_Sh_ah, however, to wreak, at the instigation of the divines, his
vengeance on One Whom he could no longer personally chastise by arresting
His messenger, a lad of about seventeen, by freighting him with chains, by
torturing him on the rack, and finally slaying him.

To this despotic sovereign Baha'u'llah, Who denounced him as the "Prince
of Oppressors," and as one who would soon be made "an object-lesson for
the world," had written: "Look upon this Youth, O king, with the eyes of
justice; judge thou, then, with truth concerning what hath befallen Him.
Of a verity, God hath made thee His shadow amongst men, and the sign of
His power unto all that dwell on earth." And again: "O king! Wert thou to
incline thine ears unto the shrill of the Pen of Glory and the cooing of
the Dove of Eternity ... thou wouldst attain unto a station from which
thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught save the effulgence of
the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty as the most
contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever might desire
it, and setting thy face toward the horizon aglow with the light of His
countenance." And again: "We fain would hope, however, that His Majesty
the _Sh_ah will himself examine these matters, and bring hope to the
hearts. That which We have submitted to thee is indeed for thine highest
good."

This hope, however, was to remain unfulfilled. It was indeed shattered by
a reign which had been inaugurated by the execution of the Bab, and the
imprisonment of Baha'u'llah in the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, by a sovereign
who had repeatedly instigated Baha'u'llah's successive banishments, and by
a dynasty that had been sullied by the slaughter of no less than twenty
thousand of His followers. The _Sh_ah's dramatic assassination, the
ignoble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qajar, and the
extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine
retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked.

The Qajars, members of the alien Turkoman tribe, had, indeed, usurped the
Persian throne. Aqa Muhammad _Kh_an, the eunuch _Sh_ah and founder of the
dynasty, was such an atrocious, avaricious, bloodthirsty tyrant that the
memory of no Persian is so detested and universally execrated as his
memory. The record of his reign and that of his immediate successors is
one of vandalism, of internal warfare, of recalcitrant and rebellious
chieftains, of brigandage, and medieval oppression, whil