t language of the newspapers in reporting the details of
this official inquiry served in turn to accentuate the publicity already
achieved, and induced the officials of the Court to exercise scrupulous
impartiality in the consideration and judgment of the case. As to the
verdict that has been pronounced on December 13, it is stated clearly that
although the followers of Baha'u'llah, in their innocent conception of the
spiritual character of their Faith, found it unnecessary to apply for
leave for the conduct of their administrative activities and have thus
been made liable to the payment of a fine, yet they have, to the
satisfaction of the legal representatives of the State, not only
established the inculpability of the Cause of Baha'u'llah, but have also
worthily acquitted themselves in the task of vindicating its independence,
its Divine origin, and its suitability to the circumstances and
requirements of the present age. It will be admitted that this recognition
on the part of the authorities would have never been so speedily secured
had the representatives of the believers proceeded through the ordinary
and official channels to obtain such a recognition from their government.

Decline of Islam

Surely every unprejudiced observer, reviewing on one hand the turbulent
history of the Cause in Turkey and recalling on the other the series of
internal convulsions that have seized that country, cannot but marvel at
the contrast between the swift decline of an all-powerful theocracy and
the gradual consolidation of a persecuted Faith. He will appreciate the
significance of the circumstances that have caused on one hand the
dismemberment of what was the most powerful institution of Islam, and
contributed on the other to the emergence upon its ruins of the very Faith
it has vainly labored to suppress. Should he look further into the past
and consult the annals of Christendom during the first century of the
Christian era, he cannot fail to observe the striking parallel between the
cataclysmic visitation of Providence that has afflicted the most sacred
institutions of the Jews in the Holy Land and the utter collapse in this,
the first century of the Baha'i era, of the Sultanate and the Caliphate,
the highest institutions of orthodox Islam. He will recall the severities
which the hand of Titus inflicted upon the Jews, the harassing siege of
Jerusalem, the destruction of the Holy City, the profanation of the
Temple, the de