'llah's sufferings, embodied in
those Messages, failed to evoke compassion in their hearts. His appeals,
the like of which neither the annals of Christianity nor even those of
Islam have recorded, were disdainfully rejected. The dark warnings He
uttered were haughtily scorned. The bold challenges He issued were
ignored. The chastisements He predicted they derisively brushed aside.

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

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