ch had
struck down so vast a number of its blameless and humble lovers and
servants was now raised to deal its Founders the heaviest and cruelest
blows.

The Bab--"the Point," as affirmed by Baha'u'llah, "round Whom the realities
of the Prophets and Messengers revolve"--was the One first swept into the
maelstrom which engulfed His supporters. Sudden arrest and confinement in
the very first year of His short and spectacular career; public affront
deliberately inflicted in the presence of the ecclesiastical dignitaries
of _Sh_iraz; strict and prolonged incarceration in the bleak fastnesses of
the mountains of A_dh_irbayjan; a contemptuous disregard and a cowardly
jealousy evinced respectively by the Chief Magistrate of the realm and the
foremost minister of his government; the carefully staged and farcical
interrogatory sustained in the presence of the heir to the Throne and the
distinguished divines of Tabriz; the shameful infliction of the bastinado
in the prayer house, and at the hands of the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam of that
city; and finally suspension in the barrack-square of Tabriz and the
discharge of a volley of above seven hundred bullets at His youthful
breast under the eyes of a callous multitude of about ten thousand people,
culminating in the ignominious exposure of His mangled remains on the edge
of the moat without the city gate--these were the progressive stages in the
tumultuous and tragic ministry of One Whose age inaugurated the
consummation of all ages, and Whose Revelation fulfilled the promise of
all Revelations.

"I swear by God!" the Bab Himself in His Tablet to Muhammad _Sh_ah has
written, "Shouldst thou know the things which in the space of these four
years have befallen Me at the hands of thy people and thine army, thou
wouldst hold thy breath from fear of God.... Alas, alas, for the things
which have touched Me!... I swear by the Most Great Lord! Wert thou to be
told in what place I dwell, the first person to have mercy on Me would be
thyself. In the heart of a mountain is a fortress [Maku] ... the inmates
of which are confined to two guards and four dogs. Picture, then, My
plight.... In this mountain I have remained alone, and have come to such a
pass that none of those gone before Me have suffered what I have suffered,
nor any transgressor endured what I have endured!"

"How veiled are ye, O My creatures," He, speaking with the voice of God,
has revealed in the Bayan, "...who, without any right,