THE PROMISED DAY IS COME
     (U.S., Revised Edition 1980) 
     FILENAME:  PDC
     FILEDATE:  08-06-94 
 
 
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                             PREFACE 
     The fundamental principle enunciated by &Baha'u'llah ... is that 
religious truth is not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is a 
continuous and progressive process, that all the great religions of the 
world are divine in origin, that their basic principles are in complete 
harmony, that their aims and purposes are one and the same, that their 
teachings are but facets of one truth, that their functions are complementary, 
that they differ only in the nonessential aspects of their 
doctrines, and that their missions represent successive stages in the 
spiritual evolution of human society....  
     ...His mission is to proclaim that the ages of the infancy and of the 
childhood of the human race are past, that the convulsions associated 
with the present stage of its adolescence are slowly and painfully preparing 
it to attain the stage of manhood, and are heralding the approach of 
that Age of Ages when swords will be beaten into plowshares, when the 
Kingdom promised by Jesus Christ will have been established, and the 
peace of the planet definitely and permanently ensured.  Nor does 
&Baha'u'llah claim finality for His own Revelation, but rather stipulates 
that a fuller measure of the truth He has been commissioned by the 
Almighty to vouchsafe to humanity, at so critical a juncture in its 
fortunes, must needs be disclosed at future stages in the constant and 
limitless evolution of mankind.  
     The &Baha'i Faith upholds the unity of God, recognizes the unity of 
His Prophets, and inculcates the principle of the oneness and wholeness 
of the entire human race.  It proclaims the necessity and the inevitability 
of the unification of mankind, asserts that it is gradually approaching, 
and claims that nothing short of the transmuting spirit of God, working 
through His chosen Mouthpiece in this day, can ultimately succeed in 
 
vi 
bringing it about.  It, moreover, enjoins upon its followers the primary 
duty of an unfettered search after truth, condemns all manner of 
prejudice and superstition, declares the purpose of religion to be the 
promotion of amity and concord, proclaims its essential harmony with 
science, and recognizes it as the foremost agency for the pacification and 
the orderly progress of human society.... 
     &Mirza &Husayn-'Ali, surnamed &Baha'u'llah (the Glory of God), a 
native of &Mazindaran, Whose advent the &Bab [Herald and Forerunner 
of &Baha'u'llah] had foretold, ... was imprisoned in &Tihran, was 
banished, in 1852, from His native land to &Baghdad, and thence to 
Constantinople and Adrianople, and finally to the prison city of &Akka, 
where He remained incarcerated for no less than twenty-four years, and 
in whose neighborhood He passed away in 1892.  In the course of His 
banishment, and particularly in Adrianople and &Akka, He formulated 
the laws and ordinances of His Dispensation, expounded, in over a 
hundred volumes, the principles of His Faith, proclaimed His Message 
to the kings and rulers of both the East and the West, both Christian and 
Muslim, addressed the Pope, the Caliph of &Islam, the Chief Magistrates 
of the Republics of the American continent, the entire Christian sacerdotal 
order, the leaders of &Shi'ih and &Sunni &Islam, and the high priests of 
the Zoroastrian religion.  In these writings He proclaimed His Revelation, 
summoned those whom He addressed to heed His call and espouse 
His Faith, warned them of the consequences of their refusal, and 
denounced, in some cases, their arrogance and tyranny....  
     The Faith which this order serves, safeguards and promotes 
is ... essentially supernatural, supranational, entirely non-political, 
non-partisan, and diametrically opposed to any policy or school of 
thought that seeks to exalt any particular race, class or nation.  It is free 
from any form of ecclesiasticism, has neither priesthood nor rituals, and 
is supported exclusively by voluntary contributions made by its avowed 
adherents.  Though loyal to their respective governments, though imbued 
with the love of their own country, and anxious to promote at all 
times, its best interests, the followers of the &Baha'i Faith, nevertheless, 
viewing mankind as one entity, and profoundly attached to its vital 
interests, will not hesitate to subordinate every particular interest, be it 
personal, regional or national, to the over-riding interests of the generality 
of mankind, knowing full well that in a world of interdependent 
 
vii 
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 
 
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                      THE PROMISED DAY IS COME 
 
Friends and fellow-heirs of the Kingdom of &Baha'u'llah: 
     A tempest, unprecedented in its violence, unpredictable in its course, 
catastrophic in its immediate effects, unimaginably glorious in its ultimate 
consequences, is at present sweeping the face of the earth.  Its 
driving power is remorselessly gaining in range and momentum.  Its 
cleansing force, however much undetected, is increasing with every 
passing day.  Humanity, gripped in the clutches of its devastating power, 
is smitten by the evidences of its resistless fury.  It can neither perceive 
its origin, nor probe its significance, nor discern its outcome.  Bewildered, 
agonized and helpless, it watches this great and mighty wind of God 
invading the remotest and fairest regions of the earth, rocking its 
foundations, deranging its equilibrium, sundering its nations, disrupting the 
homes of its peoples, wasting its cities, driving into exile its kings, 
pulling down its bulwarks, uprooting its institutions, dimming its light, 
and harrowing up the souls of its inhabitants.  
     "The time for the destruction of the world and its people," &Baha'u'llah's 
prophetic pen has proclaimed, "hath arrived."  "The hour 
is approaching," He specifically affirms, "when the most great convulsion 
will have appeared."  "The promised day is come, the day when 
tormenting trials will have surged above your heads, and beneath your 
feet, saying:  `Taste ye what your hands have wrought!'"  "Soon shall the 
blasts of His chastisement beat upon you, and the dust of hell enshroud 
you."  And again:  "And when the appointed hour is come, there shall 
suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake."  
"The day is approaching when its [civilization's] flame will devour the 
cities, when the Tongue of Grandeur will proclaim:  `The Kingdom is 
God's, the Almighty, the All-Praised!'"  "The day will soon come," He, 
referring to the foolish ones of the earth, has written, "whereon they will 
cry out for help and receive no answer."  "The day is approaching," He 
moreover has prophesied, "when the wrathful anger of the Almighty will 
have taken hold of them.  He, verily, is the Omnipotent, the All-Subduing, 
the Most Powerful.  He shall cleanse the earth from the 
 
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defilement of their corruption, and shall give it for an heritage unto such 
of His servants as are nigh unto Him."  
     "As to those who deny Him Who is the Sublime Gate of God," the &Bab, 
for His part, has affirmed in the &Qayyum-i-Asma', "for them We have 
prepared, as justly decreed by God, a sore torment.  And He, God, is the 
Mighty, the Wise."  And further, "O peoples of the earth!  I swear by your 
Lord!  Ye shall act as former generations have acted.  Warn ye, then, 
yourselves of the terrible, the most grievous vengeance of God.  For God is, 
verily, potent over all things."  And again:  "By My glory!  I will make the 
infidels to taste, with the hands of My power, retributions unknown of 
anyone except Me, and will waft over the faithful those musk-scented 
breaths which I have nursed in the midmost heart of My throne."  
     Dear friends!  The powerful operations of this titanic upheaval are 
comprehensible to none except such as have recognized the claims of 
both &Baha'u'llah and the &Bab.  Their followers know full well whence it 
comes, and what it will ultimately lead to.  Though ignorant of how far it 
will reach, they clearly recognize its genesis, are aware of its direction, 
acknowledge its necessity, observe confidently its mysterious processes, 
ardently pray for the mitigation of its severity, intelligently labor to 
assuage its fury, and anticipate, with undimmed vision, the consummation 
of the fears and the hopes it must necessarily engender.  
 
          This Judgment of God 
 
     This judgment of God, as viewed by those who have recognized 
&Baha'u'llah as His Mouthpiece and His greatest Messenger on earth, is 
both a retributory calamity and an act of holy and supreme discipline.  It 
is at once a visitation from God and a cleansing process for all mankind.  
Its fires punish the perversity of the human race, and weld its component 
parts into one organic, indivisible, world-embracing community.  Mankind, 
in these fateful years, which at once signalize the passing of the 
first century of the &Baha'i Era and proclaim the opening of a new one, is, 
as ordained by Him Who is both the Judge and the Redeemer of the 
human race, being simultaneously called upon to give account of its 
past actions, and is being purged and prepared for its future mission.  It 
can neither escape the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the 
future.  God, the Vigilant, the Just, the Loving, the All-Wise Ordainer, 
 
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can, in this supreme Dispensation, neither allow the sins of an unregenerate 
humanity, whether of omission or of commission, to go unpunished, 
nor will He be willing to abandon His children to their fate, 
and refuse them that culminating and blissful stage in their long, their 
slow and painful evolution throughout the ages, which is at once their 
inalienable right and their true destiny.  
     "Bestir yourselves, O people," is, on the one hand, the ominous 
warning sounded by &Baha'u'llah Himself, "in anticipation of the days of 
Divine Justice, for the promised hour is now come."  "Abandon that 
which ye possess, and seize that which God, Who layeth low the necks of 
men, hath brought.  Know ye of a certainty that if ye turn not back from 
that which ye have committed, chastisement will overtake you on every 
side, and ye shall behold things more grievous than that which ye beheld 
aforetime."  And again:  "We have fixed a time for you, O people!  If ye fail, 
at the appointed hour, to turn towards God, He, verily, will lay violent 
hold on you, and will cause grievous afflictions to assail you from every 
direction.  How severe indeed is the chastisement with which your Lord 
will then chastise you!"  And again:  "God assuredly dominateth the lives 
of them that wronged Us, and is well aware of their doings.  He will most 
certainly lay hold on them for their sins.  He, verily, is the fiercest of 
Avengers."  And finally:  "O ye peoples of the world!  Know verily that an 
unforeseen calamity is following you and that grievous retribution 
awaiteth you.  Think not the deeds ye have committed have been blotted 
from My sight.  By My Beauty!  All your doings hath My pen graven with 
open characters upon tablets of chrysolite."  
     "The whole earth," &Baha'u'llah, on the other hand, forecasting the 
bright future in store for a world now wrapt in darkness, emphatically 
asserts, "is now in a state of pregnancy.  The day is approaching when it 
will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will have sprung forth the 
loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the most heavenly blessings."  
"The time is approaching when every created thing will have cast 
its burden.  Glorified be God Who hath vouchsafed this grace that 
encompasseth all things, whether seen or unseen!"  "These great 
oppressions," He, moreover, foreshadowing humanity's golden age, has 
written, "are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great Justice."  This 
Most Great Justice is indeed the Justice upon which the structure of the 
Most Great Peace can alone, and must eventually, rest, while the Most 
Great Peace will, in turn, usher in that Most Great, that World Civilization 
 
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which shall remain forever associated with Him Who beareth the 
Most Great Name.  
     Beloved friends!  Well nigh a hundred years have elapsed since the 
Revelation of &Baha'u'llah dawned upon the world--a Revelation, the 
nature of which, as affirmed by Himself, "none among the Manifestations 
of old, except to a prescribed degree, hath ever completely 
apprehended."  For a whole century God has respited mankind, that it 
might acknowledge the Founder of such a Revelation, espouse His 
Cause, proclaim His greatness, and establish His Order.  In a hundred 
volumes, the repositories of priceless precepts, mighty laws, unique 
principles, impassioned exhortations, reiterated warnings, amazing 
prophecies, sublime invocations, and weighty commentaries, the 
Bearer of such a Message has proclaimed, as no Prophet before Him has 
done, the Mission with which God had entrusted Him.  To emperors, 
kings, princes and potentates, to rulers, governments, clergy and peoples, 
whether of the East or of the West, whether Christian, Jew, 
Muslim, or Zoroastrian, He addressed, for well-nigh fifty years, and in 
the most tragic circumstances, these priceless pearls of knowledge and 
wisdom that lay hid within the ocean of His matchless utterance.  
Forsaking fame and fortune, accepting imprisonment and exile, careless 
of ostracism and obloquy, submitting to physical indignities and 
cruel deprivations, He, the Vicegerent of God on earth, suffered Himself 
to be banished from place to place and from country to country, till 
at length He, in the Most Great Prison, offered up His martyred son as a 
ransom for the redemption and unification of all mankind.  "We verily," 
He Himself has testified, "have not fallen short of Our duty to exhort 
men, and to deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God, the Almighty, 
the All-Praised.  Had they hearkened unto Me, they would have beheld 
the earth another earth."  And again:  "Is there any excuse left for anyone 
in this Revelation?  No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne!  My signs 
have encompassed the earth, and My power enveloped all mankind, and 
yet the people are wrapped in a strange sleep!"  
 
          What Response to His Call? 
 
     How--we may well ask ourselves--has the world, the object of such 
Divine solicitude, repaid Him Who sacrificed His all for its sake?  What 
 
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manner of welcome did it accord Him, and what response did His call 
evoke?  A clamor, unparalleled in the history of &Shi'ih &Islam, greeted, in 
the land of its birth, the infant light of the Faith, in the midst of a people 
notorious for its crass ignorance, its fierce fanaticism, its barbaric 
cruelty, its ingrained prejudices, and the unlimited sway held over the 
masses by a firmly entrenched ecclesiastical hierarchy.  A persecution, 
kindling a courage which, as attested by no less eminent an authority 
than the late Lord Curzon of Kedleston, has been unsurpassed by that 
which the fires of Smithfield evoked, mowed down, with tragic swiftness, 
no less than twenty thousand of its heroic adherents, who refused 
to barter their newly born faith for the fleeting honors and security of a 
mortal life.  
     To the bodily agonies inflicted upon these sufferers, the charges, so 
unmerited, of Nihilism, occultism, anarchism, eclecticism, immorality, 
sectarianism, heresy, political partisanship--each conclusively disproved 
by the tenets of the Faith itself and by the conduct of its 
followers--were added, swelling thereby the number of those who, 
unwittingly or maliciously, were injuring its cause.  
     Unmitigated indifference on the part of men of eminence and rank; 
unrelenting hatred shown by the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Faith 
from which it had sprung; the scornful derision of the people among 
whom it was born; the utter contempt which most of those kings and 
rulers who had been addressed by its Author manifested towards it; the 
condemnations pronounced, the threats hurled, and the banishments 
decreed by those under whose sway it arose and first spread; the distortion 
to which its principles and laws were subjected by the envious and 
the malicious, in lands and among peoples far beyond the country of its 
origin--all these are but the evidences of the treatment meted out by a 
generation sunk in self-content, careless of its God, and oblivious of the 
omens, prophecies, warnings and admonitions revealed by His Messengers.  
     The blows so heavily dealt the followers of so precious, so glorious, so 
potent a Faith failed, however, to assuage the animosity that inflamed its 
persecutors.  Nor did the deliberate and mischievous misrepresentations 
of its fundamental teachings, its aims and purposes, its hopes and 
aspirations, its institutions and activities, suffice to stay the hand of the 
oppressor and the calumniator, who sought by every means in their 
power to abolish its name and extirpate its system.  The hand which had 
 
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struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and 
servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest 
blows.  
     The &Bab--"the Point," as affirmed by &Baha'u'llah, "round Whom the 
realities of the Prophets and Messengers revolve"--was the One first 
swept into the maelstrom which engulfed His supporters.  Sudden arrest 
and confinement in the very first year of His short and spectacular 
career; public affront deliberately inflicted in the presence of the 
ecclesiastical dignitaries of &Shiraz; strict and prolonged incarceration in 
the bleak fastnesses of the mountains of &Adhirbayjan; a contemptuous 
disregard and a cowardly jealousy evinced respectively by the Chief 
Magistrate of the realm and the foremost minister of his government; the 
carefully staged and farcical interrogatory sustained in the presence of 
the heir to the Throne and the distinguished divines of &Tabriz; the 
shameful infliction of the bastinado in the prayer house, and at the 
hands of the &Shaykhu'l-Islam of that city; and finally suspension in the 
barrack-square of &Tabriz and the discharge of a volley of above seven 
hundred bullets at His youthful breast under the eyes of a callous 
multitude of about ten thousand people, culminating in the ignominious 
exposure of His mangled remains on the edge of the moat without 
the city gate--these were the progressive stages in the tumultuous and 
tragic ministry of One Whose age inaugurated the consummation of all 
ages, and Whose Revelation fulfilled the promise of all Revelations.  
     "I swear by God!" the &Bab Himself in His Tablet to &Muhammad &Shah 
has written, "Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these 
four years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, 
thou wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God....  Alas, alas, for the 
things which have touched Me!...  I swear by the Most Great Lord!  Wert 
thou to be told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me 
would be thyself.  In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [&Maku] ... the 
inmates of which are confined to two guards and four dogs.  Picture, then, 
My plight....  In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come 
to such a pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have 
suffered, nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!"  
     "How veiled are ye, O My creatures," He, speaking with the voice of 
God, has revealed in the &Bayan, "...who, without any right, have 
consigned Him unto a mountain [&Maku], not one of whose inhabitants is 
worthy of mention....  With Him, which is with Me, there is no one 
 
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except him who is one of the Letters of the Living of My Book.  In His 
presence, which is My Presence, there is not at night even a lighted lamp!  
And yet, in places [of worship] which in varying degrees reach out unto 
Him, unnumbered lamps are shining!  All that is on earth hath been 
created for Him, and all partake with delight of His benefits, and yet they 
are so veiled from Him as to refuse Him even a lamp!"  
     What of &Baha'u'llah, the germ of Whose Revelation, as attested by 
the &Bab, is endowed with a potency superior to the combined forces of 
the &Babi Dispensation?  Was He not--He for Whom the &Bab had 
suffered and died in such tragic and miraculous circumstances--made, 
for nearly half a century and under the domination of the two most 
powerful potentates of the East, the object of a systematic and concerted 
conspiracy which, in its effects and duration, is scarcely paralleled in the 
annals of previous religions?  
     "The cruelties inflicted by My oppressors," He Himself in His anguish 
has cried out, "have bowed Me down, and turned My hair white.  
Shouldst thou present thyself before My throne, thou wouldst fail to 
recognize the Ancient Beauty, for the freshness of His countenance is 
altered and its brightness hath faded, by reason of the oppression of the 
infidels.  I swear by God!  His heart, His soul, and His vitals are melted!"  
"Wert thou to hear with Mine ear," He also declares, "thou wouldst hear 
how &Ali [the &Bab] bewaileth Me in the presence of the Glorious Companion, 
and how &Muhammad weepeth over Me in the all-highest Horizon, 
and how the Spirit [Jesus] beateth Himself upon the head in the 
heaven of My decree, by reason of what hath befallen this Wronged One 
at the hands of every impious sinner."  "Before Me," He elsewhere has 
written, "riseth up the Serpent of wrath with jaws stretched to engulf Me, 
and behind Me stalketh the lion of anger intent on tearing Me in pieces, 
and above Me, O My Well-Beloved, are the clouds of Thy decree, raining 
upon Me the showers of tribulations, whilst beneath Me are fixed the 
spears of misfortune, ready to wound My limbs and My body."  "Couldst 
thou be told," He further affirms, "what hath befallen the Ancient 
Beauty, thou wouldst flee into the wilderness, and weep with a great 
weeping.  In thy grief, thou wouldst smite thyself on the head, and cry out 
as one stung by the sting of the adder....  By the righteousness of God!  
Every morning I arose from My bed I discovered the hosts of countless 
afflictions massed behind My door, and every night when I lay down, lo! 
My heart was torn with agony at what it had suffered from the fiendish 
 
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cruelty of its foes.  With every piece of bread the Ancient Beauty breaketh 
is coupled the assault of a fresh affliction, and with every drop He 
drinketh is mixed the bitterness of the most woeful of trials.  He is preceded 
in every step He taketh by an army of unforeseen calamities, while in His 
rear follow legions of agonizing sorrows."  
     Was it not He Who, at the early age of twenty-seven, spontaneously 
arose to champion, in the capacity of a mere follower, the nascent 
Cause of the &Bab?  Was He not the One Who by assuming the actual 
leadership of a proscribed and harrassed sect exposed Himself, and His 
kindred, and His possessions, and His rank, and His reputation to the 
grave perils, the bloody assaults, the general spoliation and furious 
defamations of both government and people?  Was it not He--the Bearer 
of a Revelation, Whose day "every Prophet hath announced," for which 
"the soul of every Divine Messenger hath thirsted," and in which "God 
hath proved the hearts of the entire company of His Messengers and 
Prophets"--was not the Bearer of such a Revelation, at the instigation of 
&Shi'ih ecclesiastics and by order of the &Shah himself forced, for no less 
than four months, to breathe, in utter darkness, whilst in the company 
of the vilest criminals and freighted down with galling chains, the 
pestilential air of the vermin-infested subterranean dungeon of 
&Tihran--a place which, as He Himself subsequently declared, was 
mysteriously converted into the very scene of the annunciation made to 
Him by God of His Prophethood?  
     "We were consigned," He wrote in His "Epistle to the Son of the 
Wolf," "for four months to a place foul beyond comparison.  As to the 
dungeon in which this Wronged One and others similarly wronged were 
confined, a dark and narrow pit were preferable....  The dungeon was 
wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow prisoners numbered nearly a 
hundred and fifty souls:  thieves, assassins, and highwaymen.  Though 
crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by which We entered.  No 
pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell.  
Most of these men had neither clothes nor bedding to lie on.  God alone 
knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling and gloomy place!"  
"&Abdu'l-Baha," writes Dr. J.E. Esslemont, "tells how one day He was 
allowed to enter the prison-yard to see His beloved Father when He 
came out for His daily exercise.  &Baha'u'llah was terribly altered, so ill He 
could hardly walk.  His hair and beard unkempt, His neck galled and 
swollen from the pressure of a heavy steel collar, His body bent by the 
 
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weight of His chains."  "For three days and three nights," &Nabil has 
recorded in his chronicle, "no manner of food or drink was given to 
&Baha'u'llah.  Rest and sleep were both impossible to Him.  The place was 
infested with vermin, and the stench of that gloomy abode was enough 
to crush the very spirits of those who were condemned to suffer its 
horrors."  "Such was the intensity of His suffering that the marks of that 
cruelty remained imprinted upon His body all the days of His life."  
     And what of the other tribulations which, before and immediately 
after this dreadful episode, touched Him?  What of His confinement in 
the home of one of the &kad-khudas of &Tihran?  What of the savage 
violence with which He was stoned by the angry people in the neighborhood 
of the village of &Niyala?  What of His incarceration by the emissaries 
of the army of the &Shah in &Mazindaran, and His receiving the 
bastinado by order, and in the presence, of the assembled siyyids and 
mujtahids into whose hands He had been delivered by the civil authorities 
of &Amul?  What of the howls of derision and abuse with which a 
crowd of ruffians subsequently pursued Him?  What of the monstrous 
accusation brought against Him by the Imperial household, the Court 
and the people, when the attempt was made on the life of &Nasiri'd-Din 
&Shah?  What of the infamous outrages, the abuse and ridicule heaped on 
Him when He was arrested by responsible officers of the government, 
and conducted from &Niyavaran "on foot and in chains, with bared head 
and bare feet," and exposed to the fierce rays of the midsummer sun, to 
the &Siyah-Chal of &Tihran?  What of the avidity with which corrupt 
officials sacked His house and carried away all His possessions and 
disposed of His fortune?  What of the cruel edict that tore Him from the 
small band of the &Bab's bewildered, hounded, and shepherdless followers, 
separated Him from His kinsmen and friends, and banished Him, 
in the depth of winter, despoiled and defamed, to &Iraq?  
     Severe as were these tribulations which succeeded one another with 
bewildering rapidity as a result of the premeditated attacks and the 
systematic machinations of the court, the clergy, the government and 
the people, they were but the prelude to a harrowing and extensive 
captivity which that edict had formally initiated.  Extending over a 
period of more than forty years, and carrying Him successively to &Iraq, 
&Sulaymaniyyih, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally to the penal 
colony of &Akka, this long banishment was at last ended by His death, at 
the age of over three score years and ten, terminating a captivity which, 
 
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in its range, its duration and the diversity and severity of its afflictions, 
is unexampled in the history of previous Dispensations.  
     No need to expatiate on the particular episodes which cast a lurid light 
on the moving annals of those years.  No need to dwell on the character 
and actions of the peoples, rulers and divines who have participated in, 
and contributed to heighten the poignancy of the scenes of this, the 
greatest drama in the world's spiritual history.  
 
          Features of This Moving Drama 
 
     To enumerate a few of the outstanding features of this moving drama 
will suffice to evoke in the reader of these pages, already familiar with 
the history of the Faith, the memory of those vicissitudes which it has 
experienced, and which the world has until now viewed with such frigid 
indifference.  The forced and sudden retirement of &Baha'u'llah to the 
mountains of &Sulaymaniyyih, and the distressing consequences that 
flowed from His two years' complete withdrawal; the incessant intrigues 
indulged in by the exponents of &Shi'ih &Islam in Najaf and &Karbila, 
working in close and constant association with their confederates in 
Persia; the intensification of the repressive measures decreed by &Sultan 
&Abdu'l-'Aziz which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent 
members of the exiled community; the enforcement of yet another 
banishment by order of that same &Sultan, this time to that far off and 
most desolate of cities, causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to 
attempt suicide; the unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected 
upon their arrival in &Akka, by hostile officials, and the insufferable 
imprisonment for two years in the barracks of that town; the 
interrogatory to which the Turkish &pasha 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.  
 
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     No wonder that from the Pen of Him Who bore this anguish with 
such sublime patience these words should have been revealed:  "He Who 
is the Lord of the seen and unseen is now manifest unto all men.  His 
blessed Self hath been afflicted with such harm that if all the seas, visible 
and invisible, were turned into ink, and all that dwell in the kingdom 
into pens, and all that are in the heavens and all that are on earth into 
scribes, they would, of a certainty, be powerless to record it."  And again:  
"I have been, most of the days of My life, even as a slave, sitting under a 
sword hanging on a thread, knowing not whether it would fall soon or 
late upon him."  "All this generation," He affirms, "could offer Us were 
wounds from its darts, and the only cup it proffered to Our lips was the 
cup of its venom.  On Our neck We still bear the scar of chains, and upon 
Our body are imprinted the evidences of an unyielding cruelty."  "Twenty 
years have passed, O kings!" He, addressing the kings of Christendom, at 
the height of His mission, has written, "during which We have, each 
day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation.  No one of them that were 
before Us hath endured the things We have endured.  Would that ye could 
perceive it!  They that rose up against Us have put Us to death, have shed 
Our blood, have plundered Our property, and violated Our honor.  
Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have failed to 
stay the hand of the aggressor.  For is it not your clear duty to restrain the 
tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your subjects, that 
your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all mankind?"  
     Who is the ruler, may it not be confidently asked, whether of the East 
or of the West, who, at any time since the dawn of so transcendent a 
Revelation, has been prompted to raise his voice either in its praise or 
against those who persecuted it?  Which people has, in the course of so 
long a captivity, felt urged to arise and stem the tide of such tribulations?  
Who is the sovereign, excepting a single woman, shining in solitary 
glory, who has, in however small a measure, felt impelled to respond to 
the poignant call of &Baha'u'llah?  Who amongst the great ones of the 
earth was inclined to extend this infant Faith of God the benefit of his 
recognition or support?  Which one of the multitudes of creeds, sects, 
races, parties and classes and of the highly diversified schools of human 
thought, considered it necessary to direct its gaze towards the rising light 
of the Faith, to contemplate its unfolding system, to ponder its hidden 
processes, to appraise its weighty message, to acknowledge its regenerative 
 
+P14 
power, to embrace its salutary truth, or to proclaim its eternal 
verities?  Who among the worldly wise and the so-called men of insight 
and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century, to have 
disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered impartially its 
claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its literature, to have 
assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or to have accorded its 
cause the treatment it merits?  Where are the preeminent exponents, 
whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception of a few isolated cases, 
who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of commendation, in 
either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has conferred upon the 
world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long and so grievously, 
and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a promise for a world 
so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt?  
     To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the &Bab, to the 
long-drawn-out calamities which rained on &Baha'u'llah, to the warnings 
sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the &Baha'i Revelation, 
must be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were 
endured by &Abdu'l-Baha, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in 
the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly 
threatened the whole of mankind.  Born in the very year that witnessed 
the inception of the &Babi Revelation; baptized with the initial fires of 
persecution that raged around that nascent Cause; an eyewitness, when 
a boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His 
Father had espoused; sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and 
rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land 
to countries far beyond its confines; arrested and forced to support, 
in a dark cell, the indignity of imprisonment soon after His arrival in 
&Akka; the object of repeated investigations and the target of continual 
assaults and insults under the despotic rule of &Sultan &Abdu'l-Hamid, 
and later under the ruthless military dictatorship of the suspicious and 
merciless &Jamal &Pasha--He, too, the Center and Pivot of &Baha'u'llah's 
peerless Covenant and the perfect Exemplar of His teachings, was made 
to taste, at the hands of potentates, ecclesiastics, governments and 
peoples, the cup of woe which the &Bab and &Baha'u'llah, as well as so 
many of their followers, had drained.  
     With the warnings which both His pen and voice have given in 
countless Tablets and discourses, during an almost lifelong incarceration 
and in the course of His extended travels in both the European and 
 
+P15 
American continents, they who labor for the spread of His Father's 
Faith in the Western world are sufficiently acquainted.  How often and 
how passionately did He appeal to those in authority and to the public at 
large to examine dispassionately the precepts enunciated by His Father?  
With what precision and emphasis He unfolded the system of the Faith 
He was expounding, elucidated its fundamental verities, stressed its 
distinguishing features, and proclaimed the redemptive character of its 
principles?  How insistently did He foreshadow the impending chaos, 
the approaching upheavals, the universal conflagration which, in the 
concluding years of His life, had only begun to reveal the measure of 
its force and the significance of its impact on human society?  
     A co-sharer in the woeful trials and momentary frustrations afflicting 
the &Bab and &Baha'u'llah; reaping a harvest in His lifetime wholly 
incommensurate to the sublime, the incessant and strenuous efforts He 
had exerted; experiencing the initial perturbations of the world-shaking 
catastrophe in store for an unbelieving humanity; bent with age, and 
with eyes dimmed by the gathering storm which the reception accorded 
by a faithless generation to His Father's Cause was raising, and with a 
heart bleeding over the immediate destiny of God's wayward children--
He, at last, sank beneath a weight of troubles for which they 
who had imposed them upon Him, and upon those gone before 
Him, were soon to be summoned to a dire reckoning.  
     "Hasten, O my God!" He cried, at a time when adversity had sore 
beset Him, "the days of my ascension unto Thee, and of my coming 
before Thee, and of my entry into Thy presence, that I may be delivered 
from the darkness of the cruelty inflicted by them upon me, and may enter 
the luminous atmosphere of Thy nearness, O my Lord, the All-Glorious, 
and may rest under the shadow of Thy most great mercy."  "&Ya &Baha'u'l-Abha 
[O Thou the Glory of Glories]!" He wrote in a Tablet revealed 
during the last week of His life, "I have renounced the world 
and the people thereof, and am heartbroken and sorely afflicted because 
of the unfaithful.  In the cage of this world I flutter even as a 
frightened bird, and yearn every day to take my flight unto Thy Kingdom.  
&Ya &Baha'u'l-Abha!  Make me to drink of the cup of sacrifice, and 
set me free.  Relieve me from these woes and trials, from these afflictions 
and troubles."  
     Dear friends!  Alas, a thousand times alas, that a Revelation so 
incomparably great, so infinitely precious, so mightily potent, so manifestly 
 
+P16 
innocent, should have received, at the hands of a generation so 
blind and so perverse, so infamous a treatment!  "O My servants!"  
&Baha'u'llah Himself testifies, "The one true God is My witness!  This 
most great, this fathomless and surging ocean is near, astonishingly 
near, unto you.  Behold it is closer to you than your life vein!  Swift as the 
twinkling of an eye ye can, if ye but wish it, reach and partake of this 
imperishable favor, this God-given grace, this incorruptible gift, this 
most potent and unspeakably glorious bounty."  
 
          A World Receded from Him 
 
     After a revolution of well nigh one hundred years what is it that the 
eye encounters as one surveys the international scene and looks back 
upon the early beginnings of &Baha'i history?  A world convulsed by the 
agonies of contending systems, races and nations, entangled in the mesh 
of its accumulated falsities, receding farther and farther from Him Who 
is the sole Author of its destinies, and sinking deeper and deeper into a 
suicidal carnage which its neglect and persecution of Him Who is its 
Redeemer have precipitated.  A Faith, still proscribed, yet bursting 
through its chrysalis, emerging from the obscurity of a century-old 
repression, face to face with the awful evidences of God's wrathful 
anger, and destined to arise above the ruins of a smitten civilization.  A 
world spiritually destitute, morally bankrupt, politically disrupted, socially 
convulsed, economically paralyzed, writhing, bleeding and 
breaking up beneath the avenging rod of God.  A Faith Whose call 
remained unanswered, Whose claims were rejected, Whose warnings 
were brushed aside, Whose followers were mowed down, Whose aims 
and purposes were maligned, Whose summons to the rulers of the earth 
were ignored, Whose Herald drained the cup of martyrdom, over the 
head of Whose Author swept a sea of unheard-of tribulations, and 
Whose Exemplar sank beneath the weight of lifelong sorrows and dire 
misfortunes.  A world that has lost its bearings, in which the bright flame 
of religion is fast dying out, in which the forces of a blatant nationalism 
and racialism have usurped the rights and prerogatives of God Himself, 
in which a flagrant secularism--the direct offspring of irreligion--has 
raised its triumphant head and is protruding its ugly features, in which 
 
+P17 
the "majesty of kingship" has been disgraced, and they who wore its 
emblems have, for the most part, been hurled from their thrones, in 
which the once all-powerful ecclesiastical hierarchies of &Islam, and to a 
lesser extent those of Christianity, have been discredited, and in which 
the virus of prejudice and corruption is eating into the vitals of an 
already gravely disordered society.  A Faith Whose institutions--the 
pattern and crowning glory of the age which is to come--have been 
ignored and in some instances trampled upon and uprooted, Whose 
unfolding system has been derided and partly suppressed and crippled, 
Whose rising Order--the sole refuge of a civilization in the embrace of 
doom--has been spurned and challenged, Whose Mother-Temple has 
been seized and misappropriated, and Whose "House"--the "cynosure 
of an adoring world"--has, through a gross miscarriage of justice, as 
witnessed by the world's highest tribunal, been delivered into the hands 
of, and violated by, its implacable enemies.  
     We are indeed living in an age which, if we would correctly appraise 
it, should be regarded as one which is witnessing a dual phenomenon.  
The first signalizes the death pangs of an order, effete and godless, that 
has stubbornly refused, despite the signs and portents of a century-old 
Revelation, to attune its processes to the precepts and ideals which that 
Heaven-sent Faith proffered it.  The second proclaims the birth pangs of 
an Order, divine and redemptive, that will inevitably supplant the 
former, and within Whose administrative structure an embryonic 
civilization, incomparable and world-embracing, is imperceptibly 
maturing.  The one is being rolled up, and is crashing in oppression, 
bloodshed, and ruin.  The other opens up vistas of a justice, a unity, a 
peace, a culture, such as no age has ever seen.  The former has spent its 
force, demonstrated its falsity and barrenness, lost irretrievably its 
opportunity, and is hurrying to its doom.  The latter, virile and 
unconquerable, is plucking asunder its chains, and is vindicating its title to 
be the one refuge within which a sore-tried humanity, purged from its dross, 
can attain its destiny.  
     "Soon," &Baha'u'llah Himself has prophesied, "will the present-day 
order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead."  And again:  "By 
Myself!  The day is approaching when We will have rolled up the world 
and all that is therein, and spread out a new Order in its stead."  "The 
day is approaching when God will have raised up a people who will call to 
 
+P18 
remembrance Our days, who will tell the tale of Our trials, who will 
demand the restitution of Our rights, from them who, without a tittle of 
evidence, have treated Us with manifest injustice."  
     Dear friends!  For the trials which have afflicted the Faith of 
&Baha'u'llah a responsibility appalling and inescapable rests upon those into 
whose hands the reins of civil and ecclesiastical authority were delivered.  
The kings of the earth and the world's religious leaders alike 
must primarily bear the brunt of such an awful responsibility.  "Everyone 
well knoweth," &Baha'u'llah Himself testifies, "that all the kings have 
turned aside from Him, and all the religions have opposed Him."  "From 
time immemorial," He declares, "they who have been outwardly invested 
with authority have debarred men from setting their faces towards God.  
They have disliked that men should gather together around the Most 
Great Ocean, inasmuch as they have regarded, and still regard, such a 
gathering as the cause of, and the motive for, the disruption of their 
sovereignty."  "The kings," He moreover has written, "have recognized 
that it was not in their interest to acknowledge Me, as have likewise the 
ministers and the divines, notwithstanding that My purpose hath been 
most explicitly revealed in the Divine Books and Tablets, and the True 
One hath loudly proclaimed that this Most Great Revelation hath 
appeared for the betterment of the world and the exaltation of the 
nations."  "Gracious God!" writes the &Bab in the &Dala'il-i-Sab'ih (Seven 
Proofs) with reference to the "seven powerful sovereigns ruling the world" 
in His day, "None of them hath been informed of His [the &Bab's] 
Manifestation, and if informed, none hath believed in Him.  Who 
knoweth, they may leave this world below full of desire, and without 
having realized that the thing for which they were waiting had come to 
pass.  This is what happened to the monarchs that held fast unto the 
Gospel.  They awaited the coming of the Prophet of God [&Muhammad], 
and when He did appear, they failed to recognize Him.  Behold how great 
are the sums which these sovereigns expend without even the slightest 
thought of appointing an official charged with the task of acquainting 
them in their own realms with the Manifestation of God!  They would 
thereby have fulfilled the purpose for which they have been created.  
All their desires have been and are still fixed upon leaving behind them 
traces of their names."  The &Bab, moreover, in that same treatise, censuring 
the failure of the Christian divines to acknowledge the truth of 
&Muhammad's mission, makes this illuminating statement:  "The blame 
 
+P19 
falleth upon their doctors, for if these had believed, they would have been 
followed by the mass of their countrymen.  Behold then, that which hath 
come to pass!  The learned men of Christendom are held to be learned by 
virtue of their safeguarding the teaching of Christ, and yet consider how 
they themselves have been the cause of men's failure to accept the Faith 
and attain unto salvation!"  
 
          Recipients of the Message 
 
     It should not be forgotten that it was the kings of the earth and the 
world's religious leaders who, above all other categories of men, were 
made the direct recipients of the Message proclaimed by both the &Bab 
and &Baha'u'llah.  It was they who were deliberately addressed in numerous 
and historic Tablets, who were summoned to respond to the Call of 
God, and to whom were directed, in clear and forcible language, the 
appeals, the admonitions and warnings of His persecuted Messengers.  It 
was they who, when the Faith was born, and later when its mission was 
proclaimed, were still, for the most part, wielding unquestioned and 
absolute civil and ecclesiastical authority over their subjects and followers.  
It was they who, whether glorying in the pomp and pageantry of a 
kingship as yet scarcely restricted by constitutional limitations, or 
entrenched within the strongholds of a seemingly inviolable ecclesiastical 
power, assumed ultimate responsibility for any wrongs inflicted by those 
whose immediate destinies they controlled.  It would be no exaggeration 
to say that in most of the countries of the European and Asiatic 
continents absolutism, on the one hand, and complete subservience to 
ecclesiastical hierarchies, on the other, were still the outstanding features 
of the political and religious life of the masses.  These, dominated 
and shackled, were robbed of the necessary freedom that would enable 
them to either appraise the claims and merits of the Message proffered to 
them, or to embrace unreservedly its truth.  
     Small wonder, then, that the Author of the &Baha'i Faith, and to a 
lesser degree its Herald, should have directed at the world's supreme 
rulers and religious leaders the full force of Their Messages, and made 
them the recipients of some of Their most sublime Tablets, and invited 
them, in a language at once clear and insistent, to heed Their call.  
Small wonder that They should have taken the pains to unroll before 
 
+P20 
their eyes the truths of Their respective Revelations, and should have 
expatiated on Their woes and sufferings.  Small wonder that They 
should have stressed the preciousness of the opportunities which it was 
in the power of these rulers and leaders to seize, and should have warned 
them in ominous tones of the grave responsibilities which the rejection 
of God's Message would entail, and should have predicted, when 
rebuffed and refused, the dire consequences which such a rejection 
involved.  Small wonder that He Who is the King of kings and Vicegerent 
of God Himself should, when abandoned, contemned and persecuted, 
have uttered this epigrammatic and momentous prophecy:  
"From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized:  kings and 
ecclesiastics."  
     As to the kings and emperors who not only symbolized in their 
persons the majesty of earthly dominion but who, for the most part, 
actually held unchallengeable sway over the multitudes of their subjects, 
their relation to the Faith of &Baha'u'llah constitutes one of the 
most illuminating episodes in the history of the Heroic and Formative 
Ages of that Faith.  The Divine summons which embraced within its 
scope so large a number of the crowned heads of both Europe and Asia; 
the theme and language of the Messages that brought them into direct 
contact with the Source of God's Revelation; the nature of their reaction 
to so stupendous an impact; and the consequences which ensued and 
can still be witnessed today are the salient features of a subject upon 
which I can but inadequately touch, and which will be fully and 
befittingly treated by future &Baha'i historians.  
     The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the 
European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of 
the highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both 
temporal and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian 
Empire, Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose 
sovereignty extended over the greatest political combination the world 
has witnessed; William I, the conqueror of Napoleon III, King of 
Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch of a unified Germany; 
Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire; the tyrannical 
&Abdu'l-'Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power vested in 
the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious &Nasiri'd-Din &Shah, the 
despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of &Shi'ih &Islam--in a 
 
+P21 
word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and of sovereignty 
in His day became, one by one, the object of &Baha'u'llah's special 
attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the weight of 
the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.  
     It should be borne in mind, however, that &Baha'u'llah has not restricted 
the delivery of His Message to a few individual sovereigns, however 
potent the scepters they severally wielded, and however vast the 
dominions which they ruled.  All the kings of the earth have been 
collectively addressed by His Pen, appealed to, and warned, at a time 
when the star of His Revelation was mounting its zenith, and whilst He 
lay a prisoner in the hands, and in the vicinity of the court, of His royal 
enemy.  In a memorable Tablet, designated as the &Suriy-i-Muluk (&Surih 
of Kings) in which the &Sultan himself and his ministers, and the kings of 
Christendom, and the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to 
the Sublime Porte, and the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople, 
and its wise men and its inhabitants, and the people of Persia, 
and the philosophers of the world have been specifically addressed and 
admonished, He thus directs His words to the entire company of the 
monarchs of East and West:  
 
          Tablets to the Kings 
 
     "O kings of the earth!  Give ear unto the Voice of God, calling from this 
sublime, this fruit-laden Tree, that hath sprung out of the Crimson Hill, 
upon the holy Plain, intoning the words:  `There is none other God but 
He, the Mighty, the All-Powerful, the All-Wise.'...  Fear God, O concourse 
of kings, and suffer not yourselves to be deprived of this most 
sublime grace.  Fling away, then, the things ye possess, and take fast hold 
on the Handle of God, the Exalted, the Great.  Set your hearts towards 
the Face of God, and abandon that which your desires have bidden you to 
follow, and be not of those who perish.  Relate unto them, O servant, the 
story of &Ali [the &Bab], when He came unto them with truth, bearing His 
glorious and weighty Book, and holding in His hands a testimony and 
proof from God, and holy and blessed tokens from Him.  Ye, however, O 
kings, have failed to heed the Remembrance of God in His days and to be 
guided by the lights which arose and shone forth above the horizon of a 
resplendent Heaven.  Ye examined not His Cause when so to do would 
 
+P22 
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 
 
+P23 
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 
 
+P24 
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 
 
+P25 
exalted His Cause and magnified His testimony in the eyes of all who are 
in the heavens and all who are on the earth.  Place, in all circumstances, 
Thy whole trust in Thy Lord, and fix Thy gaze upon Him, and turn away 
from all them that repudiate His truth.  Let God, Thy Lord, be Thy 
sufficing Succorer and Helper.  We have pledged Ourself to secure Thy 
triumph upon earth and to exalt Our Cause above all men, though no 
king be found who would turn his face towards Thee...."  
     In the &Kitab-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book), that priceless treasury 
enshrining for all time the brightest emanations of the mind of 
&Baha'u'llah, the Charter of His World Order, the chief repository of His 
laws, the Harbinger of His Covenant, the Pivotal Work containing some 
of His noblest exhortations, weightiest pronouncements, and portentous 
prophecies, and revealed during the full tide of His tribulations, at a 
time when the rulers of the earth had definitely forsaken Him--in such 
a Book we read the following:  
     "O kings of the earth!  He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come.  The 
Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting.  Worship 
none but God, and, with radiant hearts, lift up your faces unto your 
Lord, the Lord of all names.  This is a Revelation to which whatever ye 
possess can never be compared, could ye but know it.  We see you rejoicing 
in that which ye have amassed for others, and shutting out yourselves 
from the worlds which naught except My Guarded Tablet can reckon.  
The treasures ye have laid up have drawn you far away from your 
ultimate objective.  This ill beseemeth you, could ye but understand it.  
Wash your hearts from all earthly defilements, and hasten to enter the 
Kingdom of your Lord, the Creator of earth and heaven, Who caused the 
world to tremble, and all its peoples to wail, except them that have 
renounced all things and clung to that which the Hidden Tablet hath 
ordained...."  
 
          The Most Great Law Revealed 
 
     And further:  "O kings of the earth!  The Most Great Law hath been 
revealed in this Spot, this Scene of transcendent splendor.  Every hidden 
thing hath been brought to light, by virtue of the Will of the Supreme 
Ordainer, He Who hath ushered in the Last Hour, through Whom the 
Moon hath been cleft, and every irrevocable decree expounded.  
 
+P26 
     "Ye are but vassals, O kings of the earth!  He Who is the King of Kings 
hath appeared, arrayed in His most wondrous glory, and is summoning 
you unto Himself, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.  Take heed lest 
pride deter you from recognizing the Source of Revelation; lest the things 
of this world shut you out as by a veil from Him Who is the Creator of 
heaven.  Arise, and serve Him Who is the Desire of all nations, Who hath 
created you through a word from Him, and ordained you to be, for all 
time, the emblems of His sovereignty.  
     "By the righteousness of God!  It is not Our wish to lay hands on your 
kingdoms.  Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men.  Upon 
them the eyes of &Baha are fastened.  To this testifieth the Kingdom of 
Names, could ye but comprehend it.  Whoso followeth his Lord, will 
renounce the world and all that is therein; how much greater, then, must 
be the detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station!  Forsake your 
palaces, and haste ye to gain admittance into His Kingdom.  This, 
indeed, will profit you both in this world and in the next.  To this testifieth 
the Lord of the realm on high, did ye but know it.  
     "How great is the blessedness that awaiteth the king who will arise to 
aid My Cause in My Kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but 
Me!  Such a king is numbered with the companions of the Crimson Ark, 
the Ark which God hath prepared for the people of &Baha.  All must glorify 
his name, must reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities 
with the keys of My Name, the omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit 
the visible and invisible kingdoms.  Such a king is the very eye of mankind, 
the luminous ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead 
of blessings unto the whole world.  Offer up, O people of &Baha, your 
substance, nay your very lives, for his assistance."  
     And further, this evident arraignment in that same Book:  "We have 
asked nothing from you.  For the sake of God We, verily, exhort you, and 
will be patient as We have been patient in that which hath befallen Us at 
your hands, O concourse of kings!"  
     Moreover, in His Tablet to Queen Victoria &Baha'u'llah thus addresses 
all the kings of the earth, summoning them to cleave to the Lesser 
Peace, as distinct from that Most Great Peace which those who are fully 
conscious of the power of His Revelation and avowedly profess the tenets 
of His Faith can alone proclaim and must eventually establish:  
     "O kings of the earth!  We see you increasing every year your 
expenditures, and laying the burden thereof on your subjects.  This, verily, is 
 
+P27 
wholly and grossly unjust.  Fear the sighs and tears of this Wronged One, 
and lay not excessive burdens on your peoples.  Do not rob them to rear 
palaces for yourselves; nay rather choose for them that which ye choose for 
yourselves.  Thus We unfold to your eyes that which profiteth you, if ye 
but perceive.  Your people are your treasures.  Beware lest your rule violate 
the commandments of God, and ye deliver your wards to the hands of the 
robber.  By them ye rule, by their means ye subsist, by their aid ye 
conquer.  Yet, how disdainfully ye look upon them!  How strange, how 
very strange!  
     "Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, hold ye fast unto 
this, the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may in some degree better your own 
condition and that of your dependents.  
     "O rulers of the earth!  Be reconciled among yourselves, that ye may 
need no more armaments save in a measure to safeguard your territories 
and dominions.  Beware lest ye disregard the counsel of the All-Knowing, 
the Faithful.  
     "Be united, O kings of the earth, for thereby will the tempest of discord 
be stilled amongst you, and your peoples find rest, if ye be of them that 
comprehend.  Should anyone among you take up arms against another, 
rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice."  
     To the Christian kings &Baha'u'llah, moreover, particularly directs His 
words of censure, and, in a language that cannot be mistaken, He 
discloses the true character of His Revelation:  
     "O kings of Christendom!  Heard ye not the saying of Jesus, the Spirit of 
God, `I go away, and come again unto you'?  Wherefore, then, did ye fail, 
when He did come again unto you in the clouds of heaven, to draw nigh 
unto Him, that ye might behold His face, and be of them that attained 
His Presence?  In another passage He saith:  `When He, the Spirit of 
Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.'  And yet, behold how, 
when He did bring the truth, ye refused to turn your faces towards Him, 
and persisted in disporting yourselves with your pastimes and fancies.  Ye 
welcomed Him not, neither did ye seek His Presence, that ye might hear 
the verses of God from His own mouth, and partake of the manifold 
wisdom of the Almighty, the All-Glorious, the All-Wise.  Ye have, by 
reason of your failure, hindered the breath of God from being wafted over 
you, and have withheld from your souls the sweetness of its fragrance.  Ye 
continue roving with delight in the valley of your corrupt desires.  Ye and 
all ye possess shall pass away.  Ye shall, most certainly, return to God, 
 
+P28 
and shall be called to account for your doings in the presence of Him Who 
shall gather together the entire creation...."  
     The &Bab, moreover, in the &Qayyum-i-Asma', His celebrated commentary 
on the &Surih of Joseph, revealed in the first year of His Mission, 
and characterized by &Baha'u'llah as "the first, the greatest, and mightiest 
of all books" in the &Babi Dispensation, has issued this stirring call to 
the kings and princes of the earth:  
     "O concourse of kings and of the sons of kings!  Lay aside, one and all, 
your dominion which belongeth unto God....  Vain indeed is your 
dominion, for God hath set aside earthly possessions for such as have 
denied Him....  O concourse of kings!  Deliver with truth and in all haste 
the verses sent down by Us to the peoples of Turkey and of India, and 
beyond them, with power and with truth, to lands in both the East and 
the West....  By God!  If ye do well, to your own behoof will ye do well; 
and if ye deny God and His signs, We, in very truth, having God, can 
well dispense with all creatures and all earthly dominion."  
     And again:  "Fear ye God, O concourse of kings, lest ye remain afar 
from Him Who is His Remembrance [the &Bab], after the Truth hath come 
unto you with a Book and signs from God, as spoken through the 
wondrous tongue of Him Who is His Remembrance.  Seek ye grace from 
God, for God hath ordained for you, after ye have believed in Him, a 
Garden the vastness of which is as the vastness of the whole of Paradise."  
     So much for the epoch-making counsels and warnings collectively 
addressed by the &Bab and &Baha'u'llah to the sovereigns of the earth, and 
more particularly directed to the kings of Christendom.  I would be 
failing to do justice to my theme were I to ignore, or even to dismiss 
briefly, those audacious, fate-laden apostrophes to individual monarchs 
who, whether as kings or emperors, have either viewed with cold 
indifference the tribulations, or rejected with contempt the warnings, of 
the twin Founders of our Faith.  I can neither quote as fully as I should 
from the two thousand and more verses that have streamed from the pen 
of &Baha'u'llah and, to a lesser extent, from that of the &Bab, addressed to 
individual monarchs in Europe and Asia, nor is it my purpose to 
expatiate upon the circumstances that have provoked, or the consequences 
that have flowed from, those astounding utterances.  The historian 
of the future, viewing more widely and in fuller perspective the 
momentous happenings of the Apostolic and Formative Ages of the 
 
+P29 
Faith of &Baha'u'llah, will no doubt be able to evaluate accurately and to 
describe in a circumstantial manner the causes, the implications and 
the effects of these Divine Messages which, in their scope and effectiveness, 
have certainly no parallel in the religious annals of mankind.  
     To the French Emperor, Napoleon III, &Baha'u'llah addressed these 
words:  "O King of Paris!  Tell the priest to ring the bells no longer.  By 
God, the True One!  The Most Mighty Bell hath appeared in the form of 
Him Who is the Most Great Name, and the fingers of the will of thy Lord, 
the Most Exalted, the Most High, toll it out in the heaven of Immortality, 
in His Name, the All-Glorious.  Thus have the mighty verses of thy 
Lord been again sent down unto thee, that thou mayest arise to remember 
God, the Creator of earth and heaven, in these days when all the 
tribes of the earth have mourned, and the foundations of the cities have 
trembled, and the dust of irreligion hath enwrapped all men, except such 
as thy Lord, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, was pleased to spare....  
Give ear, O King, unto the Voice that calleth from the Fire which 
burneth in this Verdant Tree, upon this Sinai which hath been raised 
above the hallowed and snow-white Spot, beyond the Everlasting City:  
`Verily, there is none other God but Me, the Ever-Forgiving, the Most 
Merciful!'  We, in truth, have sent Him Whom We aided with the Holy 
Spirit [Jesus], that He may announce unto you this Light that hath shone 
forth from the horizon of the will of your Lord, the Most Exalted, the 
All-Glorious, and Whose signs have been revealed in the West, that ye may 
set your faces towards Him [&Baha'u'llah], on this Day which God hath 
exalted above all other days, and whereon the All-Merciful hath shed the 
splendor of His effulgent glory upon all who are in heaven and all who are 
on earth.  Arise thou to serve God and help His Cause.  He, verily, will 
assist thee with the hosts of the seen and unseen, and will set thee king 
over all that whereon the sun riseth.  Thy Lord, in truth, is the All-Powerful, 
the Almighty....  Attire thy temple with the ornament of My 
Name, and thy tongue with remembrance of Me, and thine heart with 
love for Me, the Almighty, the Most High.  We have desired for thee 
naught except that which is better for thee than what thou dost possess 
and all the treasures of the earth.  Thy Lord, verily, is knowing, informed 
of all....  
     "O King!  We heard the words thou didst utter in answer to the Czar of 
Russia, concerning the decision made regarding the war [Crimean War].  
 
+P30 
Thy Lord, verily, knoweth, is informed of all.  Thou didst say:  `I lay asleep 
upon my couch, when the cry of the oppressed, who were drowned in the 
Black Sea, wakened me.'  This is what we heard thee say, and, verily, thy 
Lord is witness unto what I say.  We testify that that which wakened thee 
was not their cry, but the promptings of thine own passions, for We tested 
thee, and found thee wanting.  Comprehend the meaning of My words, 
and be thou of the discerning....  Hadst thou been sincere in thy words, 
thou wouldst have not cast behind thy back the Book of God, when it was 
sent unto thee by Him Who is the Almighty, the All-Wise.  We have 
proved thee through it, and found thee other than that which thou didst 
profess.  Arise, and make amends for that which escaped thee.  Erelong the 
world and all that thou possessest will perish, and the kingdom will 
remain unto God, thy Lord and the Lord of thy fathers of old.  It 
behooveth thee not to conduct thine affairs according to the dictates of thy 
desires.  Fear the sighs of this Wronged One, and shield Him from the 
darts of such as act unjustly.  For what thou hast done, thy kingdom shall 
be thrown into confusion, and thine empire shall pass from thine hands, 
as a punishment for that which thou hast wrought.  Then wilt thou know 
how thou hast plainly erred.  Commotions shall seize all the people in that 
land, unless thou arisest to help this Cause, and followest Him Who is 
the Spirit of God [Jesus] in this, the straight Path.  Hath thy pomp made 
thee proud?  By My Life!  It shall not endure; nay, it shall soon pass away, 
unless thou holdest fast by this firm Cord.  We see abasement hastening 
after thee, while thou art of the heedless....  Abandon thy palaces to the 
people of the graves, and thine empire to whosoever desireth it, and turn, 
then, unto the Kingdom.  This, verily, is what God hath chosen for thee, 
wert thou of them that turn unto Him....  Shouldst thou desire to bear 
the weight of thy dominion, bear it then to aid the Cause of thy Lord.  
Glorified be this station which whoever attaineth thereunto hath attained 
unto all good that proceedeth from Him Who is the All-Knowing, 
the All-Wise....  Exultest thou over the treasures thou dost possess, 
knowing they shall perish?  Rejoicest thou in that thou rulest a span of 
earth, when the whole world, in the estimation of the people of &Baha, is 
worth as much as the black in the eye of a dead ant?  Abandon it unto 
such as have set their affections upon it, and turn thou unto Him Who is 
the Desire of the world.  Whither are gone the proud and their palaces?  
Gaze thou into their tombs, that thou mayest profit by this example, 
inasmuch as We made it a lesson unto every beholder.  Were the breezes of 
 
+P31 
Revelation to seize thee, thou wouldst flee the world, and turn unto the 
Kingdom, and wouldst expend all thou possessest, that thou mayest draw 
nigh unto this sublime Vision."  
 
          Revealed to the Pope 
 
     To Pope Pius IX, &Baha'u'llah revealed the following:  "O Pope!  Rend 
the veils asunder.  He Who is the Lord of Lords is come overshadowed with 
clouds, and the decree hath been fulfilled by God, the Almighty, the 
Unrestrained....  He, verily, hath again come down from Heaven even 
as He came down from it the first time.  Beware that thou dispute not with 
Him even as the Pharisees disputed with Him [Jesus] without a clear 
token or proof.  On His right hand flow the living waters of grace, and on 
His left the choice Wine of justice, whilst before Him march the angels of 
Paradise, bearing the banners of His signs.  Beware lest any name debar 
thee from God, the Creator of earth and heaven.  Leave thou the world 
behind thee, and turn towards thy Lord, through Whom the whole earth 
hath been illumined....  Dwellest thou in palaces whilst He Who is the 
King of Revelation liveth in the most desolate of abodes?  Leave them unto 
such as desire them, and set thy face with joy and delight towards the 
Kingdom....  Arise in the name of thy Lord, the God of Mercy, amidst 
the peoples of the earth, and seize thou the Cup of Life with the hands of 
confidence, and first drink thou therefrom, and proffer it then to such as 
turn towards it amongst the peoples of all faiths....  
     "Call thou to remembrance Him Who was the Spirit [Jesus], Who, 
when He came, the most learned of His age pronounced judgment 
against Him in His own country, whilst he who was only a fisherman 
believed in Him.  Take heed, then, ye men of understanding heart!  Thou, 
in truth, art one of the suns of the heaven of His names.  Guard thyself, 
lest darkness spread its veils over thee, and fold thee away from His light.... 
Consider those who opposed the Son [Jesus], when He came unto them 
with sovereignty and power.  How many the Pharisees who were waiting 
to behold Him, and were lamenting over their separation from Him!  And 
yet, when the fragrance of His coming was wafted over them, and His 
beauty was unveiled, they turned aside from Him and disputed with 
Him....  None save a very few, who were destitute of any power amongst 
men, turned towards His face.  And yet today every man endowed with 
 
+P32 
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 
 
+P33 
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, 
 
+P34 
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 
 
+P35 
willeth, and withholdeth what He pleaseth from whomsoever He willeth.  
He, verily, is the All-Powerful, the Almighty."  
     To Queen Victoria &Baha'u'llah has written:  "O Queen in London!  
Incline thine ear unto the voice of thy Lord, the Lord of all mankind, 
calling from the Divine Lote-Tree:  Verily, no God is there but Me, the 
Almighty, the All-Wise!  Cast away all that is on earth, and attire the 
head of thy kingdom with the crown of the remembrance of thy Lord, the 
All-Glorious.  He, in truth, hath come unto the world in His most great 
glory, and all that hath been mentioned in the Gospel hath been fulfilled.  
The land of Syria hath been honored by the footsteps of its Lord, the Lord 
of all men, and north and south are both inebriated with the wine of His 
presence.  Blessed is the man that inhaled the fragrance of the Most 
Merciful, and turned unto the Dawning-Place of His Beauty, in this 
resplendent Dawn.  The Mosque of &Aqsa vibrateth through the breezes of 
its Lord, the All-Glorious, whilst &Batha [Mecca] trembleth at the voice of 
God, the Exalted, the Most High.  Whereupon every single stone of them 
celebrateth the praise of the Lord, through this Great Name.  
     "Lay aside thy desire, and set then thine heart towards thy Lord, the 
Ancient of Days.  We make mention of thee for the sake of God, and desire 
that thy name may be exalted through thy remembrance of God, the 
Creator of earth and heaven.  He, verily, is witness unto that which I say.  
We have been informed that thou hast forbidden the trading in slaves, 
both men and women.  This, verily, is what God hath enjoined in this 
wondrous Revelation.  God hath, truly, destined a reward for thee, 
because of this.  He, verily, will pay the doer of good his due recompense, 
wert thou to follow what hath been sent unto thee by Him Who is the 
All-Knowing, the All-Informed.  As to him who turneth aside, and 
swelleth with pride, after that the clear tokens have come unto him, from 
the Revealer of signs, his work shall God bring to naught.  He, in truth, 
hath power over all things.  Man's actions are acceptable after his having 
recognized [the Manifestation].  He that turneth aside from the True One 
is indeed the most veiled amongst His creatures.  Thus hath it been 
decreed by Him Who is the Almighty, the Most Powerful.  
     "We have also heard that thou hast entrusted the reins of counsel into 
the hands of the representatives of the people.  Thou, indeed, hast done 
well, for thereby the foundations of the edifice of thine affairs will be 
strengthened, and the hearts of all that are beneath thy shadow, whether 
 
+P36 
high or low, will be tranquilized.  It behooveth them, however, to be 
trustworthy among His servants, and to regard themselves as the representatives 
of all that dwell on earth.  This is what counseleth them, in 
this Tablet, He Who is the Ruler, the All-Wise....  Blessed is he that 
entereth the assembly for the sake of God, and judgeth between men with 
pure justice.  He, indeed, is of the blissful....  
     "Turn thou unto God and say:  O my Sovereign Lord!  I am but a vassal 
of Thine, and Thou art, in truth, the King of kings.  I have lifted my 
suppliant hands unto the heaven of Thy grace and Thy bounties.  Send 
down, then, upon me from the clouds of Thy generosity that which will 
rid me of all save Thee, and draw me nigh unto Thyself.  I beseech Thee, O 
my Lord, by Thy name, which Thou hast made the king of names and the 
manifestation of Thyself to all who are in heaven and on earth, to rend 
asunder the veils that have intervened between me and my recognition of 
the Dawning-Place of Thy signs and the Dayspring of Thy Revelation.  
Thou art, verily, the Almighty, the All-Powerful, the All-Bounteous.  
Deprive me not, O my Lord, of the fragrances of the Robe of Thy mercy in 
Thy days, and write down for me that which Thou hast written down for 
Thy handmaidens who have believed in Thee and in Thy signs, and have 
recognized Thee, and set their hearts towards the horizon of Thy Cause.  
Thou art truly the Lord of the worlds and of those who show mercy the 
Most Merciful.  Assist me, then, O my God, to remember Thee amongst 
Thy handmaidens, and to aid Thy Cause in Thy lands.  Accept, then, 
that which hath escaped me when the light of Thy countenance shone 
forth.  Thou, indeed, hast power over all things.  Glory be to Thee, O Thou 
in Whose hand is the kingdom of the heavens and of the earth."  
     In the &Kitab-i-Aqdas, His Most Holy Book, &Baha'u'llah thus addresses 
the German Emperor, William I:  "Say:  O King of Berlin!  Give ear 
unto the Voice calling from this manifest Temple:  Verily, there is none 
other God but Me, the Everlasting, the Peerless, the Ancient of Days.  
Take heed lest pride debar thee from recognizing the Dayspring of Divine 
Revelation, lest earthly desires shut thee out, as by a veil, from the Lord of 
the Throne above and of the earth below.  Thus counseleth thee the Pen of 
the Most High.  He, verily, is the Most Gracious, the All-Bountiful.  Do 
thou remember the one whose power transcended thy power [Napoleon 
III], and whose station excelled thy station.  Where is he?  Whither are 
gone the things he possessed?  Take warning, and be not of them that are 
fast asleep.  He it was who cast the Tablet of God behind him, when We 
 
+P37 
made known unto him what the hosts of tyranny had caused Us to suffer.  
Wherefore, disgrace assailed him from all sides, and he went down to dust 
in great loss.  Think deeply, O King, concerning him, and concerning 
them who, like unto thee, have conquered cities and ruled over men.  The 
All-Merciful brought them down from their palaces to their graves.  Be 
warned, be of them who reflect."  
     And further, in that same Book, this remarkable prophecy:  "O banks 
of the Rhine!  We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords 
of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn.  
And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous 
glory."  
     Again in the &Kitab-i-Aqdas these words, directed to Emperor Francis 
Joseph, are recorded:  "O Emperor of Austria!  He who is the Dayspring of 
God's Light dwelt in the prison of &Akka, at the time when thou didst set 
forth to visit the &Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem].  Thou passed Him by, and 
inquired not about Him, by Whom every house is exalted, and every lofty 
gate unlocked.  We, verily, made it [Jerusalem] a place whereunto the 
world should turn, that they might remember Me, and yet thou hast 
rejected Him Who is the Object of this remembrance, when He appeared 
with the Kingdom of God, thy Lord and the Lord of the worlds.  We have 
been with thee at all times, and found thee clinging unto the Branch and 
heedless of the Root.  Thy Lord, verily, is a witness unto what I say.  We 
grieved to see thee circle round Our Name, whilst unaware of Us, though 
We were before thy face.  Open thine eyes, that thou mayest behold this 
glorious Vision, and recognize Him Whom thou invokest in the daytime 
and in the night season, and gaze on the Light that shineth above this 
luminous Horizon."  
     In the &Suriy-i-Muluk &Sultan &Abdu'l-'Aziz is addressed in the following 
terms:  "Hearken, O king, to the speech of Him that speaketh the 
truth, Him that doth not ask thee to recompense Him with the things God 
hath chosen to bestow upon thee, Him Who unerringly treadeth the 
straight Path.  He it is Who summoneth thee unto God, thy Lord, Who 
showeth thee the right course, the way that leadeth to true felicity, that 
haply thou mayest be of them with whom it shall be well....  He that 
giveth up himself wholly to God, God shall, assuredly, be with him; and 
he that placeth his complete trust in God, God shall, verily, protect him 
from whatsoever may harm him, and shield him from the wickedness of 
every evil plotter.  
 
+P38 
     "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.  
 
+P39 
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 
 
+P40 
discerning person.  And to all these trials have We been subjected, in spite 
of Our action in approaching thee, and in bidding the people to enter 
beneath thy shadow, that thou mightest be a stronghold unto them that 
believe in and uphold the unity of God.  
     "Have I, O King, ever disobeyed thee?  Have I, at any time, transgressed 
any of thy laws?  Can any of thy ministers that represent thee in 
&Iraq produce any proof that can establish My disloyalty to thee?  No, by 
Him Who is the Lord of all worlds!  Not for one short moment did We rebel 
against thee, or against any of thy ministers.  Never, God willing, shall 
We revolt against thee, though We be exposed to trials more severe than 
any We suffered in the past.  In the daytime and in the night season, at 
even and at morn, We pray to God on thy behalf, that He may graciously 
aid thee to be obedient unto Him and to observe His commandments, 
that He may shield thee from the hosts of the evil ones.  Do, therefore, as it 
pleaseth thee, and treat Us as befitteth thy station and beseemeth thy 
sovereignty.  Be not forgetful of the law of God in whatever thou desirest to 
achieve, now or in the days to come.  Say:  Praise be to God, the Lord of all 
worlds!"  
     Moreover, in the &Kitab-i-Aqdas, is this vehement apostrophe to 
Constantinople:  "O Spot that art situate on the shores of the two seas!  The 
throne of tyranny hath, verily, been stablished upon thee, and the flame 
of hatred hath been kindled within thy bosom, in such wise that the 
Concourse on high and they who circle around the Exalted Throne have 
wailed and lamented.  We behold in thee the foolish ruling over the wise, 
and darkness vaunting itself against the light.  Thou art indeed filled with 
manifest pride.  Hath thine outward splendor made thee vainglorious?  By 
Him Who is the Lord of mankind!  It shall soon perish, and thy daughters 
and thy widows and all the kindreds that dwell within thee shall lament.  
Thus informeth thee the All-Knowing, the All-Wise."  
     As to &Nasiri'd-Din &Shah, the &Lawh-i-Sultan, despatched to him from 
&Akka and constituting &Baha'u'llah's lengthiest Epistle to any single 
sovereign, proclaims:  "O King!  I was but a man like others, asleep upon 
My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, 
and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been.  This thing is not from 
Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing.  And He bade Me 
lift up My voice between earth and heaven, and for this there befell Me 
what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow.  The 
learning current amongst men I studied not; their schools I entered not.  
 
+P41 
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 &Shah 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 
 
+P42 
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 &Shah 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 &Shah, 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 &Shah, in the path of God what eye hath not seen nor 
ear heard....  How numerous the tribulations which have rained, and 
will soon rain, upon Me!  I advance with My face set towards Him Who is 
the Almighty, the All-Bounteous, whilst behind Me glideth the serpent.  
Mine eyes have rained down tears until My bed is drenched.  I sorrow not 
for Myself, however.  By God!  Mine head yearneth for the spear out of love 
for its Lord.  I never passed a tree, but Mine heart addressed it saying:  `O 
would that thou wert cut down in My name, and My body crucified upon 
thee, in the path of My Lord!'...  By God!  Though weariness lay Me low, 
and hunger consume Me, and the bare rock be My bed, and My fellows 
the beasts of the field, I will not complain, but will endure patiently as 
those endued with constancy and firmness have endured patiently, 
through the power of God, the Eternal King and Creator of the nations, 
and will render thanks unto God under all conditions.  We pray that, out 
of His bounty--exalted be He--He may release, through this imprisonment, 
the necks of men from chains and fetters, and cause them to turn, 
with sincere faces, towards His Face, Who is the Mighty, the Bounteous.  
Ready is He to answer whosover calleth upon Him, and nigh is He unto 
such as commune with Him."  
     In the &Qayyum-i-Asma' the &Bab, for His part, thus addresses 
 
+P43 
&Muhammad &Shah:  "O King of &Islam!  Aid thou, with the truth, after 
having aided the Book, Him Who is Our Most Great Remembrance, for 
God hath, in very truth, destined for thee, and for such as circle round 
thee, on the Day of Judgment, a responsible position in His Path.  I swear 
by God, O &Shah!  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 &Shah, the Sacred 
Land [&Tihran] from such as have repudiated the Book, ere the day 
whereon the Remembrance of God cometh, terribly and of a sudden, with 
His potent Cause, by the leave of God, the Most High.  God, verily, hath 
prescribed to thee to submit unto Him Who is His Remembrance, and 
unto His Cause, and to subdue, with the truth and by His leave, the 
countries, for in this world thou hast been mercifully invested with 
sovereignty, and will, in the next, dwell, nigh unto the Seat of Holiness, 
with the inmates of the Paradise of His good pleasure.  Let not thy 
sovereignty deceive thee, O &Shah, for `every soul shall taste of death,' and 
this, in very truth, hath been written down as a decree of God."  
     In His Tablet to &Muhammad &Shah the &Bab, moreover, has revealed:  
"I am the Primal Point from which have been generated all created 
things.  I am the Countenance of God Whose splendor can never be 
obscured, the Light of God Whose radiance can never fade....  All the 
keys of heaven God hath chosen to place on My right hand, and all the 
keys of hell on My left....  I am one of the sustaining pillars of the Primal 
Word of God.  Whosoever hath recognized Me, hath known all that is true 
and right, and hath attained all that is good and seemly....  The 
substance wherewith God hath created Me is not the clay out of which 
others have been formed.  He hath conferred upon Me that which the 
worldly-wise can never comprehend, nor the faithful discover....  
     "By My life!  But for the obligation to acknowledge the Cause of Him 
Who is the Testimony of God ... I would not have announced this unto 
thee....  In that same year [year 60] I despatched a messenger and a book 
unto thee, that thou mightest act towards the Cause of Him Who is the 
Testimony of God as befitteth the station of thy sovereignty....  
     "I swear by the truth of God!  Were he who hath been willing to treat 
Me in such a manner to know who it is whom he hath so treated, he, 
verily, would never in his life be happy.  Nay--I, verily, acquaint thee 
with the truth of the matter--it is as if he hath imprisoned all the 
 
+P44 
Prophets, and all the men of truth, and all the chosen ones....  Woe 
betide him from whose hands floweth evil, and blessed the man from 
whose hands floweth good....  
     "I swear by God!  I seek no earthly goods from thee, be it as much as a 
mustard seed....  I swear by the truth of God!  Wert thou to know that 
which I know, thou wouldst forego the sovereignty of this world and of the 
next, that thou mightest attain My good pleasure, through thine obedience 
unto the True One....  Wert thou to refuse, the Lord of the world 
would raise up one who will exalt His Cause, and the Command of God 
will, verily, be carried into effect."  
 
          God's Vicar on Earth 
 
     Dear friends!  How vast a panorama these gemlike, these soul-searching 
divinely uttered pronouncements outspread before our eyes!  
What memories they evoke!  How sublime the principles they inculcate!  
What hopes they engender!  What apprehensions they excite!  And yet 
how fragmentary must these above-quoted words, suited as they are to 
the immediate purpose of my theme, appear when compared with the 
torrential majesty which only the reading of the full text can disclose!  He 
Who was God's Vicar on earth, addressing, at the most critical moment 
when His Revelation was attaining its zenith, those who concentrated in 
their persons the splendor, the sovereignty, and the strength of earthly 
dominion, could certainly not subtract one jot or tittle from the weight 
and force which the presentation of so historic a Message demanded.  
Neither the perils which were fast closing in upon Him, nor the 
formidable power with which the doctrine of absolute sovereignty invested, 
at that time, the emperors of the West and the potentates of the 
East, could restrain the Exile and Prisoner of Adrianople from communicating 
the full blast of His Message to His twin imperial persecutors 
as well as to the rest of their fellow-sovereigns.  
     The magnitude and diversity of the theme, the cogency of the 
argument, the sublimity and audacity of the language, arrest our attention 
and astound our minds.  Emperors, kings and princes, chancellors 
and ministers, the Pope himself, priests, monks and philosophers, the 
exponents of learning, parliamentarians and deputies, the rich ones of 
the earth, the followers of all religions, and the people of &Baha--all are 
 
+P45 
brought within the purview of the Author of these Messages, and 
receive, each according to their merits, the counsels and admonitions 
they deserve.  No less amazing is the diversity of the subjects touched 
upon in these Tablets.  The transcendent majesty and unity of an 
unknowable and unapproachable God is extolled, and the oneness of 
His Messengers proclaimed and emphasized.  The uniqueness, the 
universality and potentialities of the &Baha'i Faith are stressed, and the 
purpose and character of the &Babi Revelation unfolded.  The 
significance of &Baha'u'llah's sufferings and banishments is disclosed, 
and the tribulations rained down upon His Herald and upon His 
Namesake recognized and lamented.  His own yearning for the crown of 
martyrdom, which they both so mysteriously won, is voiced, and the 
ineffable glories and wonders in store for His own Dispensation 
foreshadowed.  Episodes, at once moving and marvelous, at various 
stages of His ministry, are recounted, and the transitoriness of worldly 
pomp, fame, riches, and sovereignty, repeatedly and categorically asserted.  
Appeals for the application of the highest principles in human 
and international relations are forcibly and insistently made, and the 
abandonment of discreditable practices and conventions, detrimental to 
the happiness, the growth, the prosperity and the unity of the human 
race, enjoined.  Kings are censured, ecclesiastical dignitaries arraigned, 
ministers and plenipotentiaries condemned, and the identification of 
His advent with the coming of the Father Himself unequivocally admitted 
and repeatedly announced.  The violent downfall of a few of these 
kings and emperors is prophesied, two of them are definitely challenged, 
most are warned, all are appealed to and exhorted.  
     In the &Lawh-i-Sultan (Tablet to the &Shah of Persia) &Baha'u'llah 
declares:  "Would that the world-adorning wish of His Majesty might 
decree that this Servant be brought face to face with the divines of the age, 
and produce proofs and testimonies in the presence of His Majesty the 
&Shah!  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 &Shah.  It is then for thee 
to command, and I stand ready before the throne of thy sovereignty. 
Decide, then, for Me or against Me."  
     And moreover, in the &Lawh-i-Ra'is, &Baha'u'llah, recalling His 
conversation with the Turkish officer charged with the task of enforcing His 
banishment to the fortress-town of &Akka, has written:  "There is a matter, 
 
+P46 
which, if thou findest it possible, I request thee to submit to His Majesty 
the &Sultan, that for ten minutes this Youth be enabled to meet him, so 
that he may demand whatsoever he deemeth as a sufficient testimony and 
regardeth as proof of the veracity of Him Who is the Truth.  Should God 
enable Him to produce it, let him, then, release these wronged ones, and 
leave them to themselves."  "He promised," &Baha'u'llah adds in that 
Tablet, "to transmit this message, and to give Us his reply.  We received, 
however, no news from him.  Although it becometh not Him Who is the 
Truth to present Himself before any person, inasmuch as all have been 
created to obey Him, yet in view of the condition of these little children 
and the large number of women so far removed from their friends and 
countries, We have acquiesced in this matter.  In spite of this nothing 
hath resulted.  &Umar himself is alive and accessible.  Inquire from him, 
that the truth may be made known unto you."  
     Referring to these Tablets addressed to the sovereigns of the earth, and 
which &Abdu'l-Baha has acclaimed as a "miracle," &Baha'u'llah has 
written:  "Each one of them hath been designated by a special name.  The 
first hath been named `The Rumbling,' the second, `The Blow,' the third, 
`The Inevitable,' the fourth, `The Plain,' the fifth, `The Catastrophe,' and 
the others, `The Stunning Trumpet Blast,' `The Near Event,' `The Great 
Terror,' `The Trumpet,' `The Bugle,' and their like, so that all the peoples 
of the earth may know, of a certainty, and may witness, with outward 
and inner eyes, that He Who is the Lord of Names hath prevailed, and 
will continue to prevail, under all conditions, over all men....  Never 
since the beginning of the world hath the Message been so openly 
proclaimed....  Glorified be this Power which hath shone forth and 
compassed the worlds!  This act of the Causer of Causes hath, when 
revealed, produced two results.  It hath at once sharpened the swords of 
the infidels, and unloosed the tongues of such as have turned towards 
Him in His remembrance and praise.  This is the effect of the fertilizing 
winds, mention of which hath been made aforetime in the &Lawh-i-Haykal. 
The whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy.  The day is 
approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits, when from it will 
have sprung forth the loftiest trees, the most enchanting blossoms, the 
most heavenly blessings.  Immeasurably exalted is the breeze that wafteth 
from the garment of thy Lord, the Glorified!  For lo, it hath breathed its 
fragrance and made all things new!  Well it is with them that comprehend.  
It is indubitably clear and evident that in these things He Who 
 
+P47 
is the Lord of Revelation hath sought nothing for Himself.  Though aware 
that they would lead to tribulations, and be the cause of troubles and 
afflictive trials, He, solely as a token of His loving-kindness and favor, 
and for the purpose of quickening the dead and of manifesting the Cause 
of the Lord of all Names and Attributes, and of redeeming all who are on 
earth, hath closed His eyes to His own well-being and borne that which 
no other person hath borne or will bear."  
     The most important of His Tablets addressed to individual sovereigns 
&Baha'u'llah ordered to be written in the form of a pentacle, symbolizing 
the temple of man, including therein, as a conclusion, the following 
words which reveal the importance He attached to those Messages, and 
indicate their direct association with the prophecy of the Old Testament:  
"Thus have We built the Temple with the hands of power and might, 
could ye but know it.  This is the Temple promised unto you in the Book.  
Draw ye nigh unto it.  This is that which profiteth you, could ye but 
comprehend it.  Be fair, O peoples of the earth!  Which is preferable, this, 
or a temple which is built of clay?  Set your faces towards it.  Thus have ye 
been commanded by God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.  Follow 
ye His bidding, and praise ye God, your Lord, for that which He hath 
bestowed upon you.  He, verily, is the Truth.  No God is there but He.  He 
revealeth what He pleaseth, through His words `Be and it is.'"  
     Referring to this same subject, He, in one of His Tablets, thus 
addresses the followers of Jesus Christ:  "O concourse of the followers of 
the Son!  Verily, the Temple hath been built with the hands of the will of 
your Lord, the Almighty, the All-Bounteous.  Bear, then, witness, O 
people, unto that which I say:  Which is preferable, that which is built of 
clay, or that which is built by the hands of your Lord, the Revealer of 
verses?  This is the Temple promised unto you in the Tablets.  It calleth 
aloud:  `O followers of religions!  Haste ye to attain unto Him Who is the 
Source of all causes, and follow not every infidel and doubter.'"  
     It should not be forgotten that, apart from these specific Tablets in 
which the kings of the earth are severally and collectively addressed, 
&Baha'u'llah has revealed other Tablets--the &Lawh-i-Ra'is being an 
outstanding example--and interspersed the mass of His voluminous 
writings with unnumbered passages, in which direct addresses, as well as 
references, have been made to ministers, governments, and their 
accredited representatives.  I am not concerned, however, with such 
addresses and references, which, vital as they are, cannot be regarded as 
 
+P48 
being endowed with that peculiar pregnancy which direct and specific 
messages, voiced by the Manifestation of God and directed to the 
world's Chief Magistrates in His day, must possess.  
     Dear friends!  Enough has been said to portray the tribulations which, 
for so long a time, overwhelmed the Founders of so preeminent a 
Revelation, and which the world has so disastrously ignored.  Sufficient 
attention has also been directed to the Messages addressed to those 
sovereign rulers who, either in the exercise of their unconditioned 
authority, have deliberately provoked these sufferings, or could have, in 
the plenitude of their power, arisen to mitigate their effect or deflect 
their tragic course.  Let us now consider the consequences that have 
ensued.  The reaction of these monarchs was, as already stated, varied 
and unmistakable and, as the march of events has gradually unfolded, 
disastrous in its consequences.  One of the most outstanding amongst 
these sovereigns treated the Divine Summons with gross disrespect, 
dismissing it with a curt and insolent reply, written by one of his 
ministers.  Another laid violent hold on the bearer of the Message, 
tortured, branded, and brutally slew him.  Others preferred to maintain 
a contemptuous silence.  All failed completely in their duty to arise and 
extend their assistance.  Two of them, in particular, prompted by the 
dual impulse of fear and anger, tightened their grip on the Cause they 
had jointly resolved to uproot.  The one condemned his Divine Prisoner 
to yet another banishment, to "the most unsightly of cities in appearance, 
the most detestable in climate, and the foulest in water," whilst the 
other, powerless to lay hands on the Prime Mover of a hated Faith, 
subjected its adherents under his sway to abject and savage cruelties.  
The recital of &Baha'u'llah's sufferings, embodied in those Messages, 
failed to evoke compassion in their hearts.  His appeals, the like of which 
neither the annals of Christianity nor even those of &Islam have recorded, 
were disdainfully rejected.  The dark warnings He uttered were haughtily 
scorned.  The bold challenges He issued were ignored.  The chastisements 
He predicted they derisively brushed aside.  
     What, then--might we not consider--has, in the face of so complete 
and ignominious a rejection, happened, and is still happening, in the 
course, and particularly in the closing years, of this, the first &Baha'i 
century, a century fraught with such tumultuous sufferings and violent 
outrages for the persecuted Faith of &Baha'u'llah?  Empires fallen in dust, 
kingdoms subverted, dynasties extinguished, royalty besmirched, kings 
 
+P49 
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 
&Shiraz, the &Bab, in the presence of the First Letter to believe in Him, 
revealed the first chapter of His celebrated commentary on the &Surih of 
Joseph (The &Qayyum-i-Asma'), in which He trumpeted His Call to the 
sovereigns and princes of the earth.  It passed from incubation to visible 
manifestation when &Baha'u'llah's prophecies, enshrined for all time in 
the &Suriy-i-Haykal, and uttered before Napoleon III's dramatic downfall 
and the self-imposed imprisonment of Pope Pius IX in the Vatican, 
were fulfilled.  It gathered momentum when, in the days of 
&Abdu'l-Baha, the Great War extinguished the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, 
and Hapsburg dynasties, and converted powerful time-honored 
monarchies into republics.  It was further accelerated, soon after 
&Abdu'l-Baha's passing, by the demise of the effete &Qajar dynasty in 
Persia, and the stupendous collapse of both the Sultanate and the 
Caliphate.  It is still operating, under our very eyes, as we behold the fate 
which, in the course of this colossal and ravaging struggle, is successively 
overtaking the crowned heads of the European continent.  Surely, 
no man, contemplating dispassionately the manifestations of this relentless 
revolutionizing process, within comparatively so short a time, can 
escape the conclusion that the last hundred years may well be regarded, 
in so far as the fortunes of royalty are concerned, as one of the most 
cataclysmic periods in the annals of mankind.  
 
          Humiliation Immediate and Complete 
 
     Of all the monarchs of the earth, at the time when &Baha'u'llah, 
proclaiming His Message to them, revealed the &Suriy-i-Muluk in Adrianople, 
the most august and influential were the French Emperor and 
the Supreme Pontiff.  In the political and religious spheres they respectively 
held the foremost rank, and the humiliation both suffered was 
alike immediate and complete.  
     Napoleon III, son of Louis Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I), was, 
few historians will deny, the most outstanding monarch of his day in the 
 
+P50 
West.  "The Emperor," it was said of him, "was the state."  The French 
capital was the most attractive capital in Europe, the French court "the 
most brilliant and luxurious of the XIX century."  Possessed of a fixed 
and indestructible ambition, he aspired to emulate the example, and 
finish the interrupted work, of his imperial uncle.  A dreamer, a conspirator, 
of a shifting nature, hypocritical and reckless, he, the heir to 
the Napoleonic throne, taking advantage of the policy which sought to 
foster the reviving interest in the career of his great prototype, had sought 
to overthrow the monarchy.  Failing in his attempt, he was deported to 
America, was later captured in the course of an attempted invasion of 
France, was condemned to perpetual captivity, and escaped to London, 
until, in 1848, the Revolution brought about his return, and enabled 
him to overthrow the constitution, after which he was proclaimed 
emperor.  Though able to initiate far-reaching movements, he possessed 
neither the sagacity nor the courage required to control them.  
     To this man, the last emperor of the French, who, through foreign 
conquest, had striven to endear his dynasty to the people, who even 
cherished the ideal of making France the center of a revived Roman 
Empire--to such a man the Exile of &Akka, already thrice banished by 
&Sultan &Abdu'l-'Aziz, had transmitted, from behind the walls of the 
barracks in which He lay imprisoned, an Epistle which bore this 
indubitably clear arraignment and ominous prophecy:  "We testify that 
that which wakened thee was not their cry [Turk