of the fiend" that Renan, in
his "Les Apotres," characterized that day as "perhaps unparalleled in the
history of the world."

It was these divines, who, by these very acts, sowed the seeds of the
disintegration of their own institutions, institutions that were so
potent, so famous, and appeared so invulnerable when the Faith was born.
It was they who, by assuming so lightly and foolishly, such awful
responsibilities were primarily answerable for the release of those
violent and disruptive influences that have unchained disasters as
catastrophic as those which overwhelmed kings, dynasties, and empires, and
which constitute the most noteworthy landmarks in the history of the first
century of the Baha'i era.

This process of deterioration, however startling in its initial
manifestations, is still operating with undiminished force, and will, as
the opposition to the Faith of God, from various sources and in distant
fields, gathers momentum, be further accelerated and reveal still more
remarkable evidences of its devastating power. I cannot, in view of the
proportions which this communication has already assumed, expatiate, as
fully as I would wish, on the aspects of this weighty theme which,
together with the reaction of the sovereigns of the earth to the Message
of Baha'u'llah, is one of the most fascinating and edifying episodes in
the dramatic story of His Faith. I will only consider the repercussions of
the violent assaults made by the ecclesiastical leaders of Islam and, to a
lesser degree, by certain exponents of Christian orthodoxy upon their
respective institutions. I will preface these observations with some
passages gleaned from the great mass of Baha'u'llah's Tablets which, both
directly and indirectly, bear reference to Muslim and Christian divines,
and which throw such a powerful light on the dismal disasters that have
overtaken, and are still overtaking, the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the
two religions with which the Faith has been immediately concerned.

It must not be inferred, however, that Baha'u'llah directed His historic
addresses exclusively to the leaders of Islam and Christianity, or that
the impact of an all-pervading Faith on the strongholds of religious
orthodoxy is to be confined to the institutions of these two religious
systems. "The time foreordained unto the peoples and kindreds of the
earth," affirms Baha'u'llah, "is now come. The promises of God, as
recorded in the Holy Scriptures, ha