II, that the Center of the Covenant of God had to
endure, for no less than forty years, in the fortress-town of Akka, an
incarceration fraught with so many perils, affronts and privations.

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

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

"Soon," He, moreover has written, "will He seize you in His wrathful
anger, and sedition will be stirred up in your midst, and your dominions
will be disrupted. Then will ye bewail and lament, and will find none to
help or succor you.... Several times calamities have overtaken you, and
yet ye failed utterly to take heed. One of them was the conflagration
which devoured most of the City [Constantinople] with the flames of
justice, and concerning which many poems were written, stating that no
such fire had ever been witnessed. And yet, ye waxed more heedless....
Plague, likewise, broke o