l rule with justice,
who will gather together the flock of God which the wolves have scattered.
Such a ruler will, with joy and gladness, turn his face towards and extend
his favors unto, the people of Baha. He indeed is accounted in the sight
of God as a jewel among men. Upon him rest forever the glory of God, and
the glory of all that dwell in the kingdom of His Revelation."

THE CRUMBLING OF RELIGIOUS ORTHODOXY

Dear friends! The decline in the fortunes of the crowned wielders of
temporal power has been paralleled by a no less startling deterioration in
the influence exercised by the world's spiritual leaders. The colossal
events that have heralded the dissolution of so many kingdoms and empires
have almost synchronized with the crumbling of the seemingly inviolable
strongholds of religious orthodoxy. That same process which, swiftly and
tragically, sealed the doom of kings and emperors, and extinguished their
dynasties, has operated in the case of the ecclesiastical leaders of both
Christianity and Islam, damaging their prestige, and, in some cases,
overthrowing their highest institutions. "Power hath been seized" indeed
from both "kings and ecclesiastics." The glory of the former has been
eclipsed, the power of the latter irretrievably lost.

Those leaders who exercised guidance and control over the ecclesiastical
hierarchies of their respective religions have, likewise, been appealed
to, warned, and reproved by Baha'u'llah, in terms no less uncertain than
those in which the sovereigns who presided over the destinies of their
subjects have been addressed. They, too, and more particularly the heads
of Muslim ecclesiastical orders, have, in conjunction with despots and
potentates, launched their assaults and thundered their anathemas against
the Founders of the Faith of God, its followers, its principles, and its
institutions. Were not the divines of Persia the first who hoisted the
standard of revolt, who inflamed the ignorant and subservient masses
against it, and who instigated the civil authorities, through their
outcry, their threats, their lies, their calumnies, and denunciations, to
decree the banishments, to enact the laws, to launch the punitive
campaigns, and to carry out the executions and massacres that fill the
pages of its history? So abominable and savage was the butchery committed
in a single day, instigated by these divines, and so typical of the
"callousness of the brute and the ingenuity