ctive trials Baha'u'llah has repeatedly testified: "By the
righteousness of the Almighty! Were I to recount to thee the tale of the
things that have befallen Me, the souls and minds of men would be
incapable of sustaining its weight. God Himself beareth Me witness."
"Twenty years have passed," He, addressing the kings of Christendom, has
written, "during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh
tribulation. No one of them that were before Us hath endured the things We
have endured. Would that ye could perceive it! They that rose up against
us have put us to death, have shed our blood, have plundered our property,
and violated our honor." "Recall to mind My sorrows," He, in another
connection, has revealed, "My cares and anxieties, My woes and trials, the
state of My captivity, the tears that I have shed, the bitterness of Mine
anguish, and now Mine imprisonment in this far-off land... Couldst thou be
told what hath befallen the Ancient Beauty, thou wouldst flee into the
wilderness, and weep with a great weeping... Every morning I arose from my
bed, I discovered the hosts of countless afflictions massed behind My
door; and every night when I lay down, lo, My heart was torn with agony at
what it had suffered from the fiendish cruelty of its foes."

The orders which these foes issued, the banishments they decreed, the
indignities they inflicted, the plans they devised, the investigations
they conducted, the threats they pronounced, the atrocities they were
prepared to commit, the intrigues and baseness to which they, their
ministers, their governors, and military chieftains had stooped,
constitute a record which can hardly find a parallel in the history of any
revealed religion. The mere recital of the most salient features of that
sinister theme would suffice to fill a volume. They knew full well that
the spiritual and administrative Center of the Cause they had striven to
eradicate had now shifted to their dominion, that its leaders were Turkish
citizens, and that whatever resources these could command were at their
mercy. That for a period of almost three score years and ten, while still
in the plenitude of its unquestioned authority, while reinforced by the
endless machinations of the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of a
neighboring nation, and assured of the support of those of Baha'u'llah's
kindred who had rebelled against, and seceded from, His Cause, this
despotism should have failed in the end to ex