ries
that are the very negation of purity, of morality and chastity--these
evidences of moral decadence, invading both the East and the West,
permeating every stratum of society, and instilling their poison in its
members of both sexes, young and old alike, blacken still further the
scroll upon which are inscribed the manifold transgressions of an
unrepentant humanity.

Small wonder that Baha'u'llah, the Divine Physician, should have declared:
"In this day the tastes of men have changed, and their power of perception
hath altered. The contrary winds of the world, and its colors, have
provoked a cold, and deprived men's nostrils of the sweet savors of
Revelation."

Brimful and bitter indeed is the cup of humanity that has failed to
respond to the summons of God as voiced by His Supreme Messenger, that has
dimmed the lamp of its faith in its Creator, that has transferred, in so
great a measure, the allegiance owed Him to the gods of its own invention,
and polluted itself with the evils and vices which such a transference
must necessarily engender.

Dear friends! It is in this light that we, the followers of Baha'u'llah,
should regard this visitation of God which, in the concluding years of the
first century of the Baha'i era, afflicts the generality, and has thrown
into such a bewildering confusion the affairs, of mankind. It is because
of this dual guilt, the things it has done and the things it has left
undone, its misdeeds as well as its dismal and signal failure to
accomplish its clear and unmistakable duty towards God, His Messenger, and
His Faith, that this grievous ordeal, whatever its immediate political and
economic causes, has laid its adamantine grip upon it.

God, however, as has been pointed out in the very beginning of these
pages, does not only punish the wrongdoings of His children. He chastises
because He is just, and He chastens because He loves. Having chastened
them, He cannot, in His great mercy, leave them to their fate. Indeed, by
the very act of chastening them He prepares them for the mission for which
He has created them. "My calamity is My providence," He, by the mouth of
Baha'u'llah, has assured them, "outwardly it is fire and vengeance, but
inwardly it is light and mercy."

The flames which His Divine justice have kindled cleanse an unregenerate
humanity, and fuse its discordant, its warring elements as no other agency
can cleanse or fuse them. It is not only a retributory and destructive