside.

What, then--might we not consider--has, in the face of so complete and
ignominious a rejection, happened, and is still happening, in the course,
and particularly in the closing years, of this, the first Baha'i century,
a century fraught with such tumultuous sufferings and violent outrages for
the persecuted Faith of Baha'u'llah? Empires fallen in dust, kingdoms
subverted, dynasties extinguished, royalty besmirched, kings assassinated,
poisoned, driven into exile, subjugated in their own realms, whilst the
few remaining thrones are trembling with the repercussions of the fall of
their fellows.

This process, so gigantic, so catastrophic, may be said to have had its
inception on that memorable night when, in an obscure corner of _Sh_iraz,
the Bab, in the presence of the First Letter to believe in Him, revealed
the first chapter of His celebrated commentary on the Surih of Joseph (The
Qayyum-i-Asma), in which He trumpeted His Call to the sovereigns and
princes of the earth. It passed from incubation to visible manifestation
when Baha'u'llah's prophecies, enshrined for all time in the
Suriy-i-Haykal, and uttered before Napoleon III's dramatic downfall and
the self-imposed imprisonment of Pope Pius IX in the Vatican, were
fulfilled. It gathered momentum when, in the days of 'Abdu'l-Baha, the
Great War extinguished the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, and Hapsburg
dynasties, and converted powerful time-honored monarchies into republics.
It was further accelerated, soon after 'Abdu'l-Baha's passing, by the
demise of the effete Qajar dynasty in Persia, and the stupendous collapse
of both the Sultanate and the Caliphate. It is still operating, under our
very eyes, as we behold the fate which, in the course of this colossal and
ravaging struggle, is successively overtaking the crowned heads of the
European continent. Surely, no man, contemplating dispassionately the
manifestations of this relentless revolutionizing process, within
comparatively so short a time, can escape the conclusion that the last
hundred years may well be regarded, in so far as the fortunes of royalty
are concerned, as one of the most cataclysmic periods in the annals of
mankind.





HUMILIATION IMMEDIATE AND COMPLETE


Of all the monarchs of the earth, at the time when Baha'u'llah,
proclaiming His Message to them, revealed the Suriy-i-Muluk in Adrianople,
the most august and influential were the French Emperor and the Supreme
Pontiff. In the political and religious spheres they respectively held the
foremost rank, and the humiliation both suffered was alike immediate and
complete.

Napoleon III, son of Louis Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I), was, few
historians will deny, the most outstanding monarch of his day in the West.
"The Emperor," it was said of him, "was the state." The French capital was
the most attractive capital in Europe, the French court "the most
brilliant and luxurious of the XIX century." Possessed of a fixed and
indestructible ambition, he aspired to emulate the example, and finish the
interrupted work, of his imperial uncle. A dreamer, a conspirator, of a
shifting nature, hypocritical and reckless, he, the heir to the Napoleonic
throne, taking advantage of the policy which sought to foster the reviving
interest in the career of his great prototype, had sought to overthrow the
monarchy. Failing in his attempt, he was deported to America, was later
captured in the course of an attempted invasion of France, was condemned
to perpetual captivity, and escaped to London, until, in 1848, the
Revolution brought about his return, and enabled him to overthrow the
constitution, after which he was proclaimed emperor. Though able to
initiate far-reaching movements, he possessed neither the sagacity nor the
courage required to control them.

To this man, the last emperor of the French, who, through foreign
conquest, had striven to endear his dynasty to the people, who even
cherished the ideal of making France the center of a revived Roman
Empire--to such a man the Exile of Akka, already thrice banished by Sultan
'Abdu'l-'Aziz, had transmitted, from behind the walls of the barracks in
which He lay imprisoned, an Epistle which bore this indubitably clear
arraignment and ominous prophecy: "We testify that that which wakened thee
was not their cry [Turks drowned in the Black Sea], but the promptings of
thine own passions, for We tested thee, and found thee wanting.... Hadst
thou been sincere in thy words, thou wouldst not have cast behind thy back
the Book of God [previous Tablet], when it was sent unto thee by Him Who
is the Almighty, the All-Wise. ...For what thou hast done, thy kingdom
shall be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thine
hands, as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought."

Baha'u'llah's previous Message, forwarded through one of the French
ministers to the Emperor, had been accorded a welcome the nature of which
can be conjectured from the words recorded in the "Epistle to the Son of
the Wolf": "To this [first Tablet], however, he did not reply. After Our
arrival in the Most Great Prison there reached Us a letter from his
minister, the first part of which was in Persian, and the latter in his
own handwriting. In it he was cordial, and wrote the following: 'I have,
as requested by you, delivered your letter, and until now have received no
answer. We have, however, issued the necessary recommendations to our
Minister in Constantinople and our consuls in those regions. If there be
anything you wish done, inform us, and we will carry it out.' From his
words it became apparent that he understood the purpose of this Servant to
have been a request for material assistance."

In His first Tablet Baha'u'llah, wishing to test the sincerity of the
Emperor's motives, and deliberately assuming a meek and unprovocative
tone, had, after expatiating on the sufferings He had endured, addressed
him the following words: "Two statements graciously uttered by the king of
the age have reached the ears of these wronged ones. These pronouncements
are, in truth, the king of all pronouncements, the like of which have
never been heard from any sovereign. The first was the answer given the
Russian government when it inquired why the war [Crimean] was waged
against it. Thou didst reply: 'The cry of the oppressed who, without guilt
or blame, were drowned in the Black Sea wakened me at dawn. Wherefore, I
took up arms against thee.' These oppressed ones, however, have suffered a
greater wrong, and are in greater distress. Whereas the trials inflicted
upon those people lasted but one day, the troubles borne by these servants
have continued for twenty and five years, every moment of which has held
for us a grievous affliction. The other weighty statement, which was
indeed a wondrous statement, manifested to the world, was this: 'Ours is
the responsibility to avenge the oppressed and succor the helpless.' The
fame of the Emperor's justice and fairness hath brought hope to a great
many souls. It beseemeth the king of the age to inquire into the condition
of such as have been wronged, and it behooveth him to extend his care to
the weak. Verily, there hath not been, nor is there now, on earth anyone
as oppressed as we are, or as helpless as these wanderers."

It is reported that upon receipt of this first Message that superficial,
tricky, and pride-intoxicated monarch flung down the Tablet saying: "If
this man is God, I am two gods!" The transmitter of the second Tablet had,
it is reliably stated, in order to evade the strict surveillance of the
guards, concealed it in his hat, and was able to deliver it to the French
agent, who resided in Akka, and who, as attested by Nabil in his
Narrative, translated it into French and sent it to the Emperor, he
himself becoming a believer when he had later witnessed the fulfillment of
so remarkable a prophecy.

The significance of the somber and pregnant words uttered by Baha'u'llah
in His second Tablet was soon revealed. He who was actuated in provoking
the Crimean War by his selfish desires, who was prompted by a personal
grudge against the Russian Emperor, who was impatient to tear up the
Treaty of 1815 in order to avenge the disaster of Moscow, and who sought
to shed military glory over his throne, was soon himself engulfed by a
catastrophe that hurled him in the dust, and caused France to sink from
her preeminent station among the nations to that of a fourth power in
Europe.

The Battle of Sedan in 1870 sealed the fate of the French Emperor. The
whole of his army was broken up and surrendered, constituting the greatest
capitulation hitherto recorded in modern history. A crushing indemnity was
exacted. He himself was taken prisoner. His only son, the Prince Imperial,
was killed, a few years later, in the Zulu War. The Empire collapsed, its
program unrealized. The Republic was proclaimed. Paris was subsequently
besieged and capitulated. "The terrible Year" marked by civil war,
exceeding in its ferocity the Franco-German War, followed. William I, the
Prussian king, was proclaimed German Emperor in the very palace which
stood as a "mighty monument and symbol of the power and pride of Louis
XIV, a power which had been secured to some extent by the humiliation of
Germany." Deposed by a disaster "so appalling that it resounded throughout
the world," this false and boastful monarch suffered in the end, and till
his death, the same exile as that which, in the case of Baha'u'llah, he
had so heartlessly ignored.

A humiliation less spectacular yet historically more significant awaited
Pope Pius IX. It was to him who regarded himself as the Vicar of Christ
that Baha'u'llah wrote that "the Word which the Son [Jesus] concealed is
made manifest," that "it hath been sent down in the form of the human
temple," that the Word was Himself, and He Himself the Father. It was to
him who styling himself "the servant of the servants of God" that the
Promised One of all ages, unveiling His station in its plenitude,
announced that "He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with
clouds." It was he, who, claiming to be the successor of St. Peter, was
reminded by Baha'u'llah that "this is the day whereon the Rock [Peter]
crieth out and shouteth ... saying: 'Lo, the Father is come, and that
which ye were promised in the Kingdom is fulfilled.'" It was he, the
wearer of the triple crown, who later became the first prisoner of the
Vatican, who was commanded by the Divine Prisoner of Akka to "leave his
palaces unto such as desire them," to "sell all the embellished ornaments"
he possessed, and to "expend them in the path of God," and to "abandon his
kingdom unto the kings," and emerge from his habitation with his face "set
towards the Kingdom."

Count Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola, the 254th pope since the inception
of St. Peter's primacy, who had been elevated to the apostolic throne two
years after the Declaration of the Bab, and the duration of whose
pontificate exceeded that of any of his predecessors, will be permanently
remembered as the author of the Bull which declared the Immaculate
Conception of the Blessed Virgin (1854), referred to in the Kitab-i-Iqan,
to be a doctrine of the Church, and as the promulgator of the new dogma of
Papal Infallibility (1870). Authoritarian by nature, a poor statesman,
disinclined to conciliation, determined to preserve all his authority, he,
while he succeeded through his assumption of an ultramontane attitude in
defining further his position and in reinforcing his spiritual authority,
failed, in the end, to maintain that temporal rule which, for so many
centuries, had been exercised by the heads of the Catholic Church.

This temporal power had, throughout the ages, shrunk to insignificant
proportions. The decades preceding its extinction were fraught with the
gravest vicissitudes. As the sun of Baha'u'llah's Revelation was mounting
to full meridian splendor, the shadows that beset the dwindling patrimony
of St. Peter were correspondingly deepening. The Tablet of Baha'u'llah,
addressed to Pius IX, precipitated its extinction. A hasty glance at the
course of its ebbing fortunes, during those decades, will suffice.
Napoleon I had driven the Pope from his estates. The Congress of Vienna
had reestablished him as their head and their administration in the hands
of the priests. Corruption, disorganization, impotence to ensure internal
security, the restoration of the inquisition, had induced an historian to
assert that "no land of Italy, perhaps of Europe, except Turkey, is ruled
as is this ecclesiastical state." Rome was "a city of ruins, both material
and moral." Insurrections led to Austria's intervention. Five great Powers
demanded the introduction of far-reaching reforms, which the Pope promised
but failed to carry out. Austria again reasserted herself, and was opposed
by France. Both watched each other on the Papal estates until 1838, when,
on their withdrawal, absolutism was again restored. The Pope's temporal
power was now denounced by some of his own subjects, heralding its
extinction in 1870. Internal complications forced him to flee, in the dead
of night and in the disguise of a humble priest, from Rome which was
declared a republic. It was later restored by the French to its former
status. The creation of the kingdom of Italy, the shifting policy of
Napoleon III, the disaster of Sedan, the misdeeds of the Papal government
denounced by Clarendon, at the Congress of Paris, terminating the Crimean
War, as a "disgrace to Europe," sealed the fate of that tottering
dominion.

In 1870, after Baha'u'llah had revealed His Epistle to Pius IX, King
Victor Emmanuel II went to war with the Papal states, and his troops
entered Rome and seized it. On the eve of its seizure, the Pope repaired
to the Lateran and, despite his age and with his face bathed in tears,
ascended on bended knees the Scala Santa. The following morning, as the
cannonade began, he ordered the white flag to be hoisted above the dome of
St. Peter. Despoiled, he refused to recognize this "creation of
revolution," excommunicated the invaders of his states, denounced Victor
Emmanuel as the "robber King" and as "forgetful of every religious
principle, despising every right, trampling upon every law." Rome, "the
Eternal City, on which rest twenty-five centuries of glory," and over
which the Popes had ruled in unchallengeable right for ten centuries,
finally became the seat of the new kingdom, and the scene of that
humiliation which Baha'u'llah had anticipated and which the Prisoner of
the Vatican had imposed upon himself.

"The last years of the old Pope," writes a commentator on his life, "were
filled with anguish. To his physical infirmities was added the sorrow of
beholding, all too often, the Faith outraged in the very heart of Rome,
the religious orders despoiled and persecuted, the Bishops and priests
debarred from exercising their functions."

Every effort to retrieve the situation created in 1870 proved fruitless.
The Archbishop of Posen went to Versailles to solicit Bismarck's
intervention in behalf of the Papacy, but was coldly received. Later a
Catholic party was organized in Germany to bring political pressure on the
German Chancellor. All, however, was in vain. The mighty process already
referred to had to pursue inexorably its course. Even now, after the lapse
of above half a century, the so-called restoration of temporal sovereignty
has but served to throw into greater relief the helplessness of this
erstwhile potent Prince, at whose name kings trembled and to whose dual
sovereignty they willingly submitted. This temporal sovereignty,
practically confined to the miniscule City of the Vatican, and leaving
Rome the undisputed possession of a secular monarchy, has been obtained at
the price of unreserved recognition, so long withheld, of the Kingdom of
Italy. The Treaty of the Lateran, claiming to have resolved once and for
all the Roman Question, has indeed assured to a secular Power, in respect
of the Enclaved City, a liberty of action which is fraught with
uncertainty and peril. "The two souls of the Eternal City," a Catholic
writer has observed, "have been separated from each other, only to collide
more severely than ever before."

Well might the Sovereign Pontiff recall the reign of the most powerful
among his predecessors, Innocent III who, during the eighteen years of his
pontificate, raised and deposed the kings and the emperors, whose
interdicts deprived nations of the exercise of Christian worship, at the
feet of whose legate the King of England surrendered his crown, and at
whose voice the fourth and the fifth crusades were both undertaken.

Might not the process, to which reference has already been made, manifest,
in the course of its operation, during the tumultuous years in store for
mankind, and in this same domain, a commotion still more devastating than
it has yet produced?

The dramatic collapse of both the Third Empire and the Napoleonic dynasty,
the virtual extinction of the temporal sovereignty of the Supreme Pontiff,
in the lifetime of Baha'u'llah, were but the precursors of still greater
catastrophes that may be said to have marked the ministry of 'Abdu'l-Baha.
The forces unleashed by a conflict, the full significance of which still
remains unfathomed, and which may be considered as a prelude to this, the
most devastating of all wars, can well be regarded as the occasion of
these dreadful catastrophes. The progress of the War of 1914-18 dethroned
the House of Romanov, while its termination precipitated the downfall of
both the Hapsburg and Hohenzollern dynasties.





THE RISE OF BOLSHEVISM


The rise of Bolshevism, born amidst the fires of that inconclusive
struggle, shook the throne of the Czars and overthrew it. Alexander II
Nicolaevich, whom Baha'u'llah had commanded in His Tablet to "arise ...
and summon the nations unto God," who had been thrice warned: "beware lest
thy desire deter thee from turning towards the face of thy Lord," "beware
lest thou barter away this sublime station," "beware lest thy sovereignty
withhold thee from Him Who is the Supreme Sovereign," was not indeed the
last of the Czars to rule his country, but rather the inaugurator of a
retrogressive policy which in the end proved fatal to both himself and his
dynasty.

In the latter part of his reign he initiated a reactionary policy which,
causing widespread disillusionment, gave rise to Nihilism, which, as it
spread, ushered in a period of terrorism of unexampled violence, leading
in its turn to several attempts on his life, and culminating in his
assassination. Stern repression guided the policy of his successor,
Alexander III, who "assumed an attitude of defiant hostility to innovators
and liberals." The tradition of unqualified absolutism, of extreme
religious orthodoxy was maintained by the still more severe Nicolas II,
the last of the Czars, who, guided by the counsels of a man who was "the
very incarnation of a narrow-minded, stiff-necked despotism," and aided by
a corrupt bureaucracy, and humiliated by the disastrous effects of a
foreign war, increased the general discontent of the masses, both
intellectuals and peasants. Driven for a time into subterranean channels,
and intensified by military reverses, it exploded at last in the midst of
the Great War, in the form of a Revolution which, in the principles it
challenged, the institutions it subverted, and the havoc it wrought, has
scarcely a parallel in modern history.

A great trembling seized and rocked the foundations of that country. The
light of religion was dimmed. Ecclesiastical institutions of every
denomination were swept away. The state religion was disendowed,
persecuted, and abolished. A far-flung empire was dismembered. A militant,
triumphant proletariat exiled the intellectuals, and plundered and
massacred the nobility. Civil war and disease decimated a population,
already in the throes of agony and despair. And, finally, the Chief
Magistrate of a mighty dominion, together with his consort, and his
family, and his dynasty, were swept into the vortex of this great
convulsion, and perished.

The very ordeal that heaped such dire misfortunes on the empire of the
Czars brought about, in its concluding stages, the fall of the almighty
German Kaiser as well as that of the inheritor of the once famed Holy
Roman Empire. It shattered the whole fabric of Imperial Germany, which
arose out of the disaster that engulfed the Napoleonic dynasty, and dealt
the Dual Monarchy its death blow.

Almost half a century before, Baha'u'llah, Who had predicted, in clear and
resounding terms, the ignominious fall of the successor of the great
Napoleon, had, in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, addressed to Kaiser William I, the
newly acclaimed victor, a no less significant warning, and prophesied, in
His apostrophe to the banks of the Rhine, in words equally unambiguous,
the mourning that would afflict the capital of the newly federated empire.

"Do thou remember," Baha'u'llah thus addressed him, "the one [Napoleon]
whose power transcended thy power, and whose station excelled thy
station.... Think deeply, O king, concerning him, and concerning them who,
like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men." And again: "O
banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the
swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another
turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in
conspicuous glory."

On him who, in his old age, sustained two attempts upon his life by the
advocates of the rising tide of socialism; on his son Frederick III, whose
three months' reign was overshadowed by mortal disease; and finally on his
grandson, William II, the self-willed and overweening monarch and wrecker
of his own empire--on these fell, in varying degrees, the full weight of
the responsibilities consequent to these dire pronouncements.

William I, first German Emperor and seventh king of Prussia, whose entire
lifetime had, up to the date of his accession, been spent in the army, was
a militaristic, autocratic ruler, imbued with antiquated ideas, who
initiated, with the aid of a statesman rightly regarded as "one of the
geniuses of his century," a policy which may be said to have inaugurated a
new era not only for Prussia but for the world. This policy was pursued
with characteristic thoroughness and perfected through the repressive
measures that were taken to safeguard and uphold it, through the wars that
were waged for its realization, and the political combinations that were
subsequently formed to exalt and consolidate it, combinations that were
fraught with such dreadful consequences to the European continent.

William II, temperamentally dictatorial, politically inexperienced,
militarily aggressive, religiously insincere, posed as the apostle of
European peace, yet actually insisted on "the mailed fist" and "the
shining armor." Irresponsible, indiscreet, inordinately ambitious, his
first act was to dismiss that sagacious statesman, the true founder of his
empire, to whose sagacity Baha'u'llah had paid tribute, and to the
unwisdom of whose imperial and ungrateful master 'Abdu'l-Baha had
testified. War indeed became a religion of his country, and by enlarging
the scope of his multifarious activities, he proceeded to prepare the way
for that final catastrophe that was to dethrone him and his dynasty. And
when the war broke out, and the might of his armies seemed to have
overpowered his adversaries, and the news of his triumphs was noised
abroad, reverberating as far as Persia, voices were raised ridiculing
those passages of the Kitab-i-Aqdas which so clearly foreshadowed the
misfortunes that were to befall his capital. Suddenly, however, swift and
unforeseen reverses fatally overtook him. Revolution broke out. William
II, deserting his armies, fled ignominiously to Holland, followed by the
Crown Prince. The princes of the German states abdicated. A period of
chaos ensued. The communist flag was hoisted in the capital, which became
a caldron of confusion and civil strife. The Kaiser signed his abdication.
The Constitution of Weimar established the Republic, bringing the
tremendous structure, so elaborately reared through a policy of blood and
iron, crashing to the ground. All the efforts to that end, which through
internal legislation and foreign wars had, ever since the accession of
William I to the Prussian throne, been assiduously exerted, came to
naught. "The lamentations of Berlin," tortured by the terms of a treaty
monstrous in its severity, were raised, contrasting with the hilarious
shouts of victory that rang, half a century before, in the Hall of Mirrors
of the Palace of Versailles.

The Hapsburg monarch, heir of centuries of glorious history,
simultaneously toppled from his throne. It was Francis Joseph, whom
Baha'u'llah chided in the Kitab-i-Aqdas for having failed in his duty to
investigate His Cause, let alone to seek His presence, when so easily
accessible to him in the course of his visit to the Holy Land. "Thou
passed Him by," He thus reproves the pilgrim-emperor, "and inquired not
about Him.... We have been with thee at all times, and found thee clinging
unto the Branch and heedless of the Root.... Open thine eyes, that thou
mayest behold this Glorious Vision and recognize Him Whom thou invokest in
the daytime and in the night season, and gaze on the Light that shineth
above this luminous Horizon."

The House of Hapsburg, in which the Imperial Title had remained
practically hereditary for almost five centuries, was, ever since those
words were uttered, being increasingly menaced by the forces of internal
disintegration, and was sowing the seeds of an external conflict, to both
of which it ultimately succumbed. Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, King
of Hungary, a reactionary ruler, reestablished old abuses, ignored the
rights of nationalities, and restored that bureaucratic centralization
that proved in the end so injurious to his empire. Repeated tragedies
darkened his reign. His brother Maximilian was shot in Mexico. The Crown
Prince Rudolph perished in a dishonorable affair. The Empress was
assassinated in Geneva. Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife were
murdered in Sarajevo, kindling a war in the midst of which the Emperor
himself died, closing a reign which is unsurpassed by any other reign in
the disasters it brought to the nation.





END OF THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE


Belated efforts had been made to steady his tottering throne. The
"ramshackle empire," a medley of states, races, and languages, was,
however, relentlessly and rapidly disintegrating. The political and
economic situation was desperate. The defeat of Austria and Hungary, in
that same war, sounded its death knell and brought its dismemberment.
Hungary sundered its connection. The conglomerate realm was carved up, and
all that was left of the once formidable Holy Roman Empire was a shrunken
republic that led a miserable existence until, in more recent times, it
was, unlike its sister nation, completely extinguished and wiped off the
political map of Europe.

Such was the fate of the Napoleonic, the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, and
the Hapsburg empires, whose rulers, together with the sovereign occupant
of the Papal throne, were individually addressed by the Pen of the Most
High, and who were respectively chastised, forewarned, condemned, rebuked
and admonished. What of the fate of those sovereigns who, exercising
direct political jurisdiction over the Faith, its Founders, and followers,
and within the radius of whose domains that Faith was born and first
spread, were at liberty to crucify its Herald, banish its Founder, and mow
down its adherents?





WHAT OF TURKEY AND PERSIA?


Already in the lifetime of Baha'u'llah, and later during the ministry of
'Abdu'l-Baha, the first blows of a slow yet steady and relentless
retribution were falling alike upon the rulers of the Turkish House of
U_th_man and of the Qajar dynasty in Persia--the archenemies of God's
infant Faith. Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz fell from power, and was murdered soon
after Baha'u'llah's banishment from Adrianople, while Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah
succumbed to an assassin's pistol, during 'Abdu'l-Baha's incarceration in
the fortress-town of Akka. It was reserved, however, for the Formative
Period of the Faith of God--the Age of the birth and rise of its
Administrative Order--which, as stated in a previous communication, is
through its unfoldment casting such a turmoil in the world, to witness not
only the extinction of both of these dynasties, but also the abolition of
the twin institutions of the Sultanate and the Caliphate.

Of the two despots 'Abdu'l-'Aziz was the more powerful, the more exalted
in rank, the more preeminent in guilt, and the more concerned with the
tribulations and fortunes of the Founder of our Faith. He it was who,
through his farmans, had thrice banished Baha'u'llah, and in whose
dominions the Manifestation of God spent almost the whole of His forty
years' captivity. It was during his reign and that of his nephew and
successor, 'Abdu'l-Hamid II, that the Center of the Covenant of God had to
endure, for no less than forty years, in the fortress-town of Akka, an
incarceration fraught with so many perils, affronts and privations.

"Hearken, O king!" is the summons issued to Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz by
Baha'u'llah, "to the speech of Him that speaketh the truth, Him that doth
not ask thee to recompense Him with the things God hath chosen to bestow
upon thee, Him Who unerringly treadeth the Straight Path.... Observe, O
king, with thine inmost heart and with thy whole being, the precepts of
God, and walk not in the paths of the oppressor.... Place not thy reliance
on thy treasures. Put thy whole confidence in the grace of God, thy
Lord.... Overstep not the bounds of moderation, and deal justly with them
that serve thee.... Set before thine eyes God's unerring Balance, and, as
one standing in His presence, weigh in that Balance thine actions, every
day, every moment of thy life. Bring thyself to account ere thou art
summoned to a reckoning, on the Day when no man shall have strength to
stand for fear of God, the Day when the hearts of the heedless ones shall
be made to tremble."

"The day is approaching," Baha'u'llah thus prophesies in the Lawh-i-Ra'is,
"when the Land of Mystery [Adrianople], and what is beside it shall be
changed, and shall pass out of the hands of the king, and commotions shall
appear, and the voice of lamentation shall be raised, and the evidences of
mischief shall be revealed on all sides, and confusion shall spread by
reason of that which hath befallen these captives at the hands of the
hosts of oppression. The course of things shall be altered, and conditions
shall wax so grievous, that the very sands on the desolate hills will
moan, and the trees on the mountain will weep, and blood will flow out of
all things. Then wilt thou behold the people in sore distress."

"Soon," He, moreover has written, "will He seize you in His wrathful
anger, and sedition will be stirred up in your midst, and your dominions
will be disrupted. Then will ye bewail and lament, and will find none to
help or succor you.... Several times calamities have overtaken you, and
yet ye failed utterly to take heed. One of them was the conflagration
which devoured most of the City [Constantinople] with the flames of
justice, and concerning which many poems were written, stating that no
such fire had ever been witnessed. And yet, ye waxed more heedless....
Plague, likewise, broke out, and ye still failed to give heed! Be
expectant, however, for the wrath of God is ready to overtake you. Erelong
will ye behold that which hath been sent down from the Pen of My command."

"By your deeds," He, in another Tablet, anticipating the fall of the
Sultanate and the Caliphate, thus reproves the combined forces of Sunni
and _Sh_i'ih Islam, "the exalted station of the people hath been abased,
the standard of Islam hath been reversed, and its mighty throne hath
fallen."

And finally, in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, revealed soon after Baha'u'llah's
banishment to Akka, He thus apostrophizes the seat of Turkish imperial
power: "O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas! The throne
of tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the flame of
hatred hath been kindled within thy bosom.... Thou art indeed filled with
manifest pride. Hath thine outward splendor made thee vainglorious? By Him
Who is the Lord of mankind! It shall soon perish, and thy daughters, and
thy widows, and all the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament. Thus
informeth thee, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."

Indeed, in a most remarkable passage in the Lawh-i-Fu'ad, wherein mention
has been made of the death of Fu'ad Pa_sh_a, the Turkish Minister of
Foreign Affairs, the fall of the Sultan himself is unmistakably foretold:
"Soon will We dismiss the one who was like unto him, and will lay hold on
their Chief who ruleth the land, and I, verily, am the Almighty, the
All-Compelling."

The Sultan's reaction to these words, bearing upon his person, his empire,
his throne, his capital, and his ministers, can be gathered from the
recital of the sufferings he inflicted on Baha'u'llah, and already
referred to in the beginning of these pages. The extinction of the
"outward splendor" surrounding that proud seat of Imperial power is the
theme I now proceed to expose.





THE DOOM OF IMPERIAL TURKEY


A cataclysmic process, one of the most remarkable in modern history, was
set in motion ever since Baha'u'llah, while a prisoner in Constantinople,
delivered to a Turkish official His Tablet, addressed to Sultan
'Abdu'l-'Aziz and his ministers, to be transmitted to 'Ali Pa_sh_a, the
Grand Vizir. It was this Tablet which, as attested by that officer and
affirmed by Nabil in his chronicle, affected the Vizir so profoundly that
he paled while reading it. This process received fresh impetus after the
Lawh-i-Ra'is was revealed on the morrow of its Author's final banishment
from Adrianople to Akka. Relentless, devastating, and with ever-increasing
momentum, it ominously unfolded, damaging the prestige of the Empire,
dismembering its territory, dethroning its sultans, sweeping away their
dynasty, degrading and deposing its Caliph, disestablishing its religion,
and extinguishing its glory. The "sick man" of Europe, whose condition had
been unerringly diagnosed by the Divine Physician, and whose doom was
pronounced inevitable, fell a prey, during the reign of five successive
sultans, all degenerate, all deposed, to a series of convulsions which, in
the end, proved fatal to his life. Imperial Turkey that had, under
'Abdu'l-Majid, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged
victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor,
'Abdu'l-'Aziz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after
'Abdu'l-Baha's passing, in the doom which the judgment of God had
pronounced against it.

Risings in Crete and the Balkans marked the reign of this, the 32nd sultan
of his dynasty, a despot whose mind was vacuous, whose recklessness was
extreme, whose extravagance knew no bounds. The Eastern Question entered
upon an acute phase. His gross misrule gave rise to movements which were
to exercise far-reaching effects upon his realm, while his continual and
enormous borrowings, leading to a state of semibankruptcy, introduced the
principle of foreign control over the finances of his empire. A
conspiracy, leading to a palace revolution, finally deposed him. A fatva
of the mufti denounced his incapacity and extravagance. Four days later he
was assassinated, and was succeeded by his nephew, Murad V, whose mind had
been reduced to a nullity by intemperance and by a long seclusion in the
Cage. Declared to be imbecile, he, after a reign of three months, was
deposed and was succeeded by the subtle, the resourceful, the suspicious,
the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-Hamid II who "proved to be the most mean, cunning,
untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of U_th_man." "No
one knew," it was written of him, "from day to day who was the person on
whose advice the sultan overruled his ostensible ministers, whether a
favorite lady of his harem, or a eunuch, or some fanatical dervish, or an
astrologer, or a spy." The Bulgarian atrocities heralded the black reign
of this "Great Assassin," which thrilled Europe with horror, and were
characterized by Gladstone as "the basest and blackest outrages upon
record in that [XIX] century." The War of 1877-78 accelerated the process
of the empire's dismemberment. No less than eleven million people were
emancipated from Turkish yoke. The Russian troops occupied Adrianople.
Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania proclaimed their independence. Bulgaria
became a self-governing state, tributary to the sultan. Cyprus and Egypt
were occupied. The French assumed a protectorate over Tunis. Eastern
Rumelia was ceded to Bulgaria. The wholesale massacres of Armenians,
involving directly and indirectly a hundred thousand souls, were but a
foretaste of the still more extensive bloodbaths to come in a later reign.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were lost to Austria. Bulgaria obtained her
independence. Universal contempt and hatred of an infamous sovereign,
shared alike by his Christian and Muslim subjects, finally culminated in a
revolution, swift and sweeping. The Committee of Young Turks secured from
the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam the condemnation of the sultan. Deserted and
friendless, execrated by his subjects, and despised by his fellow-rulers,
he was forced to abdicate, and was made a prisoner of state, thus ending a
reign "more disastrous in its immediate losses of territory and in the
certainty of others to follow, and more conspicuous for the deterioration
of the condition of his subjects, than that of any other of his
twenty-three degenerate predecessors since the death of Soliman the
Magnificent."

The end of so shameful a reign was but the beginning of a new era which,
however auspiciously hailed at first, was destined to witness the collapse
of the Ottoman ramshackle and worm-eaten state. Muhammad V, a brother of
'Abdu'l-Hamid II, an absolute nonentity, failed to improve the status of
his subjects. The follies of his government ultimately sealed the doom of
the empire. The War of 1914-18 provided the occasion. Military reverses
brought to a head the forces that were sapping its foundations. While the
war was still being fought the defection of the Sherif of Mecca and the
revolt of the Arabian provinces portended the convulsion which was to
seize the Turkish throne. The precipitate flight and complete destruction
of the army of Jamal Pa_sh_a, the commander-in-chief in Syria--he who had
sworn to raze to the ground, after his triumphant return from Egypt, the
Tomb of Baha'u'llah, and to publicly crucify the Center of His Covenant in
a public square of Constantinople--was the signal for the nemesis that was
to overtake an empire in distress. Nine-tenths of the large Turkish armies
had melted away. A fourth of the whole population had perished from war,
disease, famine and massacre.

A new ruler, Muhammad VI, the last of the twenty-five successive
degenerate sultans, had meanwhile succeeded his wretched brother. The
edifice of the empire was now quaking and tottering to its fall. Mustafa
Kamal dealt it the final blows. Turkey, that had already shrunk to a small
Asiatic state, became a republic. The sultan was deposed, the Ottoman
Sultanate was ended, a rulership that had remained unbroken for six and a
half centuries was extinguished. An empire which had stretched from the
center of Hungary to the Persian Gulf and the Sudan, and from the Caspian
Sea to Oran in Africa, had now dwindled to a small Asiatic republic.
Constantinople itself, which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been
honored as the splendid metropolis of the Roman Empire, and had been made
the capital of the Ottoman government, was abandoned by its conquerors,
and stripped of its pomp and glory--a mute reminder of the base tyranny
that had for so long stained its throne.

Such, in their bare outline, were the awful evidences of that retributive
justice which so tragically afflicted 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, his successors, his
throne and his dynasty. What of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, the other partner in
that imperial conspiracy which sought to extirpate, root and branch, the
budding Faith of God? His reaction to the Divine Message borne to him by
the fearless Badi, the "Pride of Martyrs," who had spontaneously dedicated
himself to this purpose, was characteristic of that implacable hatred
which, throughout his reign, glowed so fiercely in his breast.





DIVINE RETRIBUTION ON THE QAJAR DYNASTY


The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Baha'u'llah's Tablet,
and directed his minister, as Baha'u'llah Himself asserts, to address to
its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, it is
reliably stated, blanched while reading the communication addressed to his
Imperial master and his ministers, and made the following comment: "It is
as if the king of kings were issuing his behest to his humblest vassal
king, and regulating his conduct!" Queen Victoria, it is said, upon
reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: "If this is of God, it will
endure; if not, it can do no harm." It was reserved for Nasiri'd-Din
_Sh_ah, however, to wreak, at the instigation of the divines, his
vengeance on One Whom he could no longer personally chastise by arresting
His messenger, a lad of about seventeen, by freighting him with chains, by
torturing him on the rack, and finally slaying him.

To this despotic sovereign Baha'u'llah, Who denounced him as the "Prince
of Oppressors," and as one who would soon be made "an object-lesson for
the world," had written: "Look upon this Youth, O king, with the eyes of
justice; judge thou, then, with truth concerning what hath befallen Him.
Of a verity, God hath made thee His shadow amongst men, and the sign of
His power unto all that dwell on earth." And again: "O king! Wert thou to
incline thine ears unto the shrill of the Pen of Glory and the cooing of
the Dove of Eternity ... thou wouldst attain unto a station from which
thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught save the effulgence of
the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty as the most
contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever might desire
it, and setting thy face toward the horizon aglow with the light of His
countenance." And again: "We fain would hope, however, that His Majesty
the _Sh_ah will himself examine these matters, and bring hope to the
hearts. That which We have submitted to thee is indeed for thine highest
good."

This hope, however, was to remain unfulfilled. It was indeed shattered by
a reign which had been inaugurated by the execution of the Bab, and the
imprisonment of Baha'u'llah in the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, by a sovereign
who had repeatedly instigated Baha'u'llah's successive banishments, and by
a dynasty that had been sullied by the slaughter of no less than twenty
thousand of His followers. The _Sh_ah's dramatic assassination, the
ignoble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qajar, and the
extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine
retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked.

The Qajars, members of the alien Turkoman tribe, had, indeed, usurped the
Persian throne. Aqa Muhammad _Kh_an, the eunuch _Sh_ah and founder of the
dynasty, was such an atrocious, avaricious, bloodthirsty tyrant that the
memory of no Persian is so detested and universally execrated as his
memory. The record of his reign and that of his immediate successors is
one of vandalism, of internal warfare, of recalcitrant and rebellious
chieftains, of brigandage, and medieval oppression, whilst the annals of
the reigns of the later Qajars are marked by the stagnation of the nation,
the illiteracy of the people, the corruption and incompetence of the
government, the scandalous intrigues of the court, the decadence of the
princes, the irresponsibility and extravagance of the sovereign, and his
abject subservience to a notoriously degraded clerical order.

The successor of Aqa Muhammad _Kh_an, the uxorious, philoprogenetive
Fath-'Ali _Sh_ah, the so-called "Darius of the Age," was a vain, an
arrogant, and unscrupulous miser, notorious for the enormous number of his
wives and concubines, numbering above a thousand, his incalculable
progeny, and the disasters which his rule brought upon his country. He it
was who commanded that his vizir, to whom he owed his throne, be cast into
a caldron of boiling oil. As to his successor, the bigoted Muhammad
_Sh_ah, one of his earliest acts, definitely condemned by the pen of
Baha'u'llah, was the order to strangle his first minister, the illustrious
Qa'im-Maqam, immortalized by that same pen as the "Prince of the City of
Statesmanship and Literary Accomplishment," and to have him replaced by
that lowbred, consummate scoundrel, Haji Mirza Aqasi, who brought the
country to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution. It was this same _Sh_ah
who refused to interview the Bab and imprisoned Him in A_dh_irbayjan, and
who, at the age of forty, was afflicted by a complication of maladies to
which he succumbed, hastening the doom forecast in these words of the
Qayyum-i-Asma: "I swear by God, O _Sh_ah! If thou showest enmity unto Him
Who is His Remembrance, God will, on the Day of Resurrection, condemn
thee, before the kings, unto hellfire, and thou shalt not, in very truth,
find on that day any helper except God, the Exalted."

Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, a selfish, capricious, imperious monarch, succeeded
to the throne, and, for half a century, was destined to remain the sole
arbiter of the fortunes of his hapless country. A disastrous obscurantism,
a chaotic administration in the provinces, the disorganization of the
finances of the realm, the intrigues, the vindictiveness, and profligacy
of the pampered and greedy courtiers, who buzzed and swarmed round his
throne, his own despotism which, but for the restraining fear of European
public opinion and the desire to be thought well of in the capitals of the
West, would have been more cruel and savage, were the distinguishing
features of the bloody reign of one who styled himself "Footpath of
Heaven," and "Asylum of the Universe." A triple darkness of chaos,
bankruptcy and oppression enveloped the country. His own assassination was
the first portent of the revolution which was to restrict the prerogatives
of his son and successor, depose the last two monarchs of the House of
Qajar, and extinguish their dynasty. On the eve of his jubilee, which was
to inaugurate a new era, and the celebration of which had been elaborately
prepared, he fell, in the shrine of _Sh_ah 'Abdu'l-'Azim, a victim to an
assassin's pistol, his dead body driven back to his capitol, propped up in
the royal carriage in front of his Grand Vizir, in order to defer the news
of his murder.

"It was whispered," writes an eyewitness of both the ceremony and the
assassination, "that the day of the _Sh_ah's celebration was to be the
greatest in the history of Persia.... Prisoners were to be released
without condition, and a general amnesty was to be proclaimed; peasants
were promised exemption from taxes for at least two years. ...the poor
were to be fed for months. Ministers and officials were already intriguing
for honors and pension from the _Sh_ah. Shrines and sacred places were to
open their gates to all wayfarers and pilgrims, and the siyyids and mullas
were taking cough medicine to clear their throats to sing and chant the
praises of the _Sh_ah in all the pulpits. The mosques were swept and
prepared for general meetings and public prayers in behalf of the
Sovereign.... Sacred fountains were enlarged to hold more holy water, and
the rightful authorities had foreseen that many miracles might take place
on the day of the jubilee, with the aid of these fountains.... The _Sh_ah
had declared ... that he would renounce his prerogatives as despot, and
proclaim himself 'The Majestic Father of all the Persians.' The city
authority was to relax its vigilant watch. No record was to be kept of the
strangers who flocked to the caravanserais, and the population was to be
left free to wander the streets during the whole night." Even the great
mujtahids had, according to what had been reported to that same
eyewitness, "decided, for the time being, to discontinue persecuting the
Babis and other infidels."

Thus fell the one whose reign will remain forever associated with the most
heinous crime in history--the martyrdom of that One Whom the Supreme
Manifestation of God proclaimed to be the "Point round Whom the realities
of the Prophets and Messengers revolve." In a Tablet in which the pen of
Baha'u'llah condemns him, we read: "Among them [kings of the earth] is the
King of Persia, who suspended Him Who is the Temple of the Cause [the Bab]
in the air, and put Him to death with such cruelty that all created
things, and the inmates of Paradise, and the Concourse on high wept for
Him. He slew, moreover, some of Our kindred, and plundered Our property,
and made Our family captives in the hands of the oppressors. Once and
again he imprisoned Me. By God, the True One! None can reckon the things
which befell Me in prison, save God, the Reckoner, the Omniscient, the
Almighty. Subsequently he banished Me and My family from My country,
whereupon We arrived in 'Iraq in evident sorrow. We tarried there until
the time when the King of Rum [Sultan of Turkey] arose against Us, and
summoned Us unto the seat of his sovereignty. When We reached it there
flowed over Us that whereat the King of Persia rejoiced. Later We entered
this Prison, wherein the hands of Our loved ones were torn from the hem of
Our robe. In such a manner hath he dealt with Us!"

The days of the Qajar dynasty were now numbered. The torpor of the
national consciousness had vanished. The reign of Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah's
successor, Muzaffari'd-Din _Sh_ah, a weak and timid creature, extravagant
and lavish to his courtiers, led the country down the broad road to ruin.
The movement in favor of a constitution, limiting the sovereign's
prerogatives, gathered force, and culminated in the signature of the
constitution by the dying _Sh_ah, who expired a few days later.
Muhammad-'Ali _Sh_ah, a despot of the worst type, unprincipled and
avaricious, succeeded to the throne. Hostile to the constitution, he, by
his summary action, involving the bombardment of the Baharistan, where the
Assembly met, precipitated a revolution which led to his deposition by the
nationalists. Accepting, after much bargaining, a large pension, he
ignominiously withdrew to Russia. The boy-king, Ahmad _Sh_ah, who
succeeded him, was a mere cipher and careless of his duties. The crying
needs of his country continued to be ignored. Increasing anarchy, the
impotence of the central government, the state of the national finances,
the progressive deterioration of the general condition of the country,
practically abandoned by a sovereign who preferred the gaieties and
frivolities of society life in the European capitals to the discharge of
the stern and urgent responsibilities which the plight of his nation
demanded, sounded the death knell of a dynasty which, it was generally
felt, had forfeited the crown. Whilst abroad, on one of his periodic
visits, Parliament deposed him, and proclaimed the extinction of his
dynasty, which had occupied the throne of Persia for a hundred and thirty
years, whose rulers proudly claimed no less a descent than from Japhet,
son of Noah, and whose successive monarchs, with only one exception, were
either assassinated, deposed, or struck down by mortal disease.

Their myriad progeny, a veritable "beehive of princelings," a "race of
royal drones," were both a disgrace and a menace to their countrymen. Now,
however, these luckless descendants of a fallen house, shorn of all power,
and some of them reduced even to beggary, proclaim, in their distress, the
consequences of the abominations which their progenitors have perpetrated.
Swelling the ranks of the ill-fated scions of the House of U_th_man, and
of the rulers of the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, the Hapsburg, and the
Napoleonic dynasties, they roam the face of the earth, scarcely aware of
the character of those forces which have operated such tragic revolutions
in their lives, and so powerfully contributed to their present plight.

Already grandsons of both Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah and of Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz
have, in their powerlessness and destitution, turned to the World Center
of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, and sought respectively political aid and
pecuniary assistance. In the case of the former, the request was promptly
and firmly refused, whilst in the case of the latter it was unhesitatingly
offered.





THE DECLINE IN THE FORTUNES OF ROYALTY


And as we survey in other fields the decline in the fortunes of royalty,
whether in the years immediately preceding the Great War or after, and
contemplate the fate that has overtaken the Chinese Empire, the Portuguese
and Spanish Monarchies, and more recently the vicissitudes that have
afflicted, and are still afflicting, the sovereigns of Norway, of Denmark
and of Holland, and observe the impotence of their fellow-sovereigns, and
note the fear and trembling that has seized their thrones, may we not
associate their plight with the opening passages of the Suriy-i-Muluk,
which, in view of their momentous significance, I feel impelled to quote a
second time: "Fear God, O concourse of kings, and suffer not yourselves to
be deprived of this most sublime grace.... Set your hearts towards the
face of God, and abandon that which your desires have bidden you to
follow, and be not of those who perish.... Ye examined not His [the Bab's]
Cause, when so to do had been better for you than all that the sun shineth
upon, could ye but perceive it.... Beware that ye be not careless
henceforth, as ye have been careless aforetime.... My face hath come forth
from the veils, and shed its radiance upon all that is in heaven and on
earth, and yet ye turned not towards Him.... Arise then ... and make ye
amends for that which hath escaped you.... If ye pay no heed unto the
counsels which, in peerless and unequivocal language, We have revealed in
this Tablet, Divine chastisement shall assail you from every direction,
and the sentence of His justice shall be pronounced against you.... Twenty
years have passed, O kings, during which We have, each day, tasted the
agony of a fresh tribulation.... Though aware of most of Our afflictions,
ye, nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it
not your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal
equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully
demonstrated to all mankind?"

No wonder that Baha'u'llah, in view of the treatment meted out to Him by
the sovereigns of the earth, should, as already quoted, have written these
words: "From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and
ecclesiastics." Indeed, He even goes further, and states in His Tablet
addressed to _Sh_ay_kh_ Salman: "One of the signs of the maturity of the
world is that no one will accept to bear the weight of kingship. Kingship
will remain with none willing to bear alone its weight. That day will be
the day whereon wisdom will be manifested among mankind. Only in order to
proclaim the Cause of God and spread abroad His Faith will anyone be
willing to bear this grievous weight. Well is it with him who, for love of
God and His Cause, and for the sake of God and for the purpose of
proclaiming His Faith, will expose himself unto this great danger, and
will accept this toil and trouble."





RECOGNITION OF KINGSHIP


Let none, however, mistake or unwittingly misrepresent the purpose of
Baha'u'llah. Severe as has been His condemnation pronounced against those
sovereigns who persecuted Him, and however strict the censure expressed
collectively against those who failed signally in their clear duty to
investigate the truth of His Faith and to restrain the hand of the
wrongdoer, His teachings embody no principle that can, in any way, be
construed as a repudiation, or even a disparagement, however veiled, of
the institution of kingship. The catastrophic fall, and the extinction of
the dynasties and empires of those monarchs whose disastrous end He
particularly prophesied, and the declining fortunes of the sovereigns of
His Own generation, whom He generally reproved--both constituting a passing
phase of the evolution of the Faith--should, in no wise, be confounded with
the future position of that institution. Indeed if we delve into the
writings of the Author of the Baha'i Faith, we cannot fail to discover
unnumbered passages in which, in terms that none can misrepresent, the
principle of kingship is eulogized, the rank and conduct of just and
fair-minded kings is extolled, the rise of monarchs, ruling with justice
and even professing His Faith, is envisaged, and the solemn duty to arise
and ensure the triumph of Baha'i sovereigns is inculcated. To conclude
from the above quoted words, addressed by Baha'u'llah to the monarchs of
the earth, to infer from the recital of the woeful disasters that have
overtaken so many of them, that His followers either advocate or
anticipate the definite extinction of the institution of kingship, would
indeed be tantamount to a distortion of His teaching.

I can do no better than quote some of Baha'u'llah's Own testimonies,
leaving the reader to shape his own judgment as to the falsity of such a
deduction. In His "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf" He indicates the true
source of kingship: "Regard for the rank of sovereigns is divinely
ordained, as is clearly attested by the words of the Prophets of God and
His chosen ones. He Who is the Spirit [Jesus]--may peace be upon Him--was
asked: 'O Spirit of God! Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?'
And He made reply: 'Yea, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's,
and to God the things that are God's.' He forbade it not. These two
sayings are, in the estimation of men of insight, one and the same, for if
that which belonged to Caesar had not come from God He would have
forbidden it. And likewise in the sacred verse: 'Obey God and obey the
Apostle, and those among you invested with authority.' By 'those invested
with authority' is meant primarily and more specially the Imams--the
blessings of God rest upon them. They verily are the manifestations of the
power of God and the sources of His authority, and the repositories of His
knowledge, and the daysprings of His commandments. Secondarily these words
refer unto the kings and rulers--those through the brightness of whose
justice the horizons of the world are resplendent and luminous."

And again: "In the Epistle to the Romans Saint Paul hath written: 'Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of
God; the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore,
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.' And further: 'For he
is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth
evil.' He saith that the appearance of the kings, and their majesty and
power, are of God."

And again: "A just king enjoyeth nearer access unto God than anyone. Unto
this testifieth He Who speaketh in His Most Great Prison."

Likewise in the Bi_sh_arat (Glad-Tidings) Baha'u'llah asserts that "the
majesty of kingship is one of the signs of God." "We do not wish," He
adds, "that the countries of the world should be deprived thereof."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas He sets forth His purpose, and eulogizes the king who
will profess His Faith: "By the Righteousness of God! It is not Our wish
to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the
hearts of men. Upon them the eyes of Baha are fastened. To this testifieth
the Kingdom of Names, could ye but comprehend it. Whoso followeth his
Lord, will renounce the world and all that is therein; how much greater,
then, must be the detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station!" "How
great the blessedness that awaiteth the king who will arise to aid My
Cause in My Kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but Me! Such a
king is numbered with the Companions of the Crimson Ark--the Ark which God
hath prepared for the people of Baha. All must glorify his name, must
reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities with the keys of
My Name, the Omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit the visible and
invisible kingdoms. Such a king is the very eye of mankind, the luminous
ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the
whole world. Offer up, O people of Baha, your substance, nay your very
lives, for his assistance."

In the Lawh-i-Sultan Baha'u'llah further reveals the significance of
kingship: "A just king is the shadow of God on earth. All should seek
shelter under the shadow of his justice, and rest in the shade of his
favor. This is not a matter which is either specific or limited in its
scope, that it might be restricted to one or another person, inasmuch as
the shadow telleth of the One Who casteth it. God, glorified be His
remembrance, hath called Himself the Lord of the worlds, for He hath
nurtured and still nurtureth everyone. Glorified be, then, His grace that
hath preceded all created things, and His mercy that hath surpassed the
worlds."

In one of His Tablets Baha'u'llah has also written: "The one true God,
exalted be His glory, hath bestowed the government of the earth upon the
kings. To none is given the right to act in any manner that would run
counter to the considered views of them who are in authority. That which
He hath reserved for Himself are the cities of men's hearts; and of these
the loved ones of Him Who is the Sovereign Truth are, in this Day, as the
keys."

In the following passage He expresses this wish: "We cherish the hope that
one of the kings of the earth will, for the sake of God, arise for the
triumph of this wronged, this oppressed people. Such a king will be
eternally extolled and glorified. God hath prescribed unto this people the
duty of aiding whosoever will aid them, of serving his best interests, and
of demonstrating to him their abiding loyalty."

In the Lawh-i-Ra'is He actually and categorically prophesies the rise of
such a king: "Erelong will God raise up from among the kings one who will
aid His loved ones. He, verily, encompasseth all things. He will instill
in the hearts the love of His loved ones. This, indeed, is irrevocably
decreed by One Who is the Almighty, the Beneficent." In the
Ridvanu'l-'Adl, wherein the virtue of justice is exalted, He makes a
parallel prediction: "Erelong will God make manifest on earth kings who
will recline on the couches of justice, and will rule amongst men even as
they rule their own selves. They, indeed, are among the choicest of My
creatures in the entire creation."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas He visualizes in these words the elevation to the
throne of His native city, "the Mother of the World" and "the Dayspring of
Light," of a king who will be adorned with the twin ornaments of justice
and of devotion to His Faith: "Let nothing grieve thee, O Land of Ta, for
God hath chosen thee to be the source of the joy of all mankind. He shall,
if it be His will, bless thy throne with one who will rule with justice,
who will gather together the flock of God which the wolves have scattered.
Such a ruler will, with joy and gladness, turn his face towards and extend
his favors unto, the people of Baha. He indeed is accounted in the sight
of God as a jewel among men. Upon him rest forever the glory of God, and
the glory of all that dwell in the kingdom of His Revelation."





THE CRUMBLING OF RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY


Dear friends! The decline in the fortunes of the crowned wielders of
temporal power has been paralleled by a no less startling deterioration in
the influence exercised by the world's spiritual leaders. The colossal
events that have heralded the dissolution of so many kingdoms and empires
have almost synchronized with the crumbling of the seemingly inviolable
strongholds of religious orthodoxy. That same process which, swiftly and
tragically, sealed the doom of kings and emperors, and extinguished their
dynasties, has operated in the case of the ecclesiastical leaders of both
Christianity and Islam, damaging their prestige, and, in some cases,
overthrowing their highest institutions. "Power hath been seized" indeed
from both "kings and ecclesiastics." The glory of the former has been
eclipsed, the power of the latter irretrievably lost.

Those leaders who exercised guidance and control over the ecclesiastical
hierarchies of their respective religions have, likewise, been appealed
to, warned, and reproved by Baha'u'llah, in terms no less uncertain than
those in which the sovereigns who presided over the destinies of their
subjects have been addressed. They, too, and more particularly the heads
of Muslim ecclesiastical orders, have, in conjunction with despots and
potentates, launched their assaults and thundered their anathemas against
the Founders of the Faith of God, its followers, its principles, and its
institutions. Were not the divines of Persia the first who hoisted the
standard of revolt, who inflamed the ignorant and subservient masses
against it, and who instigated the civil authorities, through their
outcry, their threats, their lies, their calumnies, and denunciations, to
decree the banishments, to enact the laws, to launch the punitive
campaigns, and to carry out the executions and massacres that fill the
pages of its history? So abominable and savage was the butchery committed
in a single day, instigated by these divines, and so typical of the
"callousness of the brute and the ingenuity of the fiend" that Renan, in
his "Les Apotres," characterized that day as "perhaps unparalleled in the
history of the world."

It was these divines, who, by these very acts, sowed the seeds of the
disintegration of their own institutions, institutions that were so
potent, so famous, and appeared so invulnerable when the Faith was born.
It was they who, by assuming so lightly and foolishly, such awful
responsibilities were primarily answerable for the release of those
violent and disruptive influences that have unchained disasters as
catastrophic as those which overwhelmed kings, dynasties, and empires, and
which constitute the most noteworthy landmarks in the history of the first
century of the Baha'i era.

This process of deterioration, however startling in its initial
manifestations, is still operating with undiminished force, and will, as
the opposition to the Faith of God, from various sources and in distant
fields, gathers momentum, be further accelerated and reveal still more
remarkable evidences of its devastating power. I cannot, in view of the
proportions which this communication has already assumed, expatiate, as
fully as I would wish, on the aspects of this weighty theme which,
together with the reaction of the sovereigns of the earth to the Message
of Baha'u'llah, is one of the most fascinating and edifying episodes in
the dramatic story of His Faith. I will only consider the repercussions of
the violent assaults made by the ecclesiastical leaders of Islam and, to a
lesser degree, by certain exponents of Christian orthodoxy upon their
respective institutions. I will preface these observations with some
passages gleaned from the great mass of Baha'u'llah's Tablets which, both
directly and indirectly, bear reference to Muslim and Christian divines,
and which throw such a powerful light on the dismal disasters that have
overtaken, and are still overtaking, the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the
two religions with which the Faith has been immediately concerned.

It must not be inferred, however, that Baha'u'llah directed His historic
addresses exclusively to the leaders of Islam and Christianity, or that
the impact of an all-pervading Faith on the strongholds of religious
orthodoxy is to be confined to the institutions of these two religious
systems. "The time foreordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the
earth," affirms Baha'u'llah, "is now come. The promises of God, as
recorded in the Holy Scriptures, have all been fulfilled.... This is the
Day which the Pen of the Most High hath glorified in all the Holy
Scriptures. There is no verse in them that doth not declare the glory of
His holy Name, and no Book that doth not testify unto the loftiness of
this most exalted theme." "Were We," He adds, "to make mention of all that
hath been revealed in these heavenly Books and Holy Scriptures concerning
this Revelation, this Tablet would assume impossible dimensions." As the
promise of the Faith of Baha'u'llah is enshrined in all the Scriptures of
past religions, so does its Author address Himself to their followers, and
particularly to their responsible leaders who have intervened between Him
and their respective congregations. "At one time," writes Baha'u'llah, "We
address the people of the Torah and summon them unto Him Who is the
Revealer of verses, Who hath come from Him Who layeth low the necks of
men.... At another, We address the people of the Evangel and say: 'The
All-Glorious is come in this Name whereby the Breeze of God hath wafted
over all regions.'... At still another, We address the people of the
Qur'an saying: 'Fear the All-Merciful, and cavil not at Him through Whom
all religions were founded.'... Know thou, moreover, that We have
addressed to the Magians Our Tablets, and adorned them with Our Law.... We
have revealed in them the essence of all the hints and allusions contained
in their Books. The Lord, verily, is the Almighty, the All-Knowing."

Addressing the Jewish people Baha'u'llah has written: "The Most Great Law
is come, and the Ancient Beauty ruleth upon the throne of David. Thus hath
My Pen spoken that which the histories of bygone ages have related. At
this time, however, David crieth aloud and saith: 'O my loving Lord! Do
Thou number me with such as have stood steadfast in Thy Cause, O Thou
through Whom the faces have been illumined, and the footsteps have
slipped!'" And again: "The Breath hath been wafted, and the Breeze hath
blown, and from Zion hath appeared that which was hidden, and from
Jerusalem is heard the Voice of God, the One, the Incomparable, the
Omniscient." Furthermore, in His "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf"
Baha'u'llah has revealed: "Lend an ear unto the song of David. He saith:
'Who will bring me into the Strong City?' The Strong City is Akka, which
hath been named the Most Great Prison, and which possesseth a fortress and
mighty ramparts. O _Sh_ay_kh_! Peruse that which Isaiah hath spoken in His
Book. He saith: 'Get thee up into the high mountain, O Zion, that bringest
good tidings; lift up thy voice with strength, O Jerusalem, that bringest
good tidings. Lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah:
"Behold your God! Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His
arm shall rule for Him."' This Day all the signs have appeared. A Great
City hath descended from heaven, and Zion trembleth and exulteth with joy
at the Revelation of God, for it hath heard the Voice of God on every
side."

To the priestly caste, holding sacerdotal supremacy over the followers of
the Faith of Zoroaster, that same Voice, identifying itself with the voice
of the promised _Sh_ah-Bahram, has declared: "O high priests! Ears have
been given you that they may hearken unto the mystery of Him Who is the
Self-Dependent, and eyes that they may behold Him. Wherefore flee ye? The
Incomparable Friend is manifest. He speaketh that wherein lieth salvation.
Were ye, O high priests, to discover the perfume of the rose garden of
understanding, ye would seek none other but Him, and would recognize, in
His new vesture, the All-Wise and Peerless One, and would turn your eyes
from the world and all who seek it, and would arise to help Him."
"Whatsoever hath been announced in the Books," Baha'u'llah, replying to a
Zoroastrian who had inquired regarding the promised _Sh_ah-Bahram, has
written, "hath been revealed and made clear. From every direction the
signs have been manifested. The Omnipotent One is calling, in this Day,
and announcing the appearance of the Supreme Heaven." "This is not the
day," He, in another Tablet declares, "whereon the high priests can
command and exercise their authority. In your Book it is stated that the
high priests will, on that Day, lead men far astray, and will prevent them
from drawing nigh unto Him. He indeed is a high priest who hath seen the
light and hastened unto the way leading to the Beloved." "Say, O high
priests!" He, again addresses them, "The Hand of Omnipotence is stretched
forth from behind the clouds; behold ye it with new eyes. The tokens of
His majesty and greatness are unveiled; gaze ye on them with pure eyes....
Say, O high priests! Ye are held in reverence because of My Name, and yet
ye flee Me! Ye are the high priests of the Temple. Had ye been the high
priests of the Omnipotent One, ye would have been united with Him, and
would have recognized Him.... Say, O high priests! No man's acts shall be
acceptable, in this Day, unless he forsaketh mankind and all that men
possess, and setteth his face towards the Omnipotent One."

It is not, however, with either of these two Faiths that we are primarily
concerned. It is to Islam and, to a lesser extent, to Christianity that my
theme is directly related. Islam, from which the Faith of Baha'u'llah has
sprung, even as did Christianity from Judaism, is the religion within
whose pale that Faith first rose and developed, from whose ranks the great
mass of Baha'i adherents have been recruited, and by whose leaders they
have been, and indeed are still being, persecuted. Christianity, on the
other hand, is the religion to which the vast majority of Baha'is of
non-Islamic extraction belong, within whose spiritual domain the
Administrative Order of the Faith of God is rapidly advancing, and by
whose ecclesiastical exponents that Order is being increasingly assailed.
Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and even Zoroastrianism which, in the
main, are still unaware of the potentialities of the Cause of God, and
whose response to its Message is as yet negligible, the Muhammadan and
Christian Faiths may be regarded as the two religious systems which are
sustaining, at this formative stage in its evolution, the full impact of
so tremendous a Revelation.

Let us, then, consider what the Founders of the Baha'i Faith have
addressed to, or written about, the recognized leaders of Islam and
Christianity. We have already considered the passages with reference to
the kings of Islam, whether as Caliphs reigning in Constantinople, or as
_Sh_ahs of Persia who ruled the kingdom as temporary trustees for the
expected Imam. We have also noted the Tablet which Baha'u'llah
specifically revealed for the Roman Pontiff, and the more general message
in the Suriy-i-Muluk directed to the kings of Christendom. No less
challenging and ominous is the Voice that has warned and called to account
the Muhammadan divines and the Christian clergy.

"Leaders of religion," is Baha'u'llah's clear and universal censure
pronounced in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "in every age, have hindered their people
from attaining the shores of eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held the
reins of authority in their mighty grasp. Some for the lust of leadership,
others through want of knowledge and understanding, have been the cause of
the deprivation of the people. By their sanction and authority, every
Prophet of God hath drunk from the chalice of sacrifice, and winged His
flight unto the heights of glory. What unspeakable cruelties they that
have occupied the seats of authority and learning have inflicted upon the
true Monarchs of the world, those Gems of Divine virtue! Content with a
transitory dominion, they have deprived themselves of an everlasting
sovereignty." And again, in that same Book: "Among these 'veils of glory'
are the divines and doctors living in the days of the Manifestation of
God, wh

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