Title: The Promised Day Is Come
Author: Shoghi Effendi, 1897-1957
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Promised Day Is Come" ***


The Promised Day Is Come


by Shoghi Effendi



Edition 1, (September 2006)



                           BAHA’I TERMS OF USE


You have permission to freely make and use copies of the text and any
other information ("Content") available on this Site including printing,
emailing, posting, distributing, copying, downloading, uploading,
transmitting, displaying the Content in whole or in part subject to the
following:

1. Our copyright notice and the source reference must be attached to the
Content;

2. The Content may not be modified or altered in any way except to change
the font or appearance;

3. The Content must be used solely for a non-commercial purpose.

Although this blanket permission to reproduce the Content is given freely
such that no special permission is required, the Bahá’í International
Community retains full copyright protection for all Content included at
this Site under all applicable national and international laws.

For permission to publish, transmit, display or otherwise use the Content
for any commercial purpose, please contact us
(http://reference.bahai.org/en/contact.html).



                                 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 Qájár 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_í’ih Islám
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 Bahá’u’lláh ... 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’í 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....

Mírzá Ḥusayn-‘Alí, surnamed Bahá’u’lláh (the Glory of God), a native of
Mázindarán, Whose advent the Báb [Herald and Forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh]
had foretold, ... was imprisoned in Ṭihrán, was banished, in 1852, from
His native land to Ba_gh_dád, and thence to Constantinople and Adrianople,
and finally to the prison city of Akká, 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 Akká, 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 Islám,
the Chief Magistrates of the Republics of the American continent, the
entire Christian sacerdotal order, the leaders of _Sh_í’ih and Sunní
Islám, 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’u’lláh:

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,” Bahá’u’lláh’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 Báb, for
His part, has affirmed in the Qayyúm-i-Asmá, “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
Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb. 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 Bahá’u’lláh
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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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,” Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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_í’ih Islám, 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 Báb—“the Point,” as affirmed by Bahá’u’lláh, “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_íráz; strict and prolonged incarceration in the bleak fastnesses of
the mountains of Á_dh_irbayján; 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 Tabríz; the shameful infliction of the bastinado
in the prayer house, and at the hands of the _Sh_ay_kh_u’l-Islám of that
city; and finally suspension in the barrack-square of Tabríz 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 Báb Himself in His Tablet to Muḥammad _Sh_áh 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 [Mákú] ... 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 Bayán, “...who, without any right, have consigned Him
unto a mountain [Mákú], 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 Bahá’u’lláh, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by the Báb,
is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of the Bábí
Dispensation? Was He not—He for Whom the Báb 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 ‘Alí [the
Báb] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, and how
Muḥammad 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
Báb? 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_í’ih ecclesiastics and by order of
the _Sh_áh 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 Ṭihrán—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-Bahá,” 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.
Bahá’u’lláh 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,” Nabíl has recorded in his chronicle, “no manner of
food or drink was given to Bahá’u’lláh. 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_udás of Ṭihrán? What of the savage violence with which
He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood of the village of
Níyálá? What of His incarceration by the emissaries of the army of the
_Sh_áh in Mázindarán, 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 Ámul? 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 Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh? 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 Níyávarán “on foot and in chains, with
bared head and bare feet,” and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer
sun, to the Síyáh-_Ch_ál of Ṭihrán? 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 Báb’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 ‘Iráq?

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 ‘Iráq, Sulaymáníyyih,
Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal colony of Akká, 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 Bahá’u’lláh to the
mountains of Sulaymáníyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed
from His two years’ complete withdrawal; the incessant intrigues indulged
in by the exponents of _Sh_í’ih Islám in Najaf and Karbilá, working in
close and constant association with their confederates in Persia; the
intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz
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 Sulṭán, 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
Akká, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two
years in the barracks of that town; the interrogatory to which the Turkish
pá_sh_á 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 Bahá’u’lláh? 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 Báb, to the
long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Bahá’u’lláh, to the warnings
sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation, must
be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were
endured by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 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 Bábí 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 Akká;
the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual assaults
and insults under the despotic rule of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd, and later
under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and merciless
Jamál Pá_sh_á—He, too, the Center and Pivot of Bahá’u’lláh’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 Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, 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
Báb and Bahá’u’lláh; 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.” “Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá [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. Yá Bahá’u’l-Abhá! 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!”
Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’í 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
Islám, 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,” Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh
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,”
Bahá’u’lláh 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 Báb in the
Dalá’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 Báb’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 [Muḥammad], 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 Báb, moreover, in that same treatise, censuring the failure of
the Christian divines to acknowledge the truth of Muḥammad’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 Báb and
Bahá’u’lláh. 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’í 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-‘Azíz, the embodiment of the concentrated power
vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Náṣiri’d-Dín
_Sh_áh, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of
_Sh_í’ih Islám—in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and
of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Bahá’u’lláh’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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Súriy-i-Mulúk (Súrih of Kings) in
which the Sulṭán 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 ‘Alí
[the Báb], 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 Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), that priceless treasury
enshrining for all time the brightest emanations of the mind of
Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Bahá 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 Bahá. 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 Bahá, 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Báb, moreover, in the Qayyúm-i-Asmá, His celebrated commentary on the
Súrih of Joseph, revealed in the first year of His Mission, and
characterized by Bahá’u’lláh as “the first, the greatest, and mightiest of
all books” in the Bábí 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 Báb], 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 Báb and Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh
and, to a lesser extent, from that of the Báb, 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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, Bahá’u’lláh 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
[Bahá’u’lláh], 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 Bahá, 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, Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Aqsá vibrateth through the breezes of its Lord, the
All-Glorious, whilst Bathá [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 Kitáb-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book, Bahá’u’lláh 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 Kitáb-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 Akká, at the time when thou didst set
forth to visit the Aqsá 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 Súriy-i-Mulúk Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz 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 ‘Iráq
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 Kitáb-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 Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh, the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, despatched to him from Akká
and constituting Bahá’u’lláh’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_áh 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_áh 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_áh, 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_áh, 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 Qayyúm-i-Asmá the Báb, for His part, thus addresses Muḥammad
_Sh_áh: “O King of Islám! 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_áh! 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_áh, the Sacred Land [Ṭihrán] 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_áh, 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 Muḥammad _Sh_áh the Báb, 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 Bahá—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 Bahá’í Faith are
stressed, and the purpose and character of the Bábí Revelation unfolded.
The significance of Bahá’u’lláh’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 Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán (Tablet to the _Sh_áh of Persia) Bahá’u’lláh
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_áh!
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_áh. 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 Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís, Bahá’u’lláh, recalling His conversation
with the Turkish officer charged with the task of enforcing His banishment
to the fortress-town of Akká, has written: “There is a matter, which, if
thou findest it possible, I request thee to submit to His Majesty the
Sulṭán, 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,” Bahá’u’lláh 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-Bahá has acclaimed as a “miracle,” Bahá’u’lláh 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 Lawḥ-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
Bahá’u’lláh 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,
Bahá’u’lláh has revealed other Tablets—the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís 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 Bahá’u’lláh’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
Islám 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 Bahá’í century,
a century fraught with such tumultuous sufferings and violent outrages for
the persecuted Faith of Bahá’u’lláh? 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_íráz,
the Báb, in the presence of the First Letter to believe in Him, revealed
the first chapter of His celebrated commentary on the Súrih of Joseph (The
Qayyúm-i-Asmá), in which He trumpeted His Call to the sovereigns and
princes of the earth. It passed from incubation to visible manifestation
when Bahá’u’lláh’s prophecies, enshrined for all time in the
Súriy-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-Bahá, 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-Bahá’s passing, by the
demise of the effete Qájár 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 Bahá’u’lláh,
proclaiming His Message to them, revealed the Súriy-i-Mulúk 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 Akká, already thrice banished by Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, 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.”

Bahá’u’lláh’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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Akká, and who, as attested by Nabíl 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 Bahá’u’lláh
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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Akká 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 Báb, 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 Kitáb-i-Íqán,
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 Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation was mounting
to full meridian splendor, the shadows that beset the dwindling patrimony
of St. Peter were correspondingly deepening. The Tablet of Bahá’u’lláh,
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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh, were but the precursors of still greater
catastrophes that may be said to have marked the ministry of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
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 Bahá’u’lláh 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, Bahá’u’lláh, Who had predicted, in clear and
resounding terms, the ignominious fall of the successor of the great
Napoleon, had, in the Kitáb-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,” Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh had paid tribute, and to the
unwisdom of whose imperial and ungrateful master ‘Abdu’l-Bahá 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 Kitáb-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
Bahá’u’lláh chided in the Kitáb-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 Bahá’u’lláh, and later during the ministry of
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the first blows of a slow yet steady and relentless
retribution were falling alike upon the rulers of the Turkish House of
U_th_mán and of the Qájár dynasty in Persia—the archenemies of God’s
infant Faith. Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz fell from power, and was murdered soon
after Bahá’u’lláh’s banishment from Adrianople, while Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh
succumbed to an assassin’s pistol, during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s incarceration in
the fortress-town of Akká. 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-‘Azíz 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 farmáns, had thrice banished Bahá’u’lláh, 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-Ḥamíd II, that the Center of the Covenant of God had to
endure, for no less than forty years, in the fortress-town of Akká, an
incarceration fraught with so many perils, affronts and privations.

“Hearken, O king!” is the summons issued to Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz by
Bahá’u’lláh, “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,” Bahá’u’lláh thus prophesies in the Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís,
“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 Sunní
and _Sh_í’ih Islám, “the exalted station of the people hath been abased,
the standard of Islám hath been reversed, and its mighty throne hath
fallen.”

And finally, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, revealed soon after Bahá’u’lláh’s
banishment to Akká, 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 Lawḥ-i-Fu’ád, wherein mention
has been made of the death of Fu’ád Pá_sh_á, the Turkish Minister of
Foreign Affairs, the fall of the Sulṭán 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 Sulṭán’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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Bahá’u’lláh, while a prisoner in Constantinople,
delivered to a Turkish official His Tablet, addressed to Sulṭán
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz and his ministers, to be transmitted to ‘Alí Pá_sh_á, the
Grand Vizir. It was this Tablet which, as attested by that officer and
affirmed by Nabíl in his chronicle, affected the Vizir so profoundly that
he paled while reading it. This process received fresh impetus after the
Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís was revealed on the morrow of its Author’s final banishment
from Adrianople to Akká. Relentless, devastating, and with ever-increasing
momentum, it ominously unfolded, damaging the prestige of the Empire,
dismembering its territory, dethroning its sulṭáns, 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
sulṭáns, 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-Majíd, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged
victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor,
‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after
‘Abdu’l-Bahá’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 sulṭán
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 fatvá
of the muftí denounced his incapacity and extravagance. Four days later he
was assassinated, and was succeeded by his nephew, Murád 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-Ḥamíd II who “proved to be the most mean, cunning,
untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of U_th_mán.” “No
one knew,” it was written of him, “from day to day who was the person on
whose advice the sulṭán 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 sulṭán. 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-Islám the condemnation of the sulṭán. 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. Muḥammad V, a brother of
‘Abdu’l-Ḥamíd 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 Jamál Pá_sh_á, the commander-in-chief in Syria—he who had
sworn to raze to the ground, after his triumphant return from Egypt, the
Tomb of Bahá’u’lláh, 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, Muḥammad VI, the last of the twenty-five successive
degenerate sulṭáns, had meanwhile succeeded his wretched brother. The
edifice of the empire was now quaking and tottering to its fall. Muṣṭafá
Kamál dealt it the final blows. Turkey, that had already shrunk to a small
Asiatic state, became a republic. The sulṭán 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-‘Azíz, his successors, his
throne and his dynasty. What of Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh, 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 Badí, 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 QÁJÁR DYNASTY


The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Bahá’u’lláh’s Tablet,
and directed his minister, as Bahá’u’lláh Himself asserts, to address to
its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz, 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 Náṣiri’d-Dín
_Sh_áh, 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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_áh 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 Báb, and the
imprisonment of Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh-_Ch_ál of Ṭihrán, by a sovereign
who had repeatedly instigated Bahá’u’lláh’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_áh’s dramatic assassination, the
ignoble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qájár, and the
extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine
retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked.

The Qájárs, members of the alien Turkoman tribe, had, indeed, usurped the
Persian throne. Áqá Muḥammad _Kh_án, the eunuch _Sh_áh 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 Qájárs 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 Áqá Muḥammad _Kh_án, the uxorious, philoprogenetive
Fatḥ-‘Alí _Sh_áh, 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 Muḥammad
_Sh_áh, one of his earliest acts, definitely condemned by the pen of
Bahá’u’lláh, was the order to strangle his first minister, the illustrious
Qá’im-Maqám, 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, Ḥájí Mírzá Aqásí, who brought the
country to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution. It was this same _Sh_áh
who refused to interview the Báb and imprisoned Him in Á_dh_irbayján, 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
Qayyúm-i-Asmá: “I swear by God, O _Sh_áh! 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.”

Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh, 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
Qájár, 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_áh ‘Abdu’l-‘Aẓím, 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_áh’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_áh. Shrines and sacred places were to
open their gates to all wayfarers and pilgrims, and the siyyids and mullás
were taking cough medicine to clear their throats to sing and chant the
praises of the _Sh_áh 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_áh
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
Bábís 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
Bahá’u’lláh 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 Báb]
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 ‘Iráq in evident sorrow. We tarried there until
the time when the King of Rúm [Sulṭán 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 Qájár dynasty were now numbered. The torpor of the
national consciousness had vanished. The reign of Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh’s
successor, Muzaffari’d-Dín _Sh_áh, 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_áh, who expired a few days later.
Muḥammad-‘Alí _Sh_áh, 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 Baháristán, 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, Aḥmad _Sh_áh, 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_mán, 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 Náṣiri’d-Dín _Sh_áh and of Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz
have, in their powerlessness and destitution, turned to the World Center
of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Súriy-i-Mulúk,
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 Báb’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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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_ Salmán: “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
Bahá’u’lláh. 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’í sovereigns is inculcated. To conclude
from the above quoted words, addressed by Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh’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 Imáms—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_árát (Glad-Tidings) Bahá’u’lláh 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 Kitáb-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 Bahá 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 Bahá. 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 Bahá, your substance, nay your very
lives, for his assistance.”

In the Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Lawḥ-i-Ra’ís 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
Ridvánu’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 Kitáb-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 Tá, 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 Bahá. 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 Islám, 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Apôtres,” 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’u’lláh, 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 Islám 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 Bahá’u’lláh’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 Bahá’u’lláh directed His historic
addresses exclusively to the leaders of Islám 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 Bahá’u’lláh, “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 Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’u’lláh, “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’án 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 Bahá’u’lláh 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”
Bahá’u’lláh has revealed: “Lend an ear unto the song of David. He saith:
‘Who will bring me into the Strong City?’ The Strong City is Akká, 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_áh-Bahrám, 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,” Bahá’u’lláh, replying to a
Zoroastrian who had inquired regarding the promised _Sh_áh-Bahrám, 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 Islám and, to a lesser extent, to Christianity that my
theme is directly related. Islám, from which the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh 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 Bahá’í 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 Bahá’ís 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 Muḥammadan 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 Bahá’í Faith have
addressed to, or written about, the recognized leaders of Islám and
Christianity. We have already considered the passages with reference to
the kings of Islám, whether as Caliphs reigning in Constantinople, or as
_Sh_áhs of Persia who ruled the kingdom as temporary trustees for the
expected Imám. We have also noted the Tablet which Bahá’u’lláh
specifically revealed for the Roman Pontiff, and the more general message
in the Súriy-i-Mulúk directed to the kings of Christendom. No less
challenging and ominous is the Voice that has warned and called to account
the Muḥammadan divines and the Christian clergy.

“Leaders of religion,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s clear and universal censure
pronounced in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “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, who, because of their want of discernment and their love and
eagerness for leadership, have failed to submit to the Cause of God, nay,
have even refused to incline their ears unto the Divine Melody. ‘They have
thrust their fingers into their ears.’ And the people also, utterly
ignoring God and taking them for their masters, have placed themselves
unreservedly under the authority of these pompous and hypocritical
leaders, for they have no sight, no hearing, no heart, of their own to
distinguish truth from falsehood. Notwithstanding the divinely inspired
admonitions of all the Prophets, the Saints, and Chosen Ones of God,
enjoining the people to see with their own eyes and hear with their own
ears, they have disdainfully rejected their counsels and have blindly
followed, and will continue to follow, the leaders of their Faith. Should
a poor and obscure person, destitute of the attire of the men of learning,
address them saying: ‘Follow ye, O people, the Messengers of God,’ they
would, greatly surprised at such a statement, reply: ‘What! Meanest thou
that all these divines, all these exponents of learning, with all their
authority, their pomp, and pageantry, have erred, and failed to
distinguish truth from falsehood? Dost thou, and people like thyself,
pretend to have comprehended that which they have not understood?’ If
numbers and excellence of apparel be regarded as the criterions of
learning and truth, the peoples of a bygone age, whom those of today have
never surpassed in numbers, magnificence and power, should certainly be
accounted a superior and worthier people.” Furthermore, “Not one Prophet
of God was made manifest Who did not fall a victim to the relentless hate,
to the denunciation, denial and execration of the clerics of His day! Woe
unto them for the iniquities their hands have formerly wrought! Woe unto
them for that which they are now doing! What veils of glory more grievous
than these embodiments of error! By the righteousness of God! To pierce
such veils is the mightiest of all acts, and to rend them asunder the most
meritorious of all deeds!” “On their tongue,” He moreover has written,
“the mention of God hath become an empty name; in their midst His holy
Word a dead letter. Such is the sway of their desires, that the lamp of
conscience and reason hath been quenched in their hearts.... No two are
found to agree on one and the same law, for they seek no God but their own
desire, and tread no path but the path of error. In leadership they have
recognized the ultimate object of their endeavor, and account pride and
haughtiness as the highest attainments of their hearts’ desire. They have
placed their sordid machinations above the Divine decree, have renounced
resignation unto the will of God, busied themselves with selfish
calculation, and walked in the way of the hypocrite. With all their power
and strength they strive to secure themselves in their petty pursuits,
fearful lest the least discredit undermine their authority or blemish the
display of their magnificence.”

“The source and origin of tyranny,” Bahá’u’lláh in another Tablet has
affirmed, “have been the divines. Through the sentences pronounced by
these haughty and wayward souls the rulers of the earth have wrought that
which ye have heard.... The reins of the heedless masses have been, and
are, in the hands of the exponents of idle fancies and vain imaginings.
These decree what they please. God, verily, is clear of them, and We, too,
are clear of them, as are such as have testified unto that which the Pen
of the Most High hath spoken in this glorious Station.”

“The leaders of men,” He has likewise asserted, “have, from time
immemorial, prevented the people from turning unto the Most Great Ocean.
The Friend of God [Abraham] was cast into fire through the sentence
pronounced by the divines of the age, and lies and calumnies were imputed
to Him Who discoursed with God [Moses]. Reflect upon the One Who was the
Spirit of God [Jesus]. Though He showed forth the utmost compassion and
tenderness, yet they rose up against that Essence of Being and Lord of the
seen and unseen, in such a manner that He could find no refuge wherein to
rest. Each day He wandered unto a new place, and sought a new shelter.
Consider the Seal of the Prophets [Muḥammad]—may the souls of all else
except Him be His sacrifice! How grievous the things which befell that
Lord of all being at the hands of the priests of idolatry, and of the
Jewish doctors, after He had uttered the blessed words proclaiming the
unity of God! By My life! My pen groaneth, and all created things cry out
by reason of the things that have touched Him, at the hands of such as
have broken the Covenant of God and His Testament, and denied His
Testimony, and gainsaid His signs.”

“The foolish divines,” another Tablet declares, “have laid aside the Book
of God, and are occupied with that which they themselves have fashioned.
The Ocean of Knowledge is revealed, and the shrill of the Pen of the Most
High is raised, and yet they, even as earthworms, are afflicted with the
clay of their fancies and imaginings. They are exalted by reason of their
relationship to the one true God, and yet they have turned aside from Him!
Because of Him have they become famous, and yet they are shut off as by a
veil from Him!”

“The pagan priests,” in yet another Tablet is written, “and the Jewish and
Christian divines, have committed the very things which the divines of the
age, in this Dispensation, have committed, and are still committing. Nay,
these have displayed a more grievous cruelty and a fiercer malice. Every
atom beareth witness unto that which I say.”

To these leaders who “esteem themselves the best of all creatures and have
been regarded as the vilest by Him Who is the Truth,” who “occupy the
seats of knowledge and learning, and who have named ignorance knowledge,
and called oppression justice,” and who, “worship no God but their own
desire, who bear allegiance to naught but gold, who are wrapt in the
densest veils of learning, and who, enmeshed by its obscurities, are lost
in the wilds of error”—to these Bahá’u’lláh has chosen to address these
words: “O concourse of divines! Ye shall not henceforward behold
yourselves possessed of any power, inasmuch as We have seized it from you,
and destined it for such as have believed in God, the One, the
All-Powerful, the Almighty, the Unconstrained.”

In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas we read the following: “Say: O leaders of religion!
Weigh not the Book of God with such standards and sciences as are current
amongst you, for the Book itself is the unerring Balance established
amongst men. In this most perfect Balance whatsoever the peoples and
kindreds of the earth possess must be weighed, while the measure of its
weight should be tested according to its own standard, did ye but know it.
The eye of My loving-kindness weepeth sore over you, inasmuch as ye have
failed to recognize the One upon Whom ye have been calling in the daytime
and in the night season, at even and at morn.... O ye leaders of religion!
Who is the man amongst you that can rival Me in vision or insight? Where
is he to be found that dareth to claim to be My equal in utterance or
wisdom? No, by My Lord, the All-Merciful! All on the earth shall pass
away; and this is the face of your Lord, the Almighty, the
Well-Beloved.... Say: This, verily, is the heaven in which the Mother Book
is treasured, could ye but comprehend it. He it is Who hath caused the
Rock to shout, and the Burning Bush to lift up its voice, upon the Mount
rising above the Holy Land, and proclaim: ‘The Kingdom is God’s, the
sovereign Lord of all, the All-Powerful, the Loving!’ We have not entered
any school, nor read any of your dissertations. Incline your ears to the
words of this unlettered One, wherewith He summoneth you unto God, the
Ever-Abiding. Better is this for you than all the treasures of the earth,
could ye but comprehend it.”

“O concourse of divines!” He moreover has written, “When My verses were
sent down, and My clear tokens were revealed, We found you behind the
veils. This, verily, is a strange thing.... We have rent the veils
asunder. Beware lest ye shut out the people by yet another veil. Pluck
asunder the chains of vain imaginings, in the name of the Lord of all men,
and be not of the deceitful. Should ye turn unto God, and embrace His
Cause, spread not disorder within it, and measure not the Book of God with
your selfish desires. This, verily, is the counsel of God aforetime and
hereafter.... Had ye believed in God, when He revealed Himself, the people
would not have turned aside from Him, nor would the things ye witness
today have befallen Us. Fear God, and be not of the heedless. ...This is
the Cause that hath caused all your superstitions and idols to tremble....
O concourse of divines! Beware lest ye be the cause of strife in the land,
even as ye were the cause of the repudiation of the Faith in its early
days. Gather the people around this Word that hath made the pebbles to cry
out: ‘The Kingdom is God’s, the Dawning-Place of all signs!’... Tear the
veils asunder in such wise that the inmates of the Kingdom will hear them
being rent. This is the command of God, in days gone by, and for those to
come. Blessed the man that observeth that whereunto he was bidden, and woe
betide the negligent.”

And again: “How long will ye, O concourse of divines, level the spears of
hatred at the face of Bahá? Rein in your pens. Lo, the Most Sublime Pen
speaketh betwixt earth and heaven. Fear God, and follow not your desires
which have altered the face of creation. Purify your ears that they may
hearken unto the Voice of God. By God! It is even as fire that consumeth
the veils, and as water that washeth the souls of all who are in the
universe.”

“Say: O concourse of divines!” He furthermore addresses them, “Can any one
of you race with the Divine Youth in the arena of wisdom and utterance, or
soar with Him into the heaven of inner meaning and explanation? Nay, by My
Lord, the God of mercy! All have swooned away in this Day from the Word of
thy Lord. They are even as dead and lifeless, except him whom thy Lord,
the Almighty, the Unconstrained, hath willed to exempt. Such a one is
indeed of those endued with knowledge in the sight of Him Who is the
All-Knowing. The inmates of Paradise, and the dwellers of the sacred
Folds, bless him at eventide and at dawn. Can the one possessed of wooden
legs resist him whose feet God hath made of steel? Nay, by Him Who
illumineth the whole of creation!”

“When We observed carefully,” He significantly remarks, “We discovered
that Our enemies are, for the most part, the divines.” “Among the people
are those who said: ‘He hath repudiated the divines.’ Say: ‘Yea, by My
Lord! I, in very truth, was the One Who abolished the idols!’” “We,
verily, have sounded the Trumpet, which is Our Most Sublime Pen, and lo,
the divines and the learned, and the doctors and the rulers, swooned away
except such as God preserved, as a token of His grace, and He, verily, is
the All-Bounteous, the Ancient of Days.”

“O concourse of divines! Fling away idle fancies and imaginings, and turn,
then, towards the Horizon of Certitude. I swear by God! All that ye
possess will profit you not, neither all the treasures of the earth, nor
the leadership ye have usurped. Fear God, and be not of the lost ones.”
“Say: O concourse of divines! Lay aside all your veils and coverings. Give
ear unto that whereunto calleth you the Most Sublime Pen, in this wondrous
Day.... The world is laden with dust, by reason of your vain imaginings,
and the hearts of such as enjoy near access to God are troubled because of
your cruelty. Fear God, and be of them that judge equitably.”

“O ye the dawning-places of knowledge!” He thus exhorts them, “Beware that
ye suffer not yourselves to become changed, for as ye change, most men
will, likewise, change. This, verily, is an injustice unto yourselves and
unto others.... Ye are even as a spring. If it be changed, so will the
streams that branch out from it be changed. Fear God, and be numbered with
the godly. In like manner, if the heart of man be corrupted, his limbs
will also be corrupted. And similarly, if the root of a tree be corrupted,
its branches, and its offshoots, and its leaves, and its fruits, will be
corrupted.”

“Say: O concourse of divines!” He thus appeals to them, “Be fair, I adjure
you by God, and nullify not the Truth with the things ye possess. Peruse
that which We have sent down with truth. It will, verily, aid you, and
will draw you nigh unto God, the Mighty, the Great. Consider and call to
mind how when Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, appeared, the people denied
Him. They ascribed unto Him what caused the Spirit [Jesus] to lament in
His Most Sublime Station, and the Faithful Spirit to cry out. Consider,
moreover, the things which befell the Apostles and Messengers of God
before Him, by reason of what the hands of the unjust have wrought. We
make mention of you for the sake of God, and remind you of His signs, and
announce unto you the things ordained for such as are nigh unto Him in the
most sublime Paradise and the all-highest Heaven, and I, verily, am the
Announcer, the Omniscient. He hath come for your salvation, and hath borne
tribulations that ye may ascend, by the ladder of utterance, unto the
summit of understanding.... Peruse, with fairness and justice, that which
hath been sent down. It will, verily, exalt you through the truth, and
will cause you to behold the things from which ye have been withheld, and
will enable you to quaff His sparkling Wine.”



WORDS ADDRESSED TO MUSLIM ECCLESIASTICS


Let us now consider more particularly the specific references, and the
words directly addressed, to Muslim ecclesiastics by the Báb and
Bahá’u’lláh. The Báb, as attested by the Kitáb-i-Íqán, has “specifically
revealed an Epistle unto the divines of every city, wherein He hath fully
set forth the character of the denial and repudiation of each of them.”
Whilst in Iṣfáhán, that time-honored stronghold of Muslim ecclesiasticism,
He, through the medium of its governor, Manú_ch_ihr _Kh_án, invited in
writing the divines of that city to engage in a contest with Him, in
order, as He expressed it, to “establish the truth and dissipate
falsehood.” Not one of the multitude of divines who thronged that great
seat of learning had the courage to take up that challenge. Bahá’u’lláh,
on His part, while in Adrianople, and as witnessed by His own Tablet to
the _Sh_áh of Persia, signified His wish to be “brought face to face with
the divines of the age, and produce proofs and testimonies in the presence
of His Majesty, the _Sh_áh.” This offer was denounced as a “great
presumption and amazing audacity” by the divines of Ṭihrán, who, in their
fear, advised their sovereign to instantly punish the bearer of that
Tablet. Previously, while Bahá’u’lláh was in Ba_gh_dád, He expressed His
willingness that, provided the divines of Najaf and Karbilá—the twin
holiest cities next to Mecca and Medina, in the eyes of the
_Sh_í’ihs—assembled and agreed regarding any miracle they wished to be
performed, and signed and sealed a statement affirming that on performance
of this miracle they would acknowledge the truth of His Mission, He would
unhesitatingly produce it. To this challenge they, as recorded by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His “Some Answered Questions,” could offer no better reply
than this: “This man is an enchanter; perhaps he will perform an
enchantment, and then we shall have nothing more to say.” “For twelve
years,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself has testified, “We tarried in Ba_gh_dád. Much
as We desired that a large gathering of divines and fair-minded men be
convened, so that truth might be distinguished from falsehood, and be
fully demonstrated, no action was taken.” And again: “And likewise, while
in ‘Iráq, We wished to come together with the divines of Persia. No sooner
did they hear of this, than they fled and said: ‘He indeed is a manifest
sorcerer!’ This is the word that proceeded aforetime out of the mouths of
such as were like them. These [divines] objected to what they said, and
yet, they themselves repeat, in this day, what was said before them, and
understand not. By My life! They are even as ashes in the sight of thy
Lord. If He be willing, tempestuous gales will blow over them, and make
them as dust. Thy Lord, verily, doth what He pleaseth.”

These false, these cruel and cowardly _Sh_í’ih clericals, who, as
Bahá’u’lláh declared, had they not intervened, Persia would have been
subdued by the power of God in hardly more than two years, have been thus
addressed in the Qayyúm-i-Asmá: “O concourse of divines! Fear God from
this day onwards in the views ye advance, for He Who is Our Remembrance in
your midst, and Who cometh from Us, is, in very truth, the Judge and
Witness. Turn away from that which ye lay hold of, and which the Book of
God, the True One, hath not sanctioned, for on the Day of Resurrection ye
shall, upon the Bridge, be, in very truth, held answerable for the
position ye occupied.”

In that same Book the Báb thus addresses the _Sh_í’ihs, as well as the
entire body of the followers of the Prophet: “O concourse of _Sh_í’ihs!
Fear ye God, and Our Cause, which concerneth Him Who is the Most Great
Remembrance of God. For great is its fire, as decreed in the Mother-Book.”
“O people of the Qur’án! Ye are as nothing unless ye submit unto the
Remembrance of God and unto this Book. If ye follow the Cause of God, We
will forgive you your sins, and if ye turn aside from Our command, We
will, in truth, condemn your souls in Our Book, unto the Most Great Fire.
We, verily, do not deal unjustly with men, even to the extent of a speck
on a date stone.”

And finally, in that same Commentary, this startling prophecy is recorded:
“Erelong We will, in very truth, torment such as waged war against Ḥusayn
[Imám Ḥusayn], in the Land of the Euphrates, with the most afflictive
torment, and the most dire and exemplary punishment.” “Erelong,” He also,
referring to that same people, in that same Book, has written, “will God
wreak His vengeance upon them, at the time of Our Return, and He hath, in
very truth, prepared for them, in the world to come, a severe torment.”

As to Bahá’u’lláh, the passages I cite in these pages constitute but a
fraction of the references to the Muslim divines with which His writings
abound. “The Lote-Tree beyond Which there is no passing,” He exclaims,
“crieth out, by reason of the cruelty of the divines. It shouteth aloud,
and bewaileth itself.” “From the inception of this sect [_Sh_í’ih],” He,
in His “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” has written, “until the present
day, how great hath been the number of the divines that have appeared,
none of whom became cognizant of the nature of this Revelation. What could
have been the cause of this waywardness? Were We to mention it, their
limbs would cleave asunder. It is necessary for them to meditate, nay to
meditate for a thousand thousand years, that haply they may attain unto a
sprinkling from the ocean of knowledge, and discover the things whereof
they are oblivious in this day. I was walking in the Land of Tá
[Ṭihrán]—the dayspring of the signs of thy Lord—when lo, I heard the
lamentation of the pulpits and the voice of their supplication unto God,
blessed and glorified be He! They cried out and said: ‘O God of the world
and Lord of the nations! Thou beholdest our state and the things which
have befallen us, by reason of the cruelty of Thy servants. Thou hast
created us and revealed us for Thy glorification and praise. Thou dost now
hear what the wayward proclaim upon us in Thy days. By Thy might! Our
souls are melted, and our limbs are trembling. Alas, alas! Would that we
had never been created and revealed by Thee!’ The hearts of them that
enjoy near access to God are consumed by these words, and from them the
cries of such as are devoted to Him are raised.”

“These thick clouds,” He, in that same Epistle, has stated, “are the
exponents of idle fancies and vain imaginings, who are none other than the
divines of Persia.” “By ‘divines’ in the passage cited above,” He, in that
same connection, explains, “is meant those men who outwardly attire
themselves with the raiment of knowledge, but who inwardly are deprived
therefrom. In this connection We quote, from the Tablet addressed to His
Majesty the _Sh_áh, certain passages from the ‘Hidden Words’ which were
revealed by the Abhá Pen under the name of the ‘Book of Fátimih,’ the
blessings of God be upon her! ‘O ye that are foolish, yet have a name to
be wise! Wherefore do ye wear the guise of the shepherd, when inwardly ye
have become wolves, intent upon My flock? Ye are even as the star, which
riseth ere the dawn, and which, though it seem radiant and luminous,
leadeth the wayfarers of My city astray into the paths of perdition.’ And
likewise He saith: ‘O ye seemingly fair yet inwardly foul! Ye are like
clear but bitter water, which to outward seeming is but crystal pure but
of which, when tested by the Divine Assayer, not a drop is accepted. Yea,
the sunbeam falleth alike upon the dust and the mirror, yet differ they in
reflection even as doth the star from the earth: nay, immeasurable is the
difference!’”

“We have invited all men,” Bahá’u’lláh, in another Tablet, has stated, “to
turn towards God, and have acquainted them with the Straight Path. They
[divines] rose up against Us with such cruelty as hath sapped the strength
of Islám, and yet most of the people are heedless!” “The children of Him
Who is the Friend of God [Abraham],” He moreover has written, “and heirs
of the One Who discoursed with God [Moses], who were accounted the most
abject of men, have split the veils asunder, and rent the coverings, and
seized the Sealed Wine from the hands of the bounty of Him Who is the
Self-Subsisting, and drunk their fill, whilst the detestable _Sh_í’ih
divines have remained, until the present time, hesitant and perverse.” And
again: “The divines of Persia committed that which no people amongst the
peoples of the world have committed.”

“If this Cause be of God,” He thus addresses the Minister of the _Sh_áh in
Constantinople, “no man can prevail against it; and if it be not of God,
the divines amongst you, and they that follow their corrupt desires, and
such as have rebelled against Him, will surely suffice to overpower it.”

“Of all the peoples of the world,” He, in another Tablet, observes, “they
that have suffered the greatest loss have been, and are still, the people
of Persia. I swear by the Daystar of Utterance which shineth upon the
world in its meridian glory! The lamentations of the pulpits, in that
country, are being raised continually. In the early days such lamentations
were heard in the Land of Tá [Ṭihrán], for pulpits, erected for the
purpose of remembering the True One—exalted be His glory—have now, in
Persia, become places wherefrom blasphemies are uttered against Him Who is
the Desire of the worlds.”

“In this day,” is His caustic denunciation, “the world is redolent with
the fragrances of the robe of the Revelation of the Ancient King ... and
yet, they [divines] have gathered together, and established themselves
upon their seats, and have spoken that which would put an animal to shame,
how much more man himself! Were they to become aware of one of their acts,
and perceive the mischief it hath wrought, they would, with their own
hands, dispatch themselves to their final abode.”

“O concourse of divines!” Bahá’u’lláh thus commands them, “...Lay aside
that which ye possess, and hold your peace, and give ear, then, unto that
which the Tongue of Grandeur and Majesty speaketh. How many the veiled
handmaidens who turned unto Me, and believed, and how numerous the wearers
of the turban who were debarred from Me, and followed in the footsteps of
bygone generations!”

“I swear by the Daystar that shineth above the Horizon of Utterance!” He
asserts, “A paring from the nail of one of the believing handmaidens is,
in this day, more esteemed, in the sight of God, than the divines of
Persia, who, after thirteen hundred years’ waiting, have perpetrated what
the Jews have not perpetrated during the Revelation of Him Who is the
Spirit [Jesus].” “Though they rejoice,” is His warning, “at the
adversities that have touched Us, the day will come whereon they shall
wail and weep.”

“O heedless one!” He thus addresses, in the Lawḥ-i-Burhán, a notorious
Persian mujtahid, whose hands were stained with the blood of Bahá’í
martyrs, “rely not on thy glory and thy power. Thou art even as the last
trace of sunlight upon the mountaintop. Soon will it fade away, as decreed
by God, the All-Possessing, the Most High. Thy glory, and the glory of
such as are like thee, have been taken away, and this, verily, is what
hath been ordained by the One with Whom is the Mother Tablet. ...Because
of you the Apostle [Muḥammad] lamented, and the Chaste One [Fátimih] cried
out, and the countries were laid waste, and darkness fell upon all
regions. O concourse of divines! Because of you the people were abased,
and the banner of Islám was hauled down, and its mighty throne subverted.
Every time a man of discernment hath sought to hold fast unto that which
would exalt Islám, you raised a clamor, and thereby was he deterred from
achieving his purpose, while the land remained fallen in clear ruin.”

“Say: O concourse of Persian divines!” Bahá’u’lláh again prophesies, “In
My name ye have seized the reins of men, and occupy the seats of honor, by
reason of your relation to Me. When I revealed Myself, however, ye turned
aside, and committed what hath caused the tears of such as have recognized
Me to flow. Erelong will all that ye possess perish, and your glory be
turned into the most wretched abasement, and ye shall behold the
punishment for what ye have wrought, as decreed by God, the Ordainer, the
All-Wise.”

In the Súriy-i-Mulúk, addressing the entire company of the ecclesiastical
leaders of Sunní Islám in Constantinople, the capital of the Empire and
seat of the Caliphate, He has written: “O ye divines of the City! We came
to you with the truth, whilst ye were heedless of it. Methinks ye are as
dead, wrapt in the coverings of your own selves. Ye sought not Our
presence, when so to do would have been better for you than all your
doings.... Know ye, that had your leaders, to whom ye owe allegiance, and
on whom ye pride yourselves, and whom ye mention by day and by night, and
from whose traces ye seek guidance—had they lived in these days, they
would have circled around Me, and would not have separated themselves from
Me, whether at eventide or at morn. Ye, however, did not turn your faces
towards My face, for even less than a moment, and waxed proud, and were
careless of this Wronged One, Who hath been so afflicted by men that they
dealt with Him as they pleased. Ye failed to inquire about My condition,
nor did ye inform yourselves of the things which befell Me. Thereby have
ye withheld from yourselves the winds of holiness, and the breezes of
bounty, that blow from this luminous and perspicuous Spot. Methinks ye
have clung to outward things, and forgotten the inner things, and say that
which ye do not. Ye are lovers of names, and appear to have given
yourselves up to them. For this reason make ye mention of the names of
your leaders. And should anyone like them, or superior unto them, come
unto you, ye would flee him. Through their names ye have exalted
yourselves, and have secured your positions, and live and prosper. And
were your leaders to reappear, ye would not renounce your leadership, nor
would ye turn in their direction, nor set your faces towards them. We
found you, as We found most men, worshiping names which they mention
during the days of their life, and with which they occupy themselves. No
sooner do the Bearers of these names appear, however, than they repudiate
them, and turn upon their heels.... Know ye that God will not, in this
day, accept your thoughts, nor your remembrance of Him, nor your turning
towards Him, nor your devotions, nor your vigilance, unless ye be made new
in the estimation of this Servant, could be but perceive it.”

The voice of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of the Covenant of God, has,
likewise, been raised, announcing the dire misfortunes which were to
overtake, soon after His passing, the ecclesiastical hierarchies of both
Sunní and _Sh_í’ih Islám. “This glory,” He has written, “shall be turned
into the most abject abasement, and this pomp and might converted into the
most complete subjugation. Their palaces will be transformed into prisons,
and the course of their ascendant star terminate in the depths of the pit.
Laughter and merriment will vanish, nay more, the voice of their weeping
will be raised.” “Even as the snow,” He moreover has written, “they will
melt away in the July sun.”

The dissolution of the institution of the Caliphate, the complete
secularization of the state which had enshrined the most august
institution of Islám, and the virtual collapse of the _Sh_í’ih hierarchy
in Persia, were the visible and immediate consequences of the treatment
meted out to the Cause of God by the clergy of the two largest communions
of the Muslim world.



THE FALLING FORTUNES OF _SH_Í’IH ISLÁM


Let us first consider the visitations that have marked the falling
fortunes of _Sh_í’ih Islám. The iniquities summarized in the beginning of
these pages, and for which the _Sh_í’ih ecclesiastical order in Persia is
to be held primarily answerable; iniquities which, in the words of
Bahá’u’lláh, had caused “the Apostle [Muḥammad] to lament, and the Chaste
One [Fátimih] to cry out,” and “all created things to groan, and the limbs
of the holy ones to quake”; iniquities which had riddled the breast of the
Báb with bullets, and bowed down Bahá’u’lláh, and turned His hair white,
and caused Him to groan aloud in anguish, and made Muḥammad to weep over
Him, and Jesus to beat Himself upon the head, and the Báb to bewail His
plight—such iniquities indeed could not, and were not to, remain
unpunished. God, the Fiercest of Avengers, was lying in wait, pledged “not
to forgive any man’s injustice.” The scourge of His chastisement, swift,
sudden and terrible, was, at long last, let loose upon the perpetrators of
these iniquities.

A revolution, formidable in its proportions, far-reaching in its
repercussions, amazing in the absence of bloodshed and even of violence
which marked its progress, challenged that ecclesiastical ascendency
which, for centuries, had been of the essence of Islám in that country,
and virtually overthrew a hierarchy with which the machinery of the state
and the life of the people had been inextricably interwoven. Such a
revolution did not signalize the disestablishment of a state-church. It
indeed was tantamount to the disruption of what may be called a
church-state—a state that had been hopefully awaiting, even up till the
moment of its expiry, the gladsome advent of the Hidden Imám, who would
not only seize the reins of authority from the _sh_áh, the chief
magistrate who was merely representing him, but would also assume dominion
over the whole earth.

The spirit which that clerical order had so assiduously striven, during a
whole century, to crush; the Faith which it had, with such ferocious
brutality, attempted to extirpate; were now, in their turn, through the
forces they had engendered in the world, deranging the equilibrium, and
sapping the strength, of that same order whose ramifications had extended
to every sphere, duty, and act of life in that country. The rock wall of
Islám, seemingly impregnable, was now shaken to its foundations, and was
tottering to its ruin, before the very eyes of the persecuted followers of
the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. A sacerdotal hierarchy that had held in thrall
for so long the Faith of God, and seemed, at one time, to have mortally
struck it down, now found itself the prey of a superior civil authority
whose settled policy was to fasten, steadily and relentlessly, its coils
around it.

The vast system of that hierarchy, with all its elements and
appurtenances—its _sh_ay_kh_u’l-isláms (high priests), its mujtahids
(doctors of the law), its mullás (priests), its fuqáhás (jurists), its
imáms (prayer-leaders), its mu’a_dhdh_íns (criers), its vu’azz
(preachers), its qádís (judges), its mutávallís (custodians), its
madrasihs (seminaries), its mudárrisíns (professors), its tullábs
(pupils), its qurrá’s (intoners), its mu’ábbiríns (soothsayers), its
muháddi_th_íns (narrators), its musá_khkh_iríns (spirit-subduers), its
_dh_ákiríns (rememberers), its ummal-i-_dh_akát (almsgivers), its
muqaddasíns (saints), its munzavís (recluses), its súfís, its dervishes,
and what not—was paralyzed and utterly discredited. Its mujtahids, those
firebrands, who wielded powers of life and death, and who for generations
had been accorded honors almost regal in character, were reduced to a
deplorably insignificant number. The beturbaned prelates of the Islamic
church who, in the words of Bahá’u’lláh, “decked their heads with green
and white, and committed what made the Faithful Spirit to groan,” were
ruthlessly swept away, except for a handful who, in order to safeguard
themselves against the fury of an impious populace, are now compelled to
submit to the humiliation of producing, whenever the occasion demands it,
the license granted them by the civil authorities to wear this vanishing
emblem of a vanished authority. The rest of this turbaned class, whether
siyyids, mullás, or ḥájís, were forced not only to exchange their
venerable headdress for the kuláh-i-farangí (European hat), which not long
ago they themselves had anathematized, but also to discard their flowing
robes and don the tight-fitting garments of European style, the
introduction of which into their country they had, a generation ago, so
violently disapproved.

“The dark blue and white domes”—an allusion by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the rotund
and massive headgears of the priests of Persia—had indeed been “inverted.”
Those whose heads had borne them, the arrogant, fanatical, perfidious, and
retrograde clericals, “in the grasp of whose authority,” as testified by
Bahá’u’lláh, “were held the reins of the people,” whose “words are the
pride of the world,” and whose “deeds are the shame of the nations,”
recognizing the wretchedness of their state, betook themselves,
crestfallen and destitute of hope, to their homes, there to drag out a
miserable existence. Impotent and sullen, they are watching the operations
of a process which, having reversed their policy and ruined their
handiwork, is irresistibly moving towards a climax.

The pomp and pageantry of these princes of the church of Islám has already
died out. Their fanatical outcries, their clamorous invocations, their
noisy demonstrations, are stilled. Their fatvás (sentences), pronounced
with such shamelessness, and at times embracing the denunciation of kings,
are a dead letter. The spectacular sight of congregational prayers, in
which thousands of worshipers, lined row upon row, participated, has
vanished. The pulpits from whence they discharged the thunder of their
anathemas against the powerful and the innocent alike, are deserted and
silent. Their waqfs, those priceless and far-flung endowments—the landed
property of the expected Imám—which in Iṣfáhán alone at one time embraced
the whole of the city, have been wrested out of their hands, and brought
under the control of a lay administration. Their madrasihs (seminaries),
with their medieval learning, are deserted and dilapidated. The
innumerable tomes of theological commentaries, super-commentaries,
glosses, and notes, unreadable, unprofitable, the product of misdirected
ingenuity and toil, and pronounced by one of the most enlightened Islamic
thinkers in modern times as works obscuring sound knowledge, breeding
maggots, and fit for fire, are now buried away, overspread with cobwebs,
and forgotten. Their abstruse dissertations, their vehement controversies,
their interminable discussions, are outmoded and abandoned. Their masjids
(mosques) and imám-zádihs (tombs of saints), which were privileged to
extend the bast (right of sanctuary) to many a criminal, and which had
degenerated into a monstrous scandal, whose walls rang with the
intonations of a hypocritical and profligate clergy, whose ornaments vied
with the treasures of the palaces of kings, are either forsaken or fallen
in ruin. Their takyihs, the haunts of the lazy, the passive, and
contemplative pietists, are either being sold or closed down. Their
ta’zíyihs (religious plays), acted with barbaric zeal, and accentuated by
sudden spasms of unbridled religious excitement, are forbidden. Even their
rawdih-_kh_ánís (lamentations), with their long-drawn-out, plaintive
howls, which arose from so many houses, have been curtailed and
discouraged. The sacred pilgrimages to Najaf and Karbilá, the holiest
shrines of the _Sh_í’ih world, are reduced in number and made increasingly
difficult, preventing thereby many a greedy mullá from indulging in his
time-honored habit of charging double for making those pilgrimages as a
substitute for the religious-minded. The disuse of the veil which the
mullás fought tooth and nail to prevent; the equality of sexes which their
law forbade; the erection of civil tribunals which superseded their
ecclesiastical courts; the abolition of the sí_gh_ih (concubinage) which,
when contracted for short periods, is hardly distinguishable from
quasi-prostitution, and which made of the turbulent and fanatical
Ma_sh_had, the national center of pilgrimage, one of the most immoral
cities in Asia; and finally, the efforts which are being made to disparage
the Arabic tongue, the sacred language of Islám and of the Qur’án, and to
divorce it from Persian—all these have successively lent their share to
the acceleration of that impelling process which has subordinated to the
civil authority the position and interests of Muslim clericals to a degree
undreamt of by any mullá.

Well might the once lofty-turbaned, long-bearded, grave-looking áqá
(mullá), who had so insolently concerned himself with every department of
human activity, as he sits, hatless, clean shaven, in the seclusion of his
home, and perhaps listening to the strains of western music, blared upon
the ethers of his native land, pause to reflect for a while on the
vanished splendors of his defunct empire. Well might he muse upon the
havoc which the rising tide of nationalism and skepticism has wrought in
the adamantine traditions of his country. Well might he recollect the
halcyon days when, seated on a donkey, and parading through the bázárs and
maydáns of his native town, an eager but deluded multitude would rush to
kiss with fervor not only his hands, but also the tail of the animal on
which he rode. Well might he remember the blind zeal with which they
acclaimed his acts, and the prodigies and miracles they ascribed to their
performance.

He might indeed look back further, and call to mind the reign of those
pious Safaví monarchs, who delighted to call themselves “dogs of the
threshold of the Immaculate Imáms,” how one of those kings was induced to
go on foot before the mujtahid as he rode through the maydán-i-_Sh_áh, the
main square of Iṣfáhán, as a mark of royal subservience to the favorite
minister of the Hidden Imám, a minister who, as distinct from the _Sh_áh’s
title, styled himself “the servant of the Lord of Saintship (Imám ‘Alí).”

Was it not, he might well ponder, this same _Sh_áh Abbás the Great who had
been arrogantly addressed by another mujtahid as “the founder of a
borrowed empire,” implying that the kingdom of the “king of kings” really
belonged to the expected Imám, and was held by the _Sh_áh solely in the
capacity of a temporary trustee? Was it not this same _Sh_áh who walked
the entire distance of eight hundred miles from Iṣfáhán to Ma_sh_had, the
“special glory of the _Sh_í’ih world,” to offer his prayers, in the only
way that befitted the _sh_áhan_sh_áh, at the shrine of the Imám Riḍá, and
who trimmed the thousand candles which adorned its courts? Had not _Sh_áh
Tahmásp, on receiving an epistle, penned by yet another mujtahid, sprung
to his feet, placed it on his eyes, kissed it with rapture, and, because
he had been addressed as “brother,” ordered it to be placed within his
winding-sheet and buried with him?

Might not that same mullá ponder the torrents of blood which, during the
long years when he enjoyed impunity of conduct, flowed at his behest, the
flamboyant anathemas he pronounced, and the great army of orphans and
widows, of the disinherited, the dishonored, the destitute, and the
homeless which, on the Day of Reckoning, were, with one accord, to cry out
for vengeance, and invoke the malediction of God upon him?

That infamous crew had indeed merited the degradation in which it had
sunk. Persistently ignoring the sentence of doom which the finger of
Bahá’u’lláh had traced upon the wall, it pursued, for well nigh a hundred
years, its fatal course, until, at the appointed hour, its death knell was
sounded by those spiritual, revolutionary forces which, synchronizing with
the first dawnings of the World Order of His Faith, are upsetting the
equilibrium, and throwing into such confusion, the ancient institutions of
mankind.



THE COLLAPSE OF THE CALIPHATE


These same forces, operating in a collateral field, have effected a still
more remarkable, and a more radical, revolution, culminating in the
collapse and fall of the Muslim Caliphate, the most powerful institution
of the whole Islamic world. This event of portentous significance has,
moreover, been followed by a formal and definite separation of what was
left of the Sunní faith in Turkey from the state, and by the complete
secularization of the Republic that has arisen on the ruins of the Ottoman
theocratic empire. This catastrophic fall, that stunned the Islamic world,
and the avowed, the unqualified, and formal divorce between the spiritual
and temporal powers, which distinguished the revolution in Turkey from
that which occurred in Persia, I now proceed to consider.

Sunní Islám has sustained, not through the action of a foreign and
invading Power, but at the hands of a dictator, avowedly professing the
Faith of Muḥammad, a blow more grievous than that which fell, almost
simultaneously, upon its sister-sect in Persia. This retributive act,
directed against the archenemy of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, recalls a
similar disaster precipitated through the action of a Roman emperor,
during the latter part of the first century of the Christian era—a
disaster that razed to its foundations the Temple of Solomon, destroyed
the Holy of Holies, laid waste the city of David, uprooted the Jewish
hierarchy in Jerusalem, massacred thousands of the Jewish people—the
persecutors of the religion of Jesus Christ—dispersed the remainder over
the surface of the earth, and reared a pagan colony on Zion.

The Caliph, the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of Islám, exercised a
spiritual sovereignty, and was invested with a sacred character, which the
_Sh_áh of Persia neither claimed nor possessed. Nor should it be forgotten
that the sphere of his spiritual jurisdiction extended to countries far
beyond the confines of his own empire, and embraced the overwhelming
majority of Muslims throughout the world. He was, moreover, in his
capacity as the Prophet’s representative on earth, regarded as the
protector of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the defender and
propagator of Islám, and the commander of its followers in any holy war
they might be called upon to wage.

So potent, so august, so sacred a personage was at first by virtue of the
abolition of the Sultanate in Turkey, divested of that temporal authority
which the exponents of the Sunní school have regarded as a necessary
concomitant to his high office. The sword, emblem of temporal sovereignty,
was thus wrested out of the hands of the commander who, for a brief
period, was permitted to occupy such an anomalous and precarious position.
It was soon, however, trumpeted to the Sunní world, which had not
previously been in the least consulted, that the Caliphate itself had been
extinguished, and that the country which had accepted it as an appanage to
its Sultanate, for more than four hundred years, had now permanently
disowned it. The Turks who had been the militant leaders of the Muḥammadan
world, since the Arab decline, and who had carried the standard of Islám
as far as the gates of Vienna, the seat of government of Europe’s premier
Power, had resigned their leadership. The ex-caliph, shorn of his royal
pomp, stripped of the symbols of his vicarship, and deserted by friend and
foe alike, was forced to flee from Constantinople, the proud seat of a
dual sovereignty, to the land of the infidels, resigning himself to that
same life of exile to which a number of his fellow-sovereigns had been and
were still condemned.

Nor has the Sunní world, despite determined efforts, succeeded in
designating anyone in his stead who, though deprived of the sword of a
commander, would still act as the custodian of the cloak and standard of
the Apostle of God—the twin holy symbols of the Caliphate. Conferences
were held, discussions ensued, a Congress of the Caliphate was convened in
the Egyptian capital, the City of the Fatimites, only to result in the
widely advertised and public confession of its failure: “They have agreed
to disagree!”

Strange, incredibly strange, must appear the position of this most
powerful branch of the Islamic Faith, with no outward and visible head to
voice its sentiments and convictions, its unity irretrievably shattered,
its radiance obscured, its law undermined, its institutions thrown into
hopeless confusion. This institution that had challenged the inalienable,
divinely appointed rights of the Imáms of the Faith of Muḥammad, had,
after the revolution of thirteen centuries, vanished like a smoke, an
institution which had dealt such merciless blows to a Faith Whose Herald
was Himself a descendant of the Imáms, the lawful successors of the
Apostle of God.

To what else could this remarkable prophecy, enshrined in the
Lawḥ-i-Burhán, allude if not to the downfall of this crowned overlord of
Sunní Muslims? “O concourse of Muslim Divines! Because of you the people
were abased, and the banner of Islám was hauled down, and its mighty
throne subverted.” What of the indubitably clear and amazing prophecy
recorded in the Qayyúm-i-Asmá? “Erelong We will, in very truth, torment
such as waged war against Ḥusayn [Imám Ḥusayn], in the Land of the
Euphrates, with the most afflictive torment, and the direst and most
exemplary punishment.” What other interpretation can this Muḥammadan
tradition be given? “In the latter days a grievous calamity shall befall
My people at the hands of their ruler, a calamity such as no man ever
heard to surpass it.”

This was not all, however. The disappearance of the Caliph, the spiritual
head of above two hundred million Muḥammadans, brought in its wake, in the
land that had dealt Islám such a heavy blow, the annulment of the
_sh_arí’ah canonical Law, the disendowment of Sunní institutions, the
promulgation of a civil Code, the suppression of religious orders, the
abrogation of ceremonials and traditions inculcated by the religion of
Muḥammad. The _Sh_ay_kh_u’l-Islám and his satellites, including muftís,
qádís, hujáhs, _sh_ay_kh_s, súfís, ḥájís, mawlavís, dervishes, and others,
vanished at a stroke more determined, more open, and drastic than the one
dealt the _Sh_í’ihs by the _Sh_áh and his government. The mosques of the
capital, the pride and glory of the Islamic world, were deserted, and the
fairest and most famous of them all, the peerless St. Sophia, “the Second
Firmament,” “the Vehicle of the Cherubim,” converted by the blatant
creators of a secular regime into a museum. The Arabic tongue, the
language of the Prophet of God, was banished from the land, its alphabet
was superseded by Latin characters, and the Qur’án itself translated into
Turkish for the few who still cared to read it. The constitution of the
new Turkey not only proclaimed formally the disestablishment and
disendowment of Islám, with all its attendant and, in the view of some,
atheistic enactments, but also heralded various measures that aimed at its
further humiliation and weakening. Even the city of Constantinople, “the
Dome of Islám,” apostrophized in such condemnatory terms by Bahá’u’lláh,
which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been hailed by the great
Constantine as “the New Rome,” and exalted to the rank of the metropolis
of both the Roman Empire and of Christendom, and subsequently revered as
the seat of the Caliphs, was relegated to the position of a provincial
city and stripped of all its pomp and glory, its soaring and slender
minarets standing sentinel at the grave of so much vanished splendor and
power.

“O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!” Bahá’u’lláh has
thus apostrophized the Imperial City, in terms that call to mind the
prophetic words addressed by Jesus Christ to Jerusalem, “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.”

Such was the fate that overtook both _Sh_í’ih and Sunní Islám, in the two
countries where they had planted their banners and reared their most
powerful and far-famed institutions. Such was their fate in these two
countries, in one of which Bahá’u’lláh died an exile, and in the other the
Báb suffered a martyr’s death. Such was the fate of the self-styled Vicar
of the Prophet of God, and of the favorite ministers of the still awaited
Imám. “The people of the Qur’án,” Bahá’u’lláh testifies, “have risen
against Us, and tormented Us with such a torment that the Holy Spirit
lamented, and the thunder roared out, and the clouds wept over Us....
Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, bewaileth, in the all-highest Paradise,
their acts.” “A day shall be witnessed by My people,” their own traditions
condemn them, “whereon there will have remained of Islám naught but a
name, and of the Qur’án naught but a mere appearance. The doctors of that
age shall be the most evil the world hath ever seen. Mischief hath
proceeded from them, and on them it will recoil.” And again: “Most of His
enemies will be the divines. His bidding they will not obey, but will
protest saying: ‘This is contrary to that which hath been handed down unto
us by the Imáms of the Faith.’” And still again: “At that hour His
malediction shall descend upon you, and your curse shall afflict you, and
your religion shall remain an empty word on your tongues. And when these
signs appear amongst you, anticipate the day when the red-hot wind will
have swept over you, or the day when ye will have been disfigured, or when
stones will have rained upon you.”



A WARNING UNTO ALL NATIONS


This horde of degraded priests, stigmatized by Bahá’u’lláh as “doctors of
doubt,” as the “abject manifestations of the Prince of Darkness,” as
“wolves” and “pharaohs,” as “focal centers of hellish fire,” as “voracious
beasts preying upon the carrion of the souls of men,” and, as testified by
their own traditions, as both the sources and victims of mischief, have
joined the various swarms of _sh_áh-zádihs, of emirs, and princelings of
fallen dynasties—a witness and a warning unto all nations of what must,
sooner or later, befall those wielders of earthly dominion, be it royal or
ecclesiastic, who might dare to challenge or persecute the appointed
Channels and Embodiments of Divine authority and power.

Islám, at once the progenitor and persecutor of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh,
is, if we read aright the signs of the times, only beginning to sustain
the impact of this invincible and triumphant Faith. We need only recall
the nineteen hundred years of abject misery and dispersion which they, who
only for the short space of three years persecuted the Son of God, have
had to endure, and are still enduring. We may well ask ourselves, with
mingled feelings of dread and awe, how severe must be the tribulations of
those who, during no less than fifty years, have, “at every moment
tormented with a fresh torment” Him Who is the Father, and who have, in
addition, made His Herald—Himself a Manifestation of God—to quaff, in such
tragic circumstances, the cup of martyrdom.

I have, in the pages immediately preceding, quoted certain passages
addressed collectively to the members of the ecclesiastical order, both
Islamic and Christian, and have then recorded a number of specific
addresses and references to Muslim divines, both _Sh_í’ih and Sunní, after
which I proceeded to describe the calamities that afflicted these
Muḥammadan hierarchies, their heads, their members, their properties,
their ceremonials, and institutions. Let us now consider the addresses
specifically made to the members of the Christian clerical order who, for
the most part, have ignored the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh, whilst a few among
them have, as its Administrative Order gained in stature and spread its
ramifications over Christian countries, arisen to check its progress, to
belittle its influence, and obscure its purpose.



HIS MESSAGES TO CHRISTIAN LEADERS


A glance at the writings of the Author of the Bahá’í Revelation will
reveal the important and significant fact that He Who addressed
collectively an immortal message to all the kings of the earth, Who
revealed a Tablet to each of the outstanding crowned heads of Europe and
Asia, Who issued His call to the sacerdotal leaders of Islám, both Sunní
and _Sh_í’ih, Who did not exclude from His purview the Jews and the
Zoroastrians, has, apart from His numerous and repeated exhortations and
warnings to the entire Christian world, directed particular messages, some
general, others precise and challenging, to the heads, as well as to the
rank and file, of the ecclesiastical orders of Christendom—its pope, its
kings, its patriarchs, its archbishops, its bishops, its priests, and its
monks. We have already, in connection with the messages of Bahá’u’lláh to
the crowned heads of the world, considered certain features of the Tablet
to the Roman Pontiff, as well as the words written to the kings of
Christendom. Let us now turn our attention to those passages in which the
aristocracy of the church and its ordained servants are singled out for
exhortation and admonition by the Pen of Bahá’u’lláh:

“Say: O concourse of patriarchs! He Whom ye were promised in the Tablets
is come. Fear God, and follow not the vain imaginings of the
superstitious. Lay aside the things ye possess, and take fast hold of the
Tablet of God by His sovereign power. Better is this for you than all your
possessions. Unto this testifieth every understanding heart, and every man
of insight. Pride ye yourselves on My Name, and yet shut yourselves out as
by a veil from Me? This indeed is a strange thing!”

“Say: O concourse of archbishops! He Who is the Lord of all men hath
appeared. In the plain of guidance He calleth mankind, whilst ye are
numbered with the dead! Great is the blessedness of him who is stirred by
the Breeze of God, and hath arisen from amongst the dead in this
perspicuous Name.”

“Say: O concourse of bishops! Trembling hath seized all the kindreds of
the earth, and He Who is the Everlasting Father calleth aloud between
earth and heaven. Blessed the ear that hath heard, and the eye that hath
seen, and the heart that hath turned unto Him Who is the Point of
Adoration of all who are in the heavens and all who are on earth.” “O
concourse of bishops! Ye are the stars of the heaven of My knowledge. My
mercy desireth not that ye should fall upon the earth. My justice,
however, declareth: ‘This is that which the Son [Jesus] hath decreed.’ And
whatsoever hath proceeded out of His blameless, His truthspeaking,
trustworthy mouth, can never be altered. The bells, verily, peal out My
Name, and lament over Me, but My spirit rejoiceth with evident gladness.
The body of the Loved One yearneth for the cross, and His head is eager
for the spear, in the path of the All-Merciful. The ascendancy of the
oppressor can in no wise deter Him from His purpose.” And again: “The
stars of the heaven of knowledge have fallen, they that adduce the proofs
they possess in order to demonstrate the truth of My Cause, and who make
mention of God in My Name. When I came unto them, in My majesty, however,
they turned aside from Me. They, verily, are of the fallen. This is what
the Spirit [Jesus] prophesied when He came with the truth, and the Jewish
doctors caviled at Him, until they committed what made the Holy Spirit to
lament, and the eyes of such as enjoy near access to God to weep.”

“Say: O concourse of priests! Leave the bells, and come forth, then, from
your churches. It behooveth you, in this day, to proclaim aloud the Most
Great Name among the nations. Prefer ye to be silent, whilst every stone
and every tree shouteth aloud: ‘The Lord is come in His great glory!’?...
He that summoneth men in My name is, verily, of Me, and he will show forth
that which is beyond the power of all that are on earth. ...Let the Breeze
of God awaken you. Verily, it hath wafted over the world. Well is it with
him that hath discovered the fragrance thereof and been accounted among
the well-assured.” And again: “O concourse of priests! The Day of
Reckoning hath appeared, the Day whereon He Who was in heaven hath come.
He, verily, is the One Whom ye were promised in the Books of God, the
Holy, the Almighty, the All-Praised. How long will ye wander in the
wilderness of heedlessness and superstition? Turn with your hearts in the
direction of your Lord, the Forgiving, the Generous.”

“Say: O concourse of monks! Seclude not yourselves in churches and
cloisters. Come forth by My leave, and occupy yourselves with that which
will profit your souls and the souls of men. Thus biddeth you the King of
the Day of Reckoning. Seclude yourselves in the stronghold of My love.
This, verily, is a befitting seclusion, were ye of them that perceive it.
He that shutteth himself up in a house is indeed as one dead. It behooveth
man to show forth that which will profit all created things, and he that
bringeth forth no fruit is fit for fire. Thus counseleth you your Lord,
and He, verily, is the Almighty, the All-Bounteous. Enter ye into wedlock,
that after you someone may fill your place. We have forbidden you
perfidious acts, and not that which will demonstrate fidelity. Have ye
clung to the standards fixed by your own selves, and cast the standards of
God behind your backs? Fear God, and be not of the foolish. But for man,
who would make mention of Me on My earth, and how could My attributes and
My name have been revealed? Ponder ye, and be not of them that are veiled
and fast asleep. He that wedded not [Jesus] found no place wherein to
dwell or lay His head, by reason of that which the hands of the
treacherous had wrought. His sanctity consisteth not in that which ye
believe or fancy, but rather in the things We possess. Ask, that ye may
apprehend His station which hath been exalted above the imaginings of all
that dwell on earth. Blessed are they who perceive it.” And again: “O
concourse of monks! If ye choose to follow Me, I will make you heirs of My
Kingdom; and if ye transgress against Me, I will, in My long-suffering,
endure it patiently, and I, verily, am the Ever-Forgiving, the
All-Merciful. ...Bethlehem is astir with the Breeze of God. We hear her
voice saying: ‘O Most Generous Lord! Where is Thy great glory established?
The sweet savors of Thy presence have quickened me, after I had melted in
my separation from Thee. Praised be Thou in that Thou hast raised the
veils, and come with power in evident glory.’ We called unto her from
behind the Tabernacle of Majesty and Grandeur: ‘O Bethlehem! This Light
hath risen in the orient, and traveled towards the occident, until it
reached thee in the evening of its life. Tell Me then: Do the sons
recognize the Father, and acknowledge Him, or do they deny Him, even as
the people aforetime denied Him [Jesus]?’ Whereupon she cried out saying:
‘Thou art, in truth, the All-Knowing, the Best-Informed.” And again:
“Consider, likewise, how numerous at this time are the monks who have
secluded themselves in their churches, in My name, and who, when the
appointed time came, and We unveiled to them Our beauty, failed to
recognize Me, notwithstanding that they call upon Me at dawn and at
eventide.” “Read ye the Evangel,” He again addresses them, “and yet refuse
to acknowledge the All-Glorious Lord? This indeed beseemeth you not, O
concourse of learned men!... The fragrances of the All-Merciful have
wafted over all creation. Happy the man that hath forsaken his desires,
and taken fast hold of guidance.”

These “fallen stars” of the firmament of Christendom, these “thick clouds”
that have obscured the radiance of the true Faith of God, these princes of
the Church that have failed to acknowledge the sovereignty of the “King of
kings,” these deluded ministers of the Son who have shunned and ignored
the promised Kingdom which the “Everlasting Father” has brought down from
heaven, and is now establishing upon earth—these are experiencing, in this
“Day of Reckoning,” a crisis, not indeed as critical as that which the
Islamic sacerdotal order, the inveterate enemies of the Faith, has had to
face, but one which is no less widespread and significant. “Power hath
been seized” indeed, and is being increasingly seized, from these
ecclesiastics that speak in the name, and yet are so far away from the
spirit, of the Faith they profess.

We have only to look around us, as we survey the fortunes of Christian
ecclesiastical orders, to appreciate the steady deterioration of their
influence, the decline of their power, the damage to their prestige, the
flouting of their authority, the dwindling of their congregations, the
relaxation of their discipline, the restriction of their press, the
timidity of their leaders, the confusion in their ranks, the progressive
confiscation of their properties, the surrender of some of their most
powerful strongholds, and the extinction of other ancient and cherished
institutions. Indeed, ever since the Divine summons was issued, and the
invitation extended, and the warning sounded, and the condemnation
pronounced, this process, that may be said to have been initiated with the
collapse of the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiff, soon after the
Tablet to the Pope had been revealed, has been operating with increasing
momentum, menacing the very basis on which the entire order is resting.
Aided by the forces which the Communist movement has unloosed, reinforced
by the political consequences of the last war, accelerated by the
excessive, the blind, the intolerant, and militant nationalism which is
now convulsing the nations, and stimulated by the rising tide of
materialism, irreligion, and paganism, this process is not only tending to
subvert ecclesiastical institutions, but appears to be leading to the
rapid dechristianization of the masses in many Christian countries.

I shall content myself with the enumeration of certain outstanding
manifestations of this force which is increasingly invading the domain,
and assailing the firmest ramparts, of one of the leading religious
systems of mankind. The virtual extinction of the temporal power of the
most preeminent ruler in Christendom immediately after the creation of the
Kingdom of Italy; the wave of anticlericalism that swept over France after
the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, and which culminated in the
complete separation of the Catholic Church from the state, in the
laicization of the Third Republic, in the secularization of education, and
in the suppression and dispersal of religious orders; the swift and sudden
rise of that “religious irreligion,” that bold, conscious, and organized
assault launched in Soviet Russia against the Greek Orthodox Church, that
precipitated the disestablishment of the state religion, that massacred a
vast number of its members originally numbering above a hundred million
souls, that pulled down, closed, or converted into museums, theatres and
warehouses, thousands upon thousands of churches, monasteries, synagogues
and mosques, that stripped the church of its six and a half million acres
of property, and sought, through its League of Militant Atheists and the
promulgation of a “five-year plan of godlessness,” to loosen from its
foundations the religious life of the masses; the dismemberment of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy that dissolved, by one stroke, the most powerful
unit which owed its allegiance to, and supported through its resources the
administration of, the Church of Rome; the divorce of the Spanish state
from that same Church, and the overthrow of the monarchy, the champion of
Catholic Christendom; the nationalistic philosophy, the parent of an
unbridled and obsolete nationalism, which, having dethroned Islám, has
indirectly assaulted the front line of the Christian church in
non-Christian lands, and is dealing such heavy blows to Catholic,
Anglican, and Presbyterian Missions in Persia, Turkey, and the Far East;
the revolutionary movement that brought in its wake the persecution of the
Catholic Church in Mexico; and finally the gospel of modern paganism,
unconcealed, aggressive, and unrelenting, which, in the years preceding
the present turmoil, and increasingly since its outbreak, has swept over
the continent of Europe, invading the citadels, and sowing confusion in
the hearts of the supporters, of the Catholic, the Greek Orthodox, and the
Lutheran churches, in Austria, Poland, the Baltic and Scandinavian states,
and more recently in Western Europe, the home and center of the most
powerful hierarchies of Christendom.



CHRISTIAN NATIONS AGAINST CHRISTIAN NATIONS


What a sorry spectacle of impotence and disruption does this fratricidal
war, which Christian nations are waging against Christian
nations—Anglicans pitted against Lutherans, Catholics against Greek
Orthodox, Catholics against Catholics, and Protestants against
Protestants—in support of a so-called Christian civilization, offer to the
eyes of those who are already perceiving the bankruptcy of the
institutions that claim to speak in the name, and to be the custodians, of
the Faith of Jesus Christ! The powerlessness and despair of the Holy See
to halt this internecine strife, in which the children of the Prince of
Peace—blessed and supported by the benedictions and harangues of the
prelates of a hopelessly divided church—are engaged, proclaim the degree
of subservience into which the once all-powerful institutions of the
Christian Faith have sunk, and are a striking reminder of the parallel
state of decadence into which the hierarchies of its sister religion have
fallen.

How tragically has Christendom ignored, and how far it has strayed from,
that high mission which He Who is the true Prince of Peace has, in these,
the concluding passages of His Tablet to Pope Pius IX, called upon the
entire body of Christians to fulfill—passages which establish, for all
time, the distinction between the Mission of Bahá’u’lláh in this age and
that of Jesus Christ: “Say: O concourse of Christians! We have, on a
previous occasion, revealed Ourself unto you, and ye recognized Me not.
This is yet another occasion vouchsafed unto you. This is the Day of God;
turn ye unto Him.... The Beloved One loveth not that ye be consumed with
the fire of your desires. Were ye to be shut out as by a veil from Him,
this would be for no other reason than your own waywardness and ignorance.
Ye make mention of Me, and know Me not. Ye call upon Me, and are heedless
of My Revelation.... O people of the Gospel! They who were not in the
Kingdom have now entered it, whilst We behold you, in this day, tarrying
at the gate. Rend the veils asunder by the power of your Lord, the
Almighty, the All-Bounteous, and enter, then, in My name My Kingdom. Thus
biddeth you He Who desireth for you everlasting life.... We behold you, O
children of the Kingdom, in darkness. This, verily, beseemeth you not. Are
ye, in the face of the Light, fearful because of your deeds? Direct
yourselves towards Him.... Verily, He [Jesus] said: ‘Come ye after Me, and
I will make you to become fishers of men.’ In this day, however, We say:
‘Come ye after Me, that We may make you to become the quickeners of
mankind.’” “Say,” He moreover has written, “We, verily, have come for your
sakes, and have borne the misfortunes of the world for your salvation.
Flee ye the One Who hath sacrificed His life that ye may be quickened?
Fear God, O followers of the Spirit [Jesus], and walk not in the footsteps
of every divine that hath gone far astray.... Open the doors of your
hearts. He Who is the Spirit [Jesus] verily, standeth before them.
Wherefore keep ye afar from Him Who hath purposed to draw you nigh unto a
Resplendent Spot? Say: We, in truth, have opened unto you the gates of the
Kingdom. Will ye bar the doors of your houses in My face? This indeed is
naught but a grievous error.”

Such is the pass to which the Christian clergy have come—a clergy that
have interposed themselves between their flock and the Christ returned in
the glory of the Father. As the Faith of this Promised One penetrates
farther and farther into the heart of Christendom, as its recruits from
the garrisons which its spirit is assailing multiply, and provoke a
concerted and determined action in defense of the strongholds of Christian
orthodoxy, and as the forces of nationalism, paganism, secularism and
racialism move jointly towards a climax, might we not expect that the
decline in the power, the authority, and the prestige of these
ecclesiastics will be accentuated, and further demonstrate the truth, and
more fully unfold the implications, of Bahá’u’lláh’s pronouncement
predicting the eclipse of the luminaries of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Devastating indeed has been the havoc wrought in the fortunes of the
_Sh_í’ih hierarchy in Persia, and pitiable the lot reserved for its
remnant now groaning under the yoke of a civil authority it had for
centuries scorned and dominated. Cataclysmic indeed has been the collapse
of the most preeminent institution of Sunní Islám, and irretrievable the
downfall of its hierarchy in a country that had championed the cause of
the self-styled vicar of the Prophet of God. Steady and relentless is the
process which has brought such destruction, shame, division, and weakness
to the defenders of the strongholds of Christian ecclesiasticism, and
black indeed are the clouds that darken its horizon. Through the actions
of Muslim and Christian divines—“idols,” whom Bahá’u’lláh has stigmatized
as constituting the majority of His enemies—who failed, as commanded by
Him, to lay aside their pens and fling away their fancies, and who, as He
Himself testified, had they believed in Him would have brought about the
conversion of the masses, Islám and Christianity have, it would be no
exaggeration to say, entered the most critical phase of their history.

Let none, however, mistake my purpose, or misrepresent this cardinal truth
which is of the essence of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh. The divine origin of
all the Prophets of God—including Jesus Christ and the Apostle of God, the
two greatest Manifestations preceding the Revelation of the Báb—is
unreservedly and unshakably upheld by each and every follower of the
Bahá’í religion. The fundamental unity of these Messengers of God is
clearly recognized, the continuity of their Revelations is affirmed, the
God-given authority and correlative character of their Books is admitted,
the singleness of their aims and purposes is proclaimed, the uniqueness of
their influence emphasized, the ultimate reconciliation of their teachings
and followers taught and anticipated. “They all,” according to
Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony, “abide in the same tabernacle, soar in the same
heaven, are seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech, and
proclaim the same Faith.”



THE CONTINUITY OF REVELATION


The Faith standing identified with the name of Bahá’u’lláh disclaims any
intention to belittle any of the Prophets gone before Him, to whittle down
any of their teachings, to obscure, however slightly, the radiance of
their Revelations, to oust them from the hearts of their followers, to
abrogate the fundamentals of their doctrines, to discard any of their
revealed Books, or to suppress the legitimate aspirations of their
adherents. Repudiating the claim of any religion to be the final
revelation of God to man, disclaiming finality for His own Revelation,
Bahá’u’lláh inculcates the basic principle of the relativity of religious
truth, the continuity of Divine Revelation, the progressiveness of
religious experience. His aim is to widen the basis of all revealed
religions and to unravel the mysteries of their scriptures. He insists on
the unqualified recognition of the unity of their purpose, restates the
eternal verities they enshrine, coordinates their functions, distinguishes
the essential and the authentic from the nonessential and spurious in
their teachings, separates the God-given truths from the priest-prompted
superstitions, and on this as a basis proclaims the possibility, and even
prophecies the inevitability, of their unification, and the consummation
of their highest hopes.

As to Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, let none among His followers who read
these pages, think for a moment that either Islám, or its Prophet, or His
Book, or His appointed Successors, or any of His authentic teachings, have
been, or are to be in any way, or to however slight a degree, disparaged.
The lineage of the Báb, the descendant of the Imám Ḥusayn; the divers and
striking evidences, in Nabíl’s Narrative, of the attitude of the Herald of
our Faith towards the Founder, the Imáms, and the Book of Islám; the
glowing tributes paid by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Íqán to Muḥammad and
His lawful Successors, and particularly to the “peerless and incomparable”
Imám Ḥusayn; the arguments adduced, forcibly, fearlessly, and publicly by
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in churches and synagogues, to demonstrate the validity of
the Message of the Arabian Prophet; and last but not least the written
testimonial of the Queen of Rumania, who, born in the Anglican faith and
notwithstanding the close alliance of her government with the Greek
Orthodox Church, the state religion of her adopted country, has, largely
as a result of the perusal of these public discourses of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
been prompted to proclaim her recognition of the prophetic function of
Muḥammad—all proclaim, in no uncertain terms, the true attitude of the
Bahá’í Faith towards its parent religion.

“God,” is her royal tribute, “is All, everything. He is the power behind
all beginnings.... His is the Voice within us that shows us good and evil.
But mostly we ignore or misunderstand this voice. Therefore, did He choose
His Elect to come down amongst us upon earth to make clear His Word, His
real meaning. Therefore, the Prophets; therefore, Christ, Muḥammad,
Bahá’u’lláh, for man needs from time to time a voice upon earth to bring
God to him, to sharpen the realization of the existence of the true God.
Those voices sent to us had to become flesh, so that with our earthly ears
we should be able to hear and understand.”

What greater proof, it may be pertinently asked, can the divines of either
Persia or Turkey require wherewith to demonstrate the recognition by the
followers of Bahá’u’lláh of the exalted position occupied by the Prophet
Muḥammad among the entire company of the Messengers of God? What greater
service do these divines expect us to render the Cause of Islám? What
greater evidence of our competence can they demand than that we should
kindle, in quarters so far beyond their reach, the spark of an ardent and
sincere conversion to the truth voiced by the Apostle of God, and obtain
from the pen of royalty this public, and indeed historic, confession of
His God-given Mission?

As to the position of Christianity, let it be stated without any
hesitation or equivocation that its divine origin is unconditionally
acknowledged, that the Sonship and Divinity of Jesus Christ are fearlessly
asserted, that the divine inspiration of the Gospel is fully recognized,
that the reality of the mystery of the Immaculacy of the Virgin Mary is
confessed, and the primacy of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, is upheld
and defended. The Founder of the Christian Faith is designated by
Bahá’u’lláh as the “Spirit of God,” is proclaimed as the One Who “appeared
out of the breath of the Holy Ghost,” and is even extolled as the “Essence
of the Spirit.” His mother is described as “that veiled and immortal, that
most beauteous, countenance,” and the station of her Son eulogized as a
“station which hath been exalted above the imaginings of all that dwell on
earth,” whilst Peter is recognized as one whom God has caused “the
mysteries of wisdom and of utterance to flow out of his mouth.” “Know
thou,” Bahá’u’lláh has moreover testified, “that when the Son of Man
yielded up His breath to God, the whole creation wept with a great
weeping. By sacrificing Himself, however, a fresh capacity was infused
into all created things. Its evidences, as witnessed in all the peoples of
the earth, are now manifest before thee. The deepest wisdom which the
sages have uttered, the profoundest learning which any mind hath unfolded,
the arts which the ablest hands have produced, the influence exerted by
the most potent of rulers, are but manifestations of the quickening power
released by His transcendent, His all-pervasive and resplendent Spirit. We
testify that when He came into the world, He shed the splendor of His
glory upon all created things. Through Him the leper recovered from the
leprosy of perversity and ignorance. Through Him the unchaste and wayward
were healed. Through His power, born of Almighty God, the eyes of the
blind were opened and the soul of the sinner sanctified.... He it is Who
purified the world. Blessed is the man who, with a face beaming with
light, hath turned towards Him.”

Indeed, the essential prerequisites of admittance into the Bahá’í fold of
Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and the followers of other ancient
faiths, as well as of agnostics and even atheists, is the wholehearted and
unqualified acceptance by them all of the divine origin of both Islám and
Christianity, of the Prophetic functions of both Muḥammad and Jesus
Christ, of the legitimacy of the institution of the Imamate, and of the
primacy of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. Such are the central,
the solid, the incontrovertible principles that constitute the bedrock of
Bahá’í belief, which the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh is proud to acknowledge,
which its teachers proclaim, which its apologists defend, which its
literature disseminates, which its summer schools expound, and which the
rank and file of its followers attest by both word and deed.

Nor should it be thought for a moment that the followers of Bahá’u’lláh
either seek to degrade or even belittle the rank of the world’s religious
leaders, whether Christian, Muslim, or of any other denomination, should
their conduct conform to their professions, and be worthy of the position
they occupy. “Those divines,” Bahá’u’lláh has affirmed, “...who are truly
adorned with the ornament of knowledge and of a goodly character are,
verily, as a head to the body of the world, and as eyes to the nations.
The guidance of men hath, at all times, been and is dependent upon these
blessed souls.” And again: “The divine whose conduct is upright, and the
sage who is just, are as the spirit unto the body of the world. Well is it
with that divine whose head is attired with the crown of justice, and
whose temple is adorned with the ornament of equity.” And yet again: “The
divine who hath seized and quaffed the most holy Wine, in the name of the
sovereign Ordainer, is as an eye unto the world. Well is it with them who
obey him, and call him to remembrance.” “Great is the blessedness of that
divine,” He, in another connection, has written, “that hath not allowed
knowledge to become a veil between him and the One Who is the Object of
all knowledge, and who, when the Self-Subsisting appeared, hath turned
with a beaming face towards Him. He, in truth, is numbered with the
learned. The inmates of Paradise seek the blessing of his breath, and his
lamp sheddeth its radiance over all who are in heaven and on earth. He,
verily, is numbered with the inheritors of the Prophets. He that beholdeth
him hath, verily, beheld the True One, and he that turneth towards him
hath, verily, turned towards God, the Almighty, the All-Wise.” “Respect ye
the divines amongst you,” is His exhortation, “They whose acts conform to
the knowledge they possess, who observe the statutes of God, and decree
the things God hath decreed in the Book. Know ye that they are the lamps
of guidance betwixt earth and heaven. They that have no consideration for
the position and merit of the divines amongst them have, verily, altered
the bounty of God vouchsafed unto them.”

Dear friends! I have, in the preceding pages, attempted to represent this
world-afflicting ordeal that has laid its grip upon mankind as primarily a
judgment of God pronounced against the peoples of the earth, who, for a
century, have refused to recognize the One Whose advent had been promised
to all religions, and in Whose Faith all nations can alone, and must
eventually, seek their true salvation. I have quoted certain passages from
the writings of Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb that reveal the character, and
foreshadow the occurrence of this divinely inflicted visitation. I have
enumerated the woeful trials with which the Faith, its Herald, its
Founder, and its Exemplar, have been afflicted, and exposed the tragic
failure of the generality of mankind and its leaders to protest against
these tribulations, and to acknowledge the claims advanced by those Who
bore them. I have, moreover, indicated that a direct, an awful, an
inescapable responsibility rested on the sovereigns of the earth and the
world’s religious leaders who, in the days of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh,
held within their grasp the reins of absolute political and religious
authority. I have also endeavored to show how, as a result of the direct
and active antagonism of some of them to the Faith, and the neglect by
others of their unquestioned duty to investigate its truth and its claims,
to vindicate its innocence, and avenge its injuries, both kings and
ecclesiastics have been, and are still being, subjected to the dire
punishments which their sins of omission and commission have provoked. I
have, owing to the chief responsibility which they incurred, as a result
of the undisputed ascendancy they held over their subjects and followers,
quoted extensively from the messages, the exhortations and warnings
addressed to them by the Founders of our Faith, and expatiated on the
consequences that have flowed from these momentous and epoch-making
utterances.

This great retributive calamity, for which the world’s supreme leaders,
both secular and religious, are to be regarded as primarily answerable, as
testified by Bahá’u’lláh, should not, if we would correctly appraise it,
be regarded solely as a punishment meted out by God to a world that has,
for a hundred years, persisted in its refusal to embrace the truth of the
redemptive Message proffered to it by the supreme Messenger of God in this
day. It should be viewed also, though to a lesser degree, in the light of
a divine retribution for the perversity of the human race in general, in
casting itself adrift from those elementary principles which must, at all
times, govern, and can alone safeguard, the life and progress of mankind.
Humanity has, alas, with increasing insistence, preferred, instead of
acknowledging and adoring the Spirit of God as embodied in His religion in
this day, to worship those false idols, untruths and half-truths, which
are obscuring its religions, corrupting its spiritual life, convulsing its
political institutions, corroding its social fabric, and shattering its
economic structure.

Not only have the peoples of the earth ignored, and some of them even
assailed, a Faith which is at once the essence, the promise, the
reconciler, and the unifier of all religions, but they have drifted away
from their own religions, and set up on their subverted altars other gods
wholly alien not only to the spirit but to the traditional forms of their
ancient faiths.

“The face of the world,” Bahá’u’lláh laments, “hath altered. The way of
God and the religion of God have ceased to be of any worth in the eyes of
men.” “The vitality of men’s belief in God,” He also has written, “is
dying out in every land.... The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into
the vitals of human society.” “Religion,” He affirms, “is verily the chief
instrument for the establishment of order in the world, and of tranquility
amongst its peoples.... The greater the decline of religion, the more
grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but lead in the end
to chaos and confusion.” And again: “Religion is a radiant light and an
impregnable stronghold for the protection and welfare of the peoples of
the world.” “As the body of man,” He, in another connection, has written,
“needeth a garment to clothe it, so the body of mankind must needs be
adorned with the mantle of justice and wisdom. Its robe is the Revelation
vouchsafed unto it by God.”



THE THREE FALSE GODS


This vital force is dying out, this mighty agency has been scorned, this
radiant light obscured, this impregnable stronghold abandoned, this
beauteous robe discarded. God Himself has indeed been dethroned from the
hearts of men, and an idolatrous world passionately and clamorously hails
and worships the false gods which its own idle fancies have fatuously
created, and its misguided hands so impiously exalted. The chief idols in
the desecrated temple of mankind are none other than the triple gods of
Nationalism, Racialism and Communism, at whose altars governments and
peoples, whether democratic or totalitarian, at peace or at war, of the
East or of the West, Christian or Islamic, are, in various forms and in
different degrees, now worshiping. Their high priests are the politicians
and the worldly-wise, the so-called sages of the age; their sacrifice, the
flesh and blood of the slaughtered multitudes; their incantations outworn
shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the
smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved,
the maimed, and the homeless.

The theories and policies, so unsound, so pernicious, which deify the
state and exalt the nation above mankind, which seek to subordinate the
sister races of the world to one single race, which discriminate between
the black and the white, and which tolerate the dominance of one
privileged class over all others—these are the dark, the false, and
crooked doctrines for which any man or people who believes in them, or
acts upon them, must, sooner or later, incur the wrath and chastisement of
God.

“Movements,” is the warning sounded by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “newly born and
worldwide in their range, will exert their utmost effort for the
advancement of their designs. The Movement of the Left will acquire great
importance. Its influence will spread.”

Contrasting with, and irreconcilably opposed to, these war-engendering,
world-convulsing doctrines are the healing, the saving, the pregnant
truths proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, the Divine Organizer and Savior of the
whole human race—truths which should be regarded as the animating force
and the hallmark of His Revelation: “The world is but one country, and
mankind its citizens.” “Let not a man glory in that he loves his country;
let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.” And again: “Ye are
the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.” “Bend your minds
and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth, that
haply ... all mankind may become the upholders of one order, and the
inhabitants of one city.... Ye dwell in one world, and have been created
through the operation of one Will.” “Beware lest the desires of the flesh
and of a corrupt inclination provoke divisions among you. Be ye as the
fingers of one hand, the members of one body.” And yet again: “All the
saplings of the world have appeared from one Tree, and all the drops from
one Ocean, and all beings owe their existence to one Being.” And
furthermore: “That one indeed is a man who today dedicateth himself to the
service of the entire human race.”



THE WEAKENED PILLARS OF RELIGION


Not only must irreligion and its monstrous offspring, the triple curse
that oppresses the soul of mankind in this day, be held responsible for
the ills which are so tragically besetting it, but other evils and vices,
which are, for the most part, the direct consequences of the “weakening of
the pillars of religion,” must also be regarded as contributory factors to
the manifold guilt of which individuals and nations stand convicted. The
signs of moral downfall, consequent to the dethronement of religion and
the enthronement of these usurping idols, are too numerous and too patent
for even a superficial observer of the state of present-day society to
fail to notice. The spread of lawlessness, of drunkenness, of gambling,
and of crime; the inordinate love of pleasure, of riches, and other
earthly vanities; the laxity in morals, revealing itself in the
irresponsible attitude towards marriage, in the weakening of parental
control, in the rising tide of divorce, in the deterioration in the
standard of literature and of the press, and in the advocacy of theories
that are the very negation of purity, of morality and chastity—these
evidences of moral decadence, invading both the East and the West,
permeating every stratum of society, and instilling their poison in its
members of both sexes, young and old alike, blacken still further the
scroll upon which are inscribed the manifold transgressions of an
unrepentant humanity.

Small wonder that Bahá’u’lláh, the Divine Physician, should have declared:
“In this day the tastes of men have changed, and their power of perception
hath altered. The contrary winds of the world, and its colors, have
provoked a cold, and deprived men’s nostrils of the sweet savors of
Revelation.”

Brimful and bitter indeed is the cup of humanity that has failed to
respond to the summons of God as voiced by His Supreme Messenger, that has
dimmed the lamp of its faith in its Creator, that has transferred, in so
great a measure, the allegiance owed Him to the gods of its own invention,
and polluted itself with the evils and vices which such a transference
must necessarily engender.

Dear friends! It is in this light that we, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh,
should regard this visitation of God which, in the concluding years of the
first century of the Bahá’í era, afflicts the generality, and has thrown
into such a bewildering confusion the affairs, of mankind. It is because
of this dual guilt, the things it has done and the things it has left
undone, its misdeeds as well as its dismal and signal failure to
accomplish its clear and unmistakable duty towards God, His Messenger, and
His Faith, that this grievous ordeal, whatever its immediate political and
economic causes, has laid its adamantine grip upon it.

God, however, as has been pointed out in the very beginning of these
pages, does not only punish the wrongdoings of His children. He chastises
because He is just, and He chastens because He loves. Having chastened
them, He cannot, in His great mercy, leave them to their fate. Indeed, by
the very act of chastening them He prepares them for the mission for which
He has created them. “My calamity is My providence,” He, by the mouth of
Bahá’u’lláh, has assured them, “outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but
inwardly it is light and mercy.”

The flames which His Divine justice have kindled cleanse an unregenerate
humanity, and fuse its discordant, its warring elements as no other agency
can cleanse or fuse them. It is not only a retributory and destructive
fire, but a disciplinary and creative process, whose aim is the salvation,
through unification, of the entire planet. Mysteriously, slowly, and
resistlessly God accomplishes His design, though the sight that meets our
eyes in this day be the spectacle of a world hopelessly entangled in its
own meshes, utterly careless of the Voice which, for a century, has been
calling it to God, and miserably subservient to the siren voices which are
attempting to lure it into the vast abyss.



GOD’S PURPOSE


God’s purpose is none other than to usher in, in ways He alone can bring
about, and the full significance of which He alone can fathom, the Great,
the Golden Age of a long-divided, a long-afflicted humanity. Its present
state, indeed even its immediate future, is dark, distressingly dark. Its
distant future, however, is radiant, gloriously radiant—so radiant that no
eye can visualize it.

“The winds of despair,” writes Bahá’u’lláh, as He surveys the immediate
destinies of mankind, “are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the
strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The
signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as
the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.” “Such shall be
its plight,” He, in another connection, has declared, “that to disclose it
now would not be meet and seemly.” “These fruitless strifes,” He, on the
other hand, contemplating the future of mankind, has emphatically
prophesied, in the course of His memorable interview with the Persian
orientalist, Edward G. Browne, “these ruinous wars shall pass away, and
the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come.... These strifes and this bloodshed and
discord must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family.” “Soon,”
He predicts, “will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one
spread out in its stead.” “After a time,” He also has written, “all the
governments on earth will change. Oppression will envelop the world. And
following a universal convulsion, the sun of justice will rise from the
horizon of the unseen realm.” “The whole earth,” He, moreover, has stated,
“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.” “All nations and kindreds,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá likewise has written,
“...will become a single nation. Religious and sectarian antagonism, the
hostility of races and peoples, and differences among nations, will be
eliminated. All men will adhere to one religion, will have one common
faith, will be blended into one race, and become a single people. All will
dwell in one common fatherland, which is the planet itself.”

What we witness at the present time, during “this gravest crisis in the
history of civilization,” recalling such times in which “religions have
perished and are born,” is the adolescent stage in the slow and painful
evolution of humanity, preparatory to the attainment of the stage of
manhood, the stage of maturity, the promise of which is embedded in the
teachings, and enshrined in the prophecies, of Bahá’u’lláh. The tumult of
this age of transition is characteristic of the impetuosity and irrational
instincts of youth, its follies, its prodigality, its pride, its
self-assurance, its rebelliousness, and contempt of discipline.



THE GREAT AGE TO COME


The ages of its infancy and childhood are past, never again to return,
while the Great Age, the consummation of all ages, which must signalize
the coming of age of the entire human race, is yet to come. The
convulsions of this transitional and most turbulent period in the annals
of humanity are the essential prerequisites, and herald the inevitable
approach, of that Age of Ages, “the time of the end,” in which the folly
and tumult of strife that has, since the dawn of history, blackened the
annals of mankind, will have been finally transmuted into the wisdom and
the tranquility of an undisturbed, a universal, and lasting peace, in
which the discord and separation of the children of men will have given
way to the worldwide reconciliation, and the complete unification of the
divers elements that constitute human society.

This will indeed be the fitting climax of that process of integration
which, starting with the family, the smallest unit in the scale of human
organization, must, after having called successively into being the tribe,
the city-state, and the nation, continue to operate until it culminates in
the unification of the whole world, the final object and the crowning
glory of human evolution on this planet. It is this stage which humanity,
willingly or unwillingly, is resistlessly approaching. It is for this
stage that this vast, this fiery ordeal which humanity is experiencing is
mysteriously paving the way. It is with this stage that the fortunes and
the purpose of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh are indissolubly linked. It is the
creative energies which His Revelation has released in the “year sixty,”
and later reinforced by the successive effusions of celestial power
vouchsafed in the “year nine” and the “year eighty” to all mankind, that
have instilled into humanity the capacity to attain this final stage in
its organic and collective evolution. It is with the Golden Age of His
Dispensation that the consummation of this process will be forever
associated. It is the structure of His New World Order, now stirring in
the womb of the administrative institutions He Himself has created, that
will serve both as a pattern and a nucleus of that world commonwealth
which is the sure, the inevitable destiny of the peoples and nations of
the earth.

Just as the organic evolution of mankind has been slow and gradual, and
involved successively the unification of the family, the tribe, the
city-state, and the nation, so has the light vouchsafed by the Revelation
of God, at various stages in the evolution of religion, and reflected in
the successive Dispensations of the past, been slow and progressive.
Indeed the measure of Divine Revelation, in every age, has been adapted
to, and commensurate with, the degree of social progress achieved in that
age by a constantly evolving humanity.

“It hath been decreed by Us,” explains Bahá’u’lláh, “that the Word of God,
and all the potentialities thereof, shall be manifested unto men in strict
conformity with such conditions as have been foreordained by Him Who is
the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.... Should the Word be allowed to release
suddenly all the energies latent within it, no man could sustain the
weight of so mighty a Revelation.” “All created things,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá,
elucidating this truth, has affirmed, “have their degree or stage of
maturity. The period of maturity in the life of a tree is the time of its
fruit-bearing.... The animal attains a stage of full growth and
completeness, and in the human kingdom man reaches his maturity when the
light of his intelligence attains its greatest power and development.
...Similarly there are periods and stages in the collective life of
humanity. At one time it was passing through its stage of childhood, at
another its period of youth, but now it has entered its long-predicted
phase of maturity, the evidences of which are everywhere apparent.... That
which was applicable to human needs during the early history of the race
can neither meet nor satisfy the demands of this day, this period of
newness and consummation. Humanity has emerged from its former state of
limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new
virtues and powers, new moral standards, new capacities. New bounties,
perfect bestowals, are awaiting and already descending upon him. The gifts
and blessings of the period of youth, although timely and sufficient
during the adolescence of mankind, are now incapable of meeting the
requirements of its maturity.” “In every Dispensation,” He moreover has
written, “the light of Divine Guidance has been focused upon one central
theme.... In this wondrous Revelation, this glorious century, the
foundation of the Faith of God, and the distinguishing feature of His Law,
is the consciousness of the oneness of mankind.”



RELIGION AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION


The Revelation associated with the Faith of Jesus Christ focused attention
primarily on the redemption of the individual and the molding of his
conduct, and stressed, as its central theme, the necessity of inculcating
a high standard of morality and discipline into man, as the fundamental
unit in human society. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find any reference to
the unity of nations or the unification of mankind as a whole. When Jesus
spoke to those around Him, He addressed them primarily as individuals
rather than as component parts of one universal, indivisible entity. The
whole surface of the earth was as yet unexplored, and the organization of
all its peoples and nations as one unit could, consequently, not be
envisaged, how much less proclaimed or established. What other
interpretation can be given to these words, addressed specifically by
Bahá’u’lláh to the followers of the Gospel, in which the fundamental
distinction between the Mission of Jesus Christ, concerning primarily the
individual, and His own Message, directed more particularly to mankind as
a whole, has been definitely established: “Verily, He [Jesus] said: ‘Come
ye after Me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.’ In this day,
however, We say: ‘Come ye after Me, that We may make you to become the
quickeners of mankind.’”

The Faith of Islám, the succeeding link in the chain of Divine Revelation,
introduced, as Bahá’u’lláh Himself testifies, the conception of the nation
as a unit and a vital stage in the organization of human society, and
embodied it in its teaching. This indeed is what is meant by this brief
yet highly significant and illuminating pronouncement of Bahá’u’lláh: “Of
old [Islamic Dispensation] it hath been revealed: ‘Love of one’s country
is an element of the Faith of God.’” This principle was established and
stressed by the Apostle of God, inasmuch as the evolution of human society
required it at that time. Nor could any stage above and beyond it have
been envisaged, as world conditions preliminary to the establishment of a
superior form of organization were as yet unobtainable. The conception of
nationality, the attainment to the state of nationhood, may, therefore, be
said to be the distinguishing characteristics of the Muḥammadan
Dispensation, in the course of which the nations and races of the world,
and particularly in Europe and America, were unified and achieved
political independence.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá Himself elucidates this truth in one of His Tablets: “In
cycles gone by, though harmony was established, yet, owing to the absence
of means, the unity of all mankind could not have been achieved.
Continents remained widely divided, nay even among the peoples of one and
the same continent association and interchange of thought were well-nigh
impossible. Consequently intercourse, understanding and unity amongst all
the peoples and kindreds of the earth were unattainable. In this day,
however, means of communication have multiplied, and the five continents
of the earth have virtually merged into one.... In like manner all the
members of the human family, whether peoples or governments, cities or
villages, have become increasingly interdependent. For none is
self-sufficiency any longer possible, inasmuch as political ties unite all
peoples and nations, and the bonds of trade and industry, of agriculture
and education, are being strengthened every day. Hence the unity of all
mankind can in this day be achieved. Verily this is none other but one of
the wonders of this wondrous age, this glorious century. Of this past ages
have been deprived, for this century—the century of light—has been endowed
with unique and unprecedented glory, power and illumination. Hence the
miraculous unfolding of a fresh marvel every day. Eventually it will be
seen how bright its candles will burn in the assemblage of man.”

“Behold,” He further explains, “how its light is now dawning upon the
world’s darkened horizon. The first candle is unity in the political
realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned. The second
candle is unity of thought in world undertakings, the consummation of
which will erelong be witnessed. The third candle is unity in freedom
which will surely come to pass. The fourth candle is unity in religion
which is the cornerstone of the foundation itself, and which, by the power
of God, will be revealed in all its splendor. The fifth candle is the
unity of nations—a unity which, in this century, will be securely
established, causing all the peoples of the world to regard themselves as
citizens of one common fatherland. The sixth candle is unity of races,
making of all that dwell on earth peoples and kindreds of one race. The
seventh candle is unity of language, i.e., the choice of a universal
tongue in which all peoples will be instructed and converse. Each and
every one of these will inevitably come to pass, inasmuch as the power of
the Kingdom of God will aid and assist in their realization.”

“One of the great events,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has, in His “Some Answered
Questions,” affirmed, “which is to occur in the Day of the manifestation
of that Incomparable Branch [Bahá’u’lláh] is the hoisting of the Standard
of God among all nations. By this is meant that all nations and kindreds
will be gathered together under the shadow of this Divine Banner, which is
no other than the Lordly Branch itself, and will become a single nation.
Religious and sectarian antagonism, the hostility of races and peoples,
and differences among nations, will be eliminated. All men will adhere to
one religion, will have one common faith, will be blended into one race,
and become a single people. All will dwell in one common fatherland, which
is the planet itself.”

This is the stage which the world is now approaching, the stage of world
unity, which, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá assures us, will, in this century, be
securely established. “The Tongue of Grandeur,” Bahá’u’lláh Himself
affirms, “hath ... in the Day of His Manifestation proclaimed: ‘It is not
his to boast who loveth his country, but it is his who loveth the world.’”
“Through the power,” He adds, “released by these exalted words He hath
lent a fresh impulse, and set a new direction, to the birds of men’s
hearts, and hath obliterated every trace of restriction and limitation
from God’s Holy Book.”



THE WIDER, INCLUSIVE LOYALTY


A word of warning should, however, be uttered in this connection. The love
of one’s country, instilled and stressed by the teaching of Islám, as “an
element of the Faith of God,” has not, through this declaration, this
clarion-call of Bahá’u’lláh, been either condemned or disparaged. It
should not, indeed it cannot, be construed as a repudiation, or regarded
in the light of a censure, pronounced against a sane and intelligent
patriotism, nor does it seek to undermine the allegiance and loyalty of
any individual to his country, nor does it conflict with the legitimate
aspirations, rights, and duties of any individual state or nation. All it
does imply and proclaim is the insufficiency of patriotism, in view of the
fundamental changes effected in the economic life of society and the
interdependence of the nations, and as the consequence of the contraction
of the world, through the revolution in the means of transportation and
communication—conditions that did not and could not exist either in the
days of Jesus Christ or of Muḥammad. It calls for a wider loyalty, which
should not, and indeed does not, conflict with lesser loyalties. It
instills a love which, in view of its scope, must include and not exclude
the love of one’s own country. It lays, through this loyalty which it
inspires, and this love which it infuses, the only foundation on which the
concept of world citizenship can thrive, and the structure of world
unification can rest. It does insist, however, on the subordination of
national considerations and particularistic interests to the imperative
and paramount claims of humanity as a whole, inasmuch as in a world of
interdependent nations and peoples the advantage of the part is best to be
reached by the advantage of the whole.

The world is, in truth, moving on towards its destiny. The interdependence
of the peoples and nations of the earth, whatever the leaders of the
divisive forces of the world may say or do, is already an accomplished
fact. Its unity in the economic sphere is now understood and recognized.
The welfare of the part means the welfare of the whole, and the distress
of the part brings distress to the whole. The Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh
has, in His own words, “lent a fresh impulse and set a new direction” to
this vast process now operating in the world. The fires lit by this great
ordeal are the consequences of men’s failure to recognize it. They are,
moreover, hastening its consummation. Adversity, prolonged, worldwide,
afflictive, allied to chaos and universal destruction, must needs convulse
the nations, stir the conscience of the world, disillusion the masses,
precipitate a radical change in the very conception of society, and
coalesce ultimately the disjointed, the bleeding limbs of mankind into one
body, single, organically united, and indivisible.



WORLD COMMONWEALTH


To the general character, the implications and features of this world
commonwealth, destined to emerge, sooner or later, out of the carnage,
agony, and havoc of this great world convulsion, I have already referred
in my previous communications. Suffice it to say that this consummation
will, by its very nature, be a gradual process, and must, as Bahá’u’lláh
has Himself anticipated, lead at first to the establishment of that Lesser
Peace which the nations of the earth, as yet unconscious of His Revelation
and yet unwittingly enforcing the general principles which He has
enunciated, will themselves establish. This momentous and historic step,
involving the reconstruction of mankind, as the result of the universal
recognition of its oneness and wholeness, will bring in its wake the
spiritualization of the masses, consequent to the recognition of the
character, and the acknowledgment of the claims, of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh—the essential condition to that ultimate fusion of all races,
creeds, classes, and nations which must signalize the emergence of His New
World Order.

Then will the coming of age of the entire human race be proclaimed and
celebrated by all the peoples and nations of the earth. Then will the
banner of the Most Great Peace be hoisted. Then will the worldwide
sovereignty of Bahá’u’lláh—the Establisher of the Kingdom of the Father
foretold by the Son, and anticipated by the Prophets of God before Him and
after Him—be recognized, acclaimed, and firmly established. Then will a
world civilization be born, flourish, and perpetuate itself, a
civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor
can as yet conceive. Then will the Everlasting Covenant be fulfilled in
its completeness. Then will the promise enshrined in all the Books of God
be redeemed, and all the prophecies uttered by the Prophets of old come to
pass, and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet,
galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God, and
their allegiance to one common Revelation, mirror, within the limitations
imposed upon it, the effulgent glories of the sovereignty of Bahá’u’lláh,
shining in the plenitude of its splendor in the Abhá Paradise, and be made
the footstool of His Throne on high, and acclaimed as the earthly heaven,
capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it, from time
immemorial, by the love and wisdom of its Creator.

Not ours, puny mortals that we are, to attempt, at so critical a stage in
the long and checkered history of mankind, to arrive at a precise and
satisfactory understanding of the steps which must successively lead a
bleeding humanity, wretchedly oblivious of its God, and careless of
Bahá’u’lláh, from its calvary to its ultimate resurrection. Not ours, the
living witnesses of the all-subduing potency of His Faith, to question,
for a moment, and however dark the misery that enshrouds the world, the
ability of Bahá’u’lláh to forge, with the hammer of His Will, and through
the fire of tribulation, upon the anvil of this travailing age, and in the
particular shape His mind has envisioned, these scattered and mutually
destructive fragments into which a perverse world has fallen, into one
single unit, solid and indivisible, able to execute His design for the
children of men.

Ours rather the duty, however confused the scene, however dismal the
present outlook, however circumscribed the resources we dispose of, to
labor serenely, confidently, and unremittingly to lend our share of
assistance, in whichever way circumstances may enable us, to the operation
of the forces which, as marshaled and directed by Bahá’u’lláh, are leading
humanity out of the valley of misery and shame to the loftiest summits of
power and glory.

Shoghi

To the beloved of God and the handmaids of the Merciful throughout the
West.
Haifa, Palestine
March 28, 1941





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Promised Day Is Come" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.