d in its accomplishment. Theirs
will be the privilege of evaluating the share which each of these
champion-builders of the World Order of Baha'u'llah has had in ushering in
that golden Millennium, the promise of which lies enshrined in His
teachings.

Does not the history of primitive Christianity and of the rise of Islam,
each in its own way, offer a striking parallel to this strange phenomenon
the beginnings of which we are now witnessing in this, the first century
of the Baha'i Era? Has not the Divine Impulse which gave birth to each of
these great religious systems been driven, through the operation of those
forces which the irresistible growth of the Faith itself had released, to
seek away from the land of its birth and in more propitious climes a ready
field and a more adequate medium for the incarnation of its spirit and the
propagation of its cause? Have not the Asiatic churches of Jerusalem, of
Antioch and of Alexandria, consisting chiefly of those Jewish converts,
whose character and temperament inclined them to sympathize with the
traditional ceremonies of the Mosaic Dispensation, been forced as they
steadily declined to recognize the growing ascendancy of their Greek and
Roman brethren? Have they not been compelled to acknowledge the superior
valor and the trained efficiency which have enabled these standard-bearers
of the Cause of Jesus Christ to erect the symbols of His world-wide
dominion on the ruins of a collapsing Empire? Has not the animating spirit
of Islam been constrained, under the pressure of similar circumstances, to
abandon the inhospitable wastes of its Arabian Home, the theatre of its
greatest sufferings and exploits, to yield in a distant land the fairest
fruit of its slowly maturing civilization?

"From the beginning of time until the present day," 'Abdu'l-Baha Himself
affirms, "the light of Divine Revelation hath risen in the East and shed
its radiance upon the West. The illumination thus shed hath, however,
acquired in the West an extraordinary brilliancy. Consider the Faith
proclaimed by Jesus. Though it first appeared in the East, yet not until
its light had been shed upon the West did the full measure of its
potentialities become manifest." "The day is approaching," He, in another
passage, assures us, "when ye shall witness how, through the splendor of
the Faith of Baha'u'llah, the West will have replaced the East, radiating
the light of Divine Guidance." "In the books of the Prophets,