rement, had set in, bringing in
its wake the recreation of that community, the reformation of its morals,
the enhancement of its prestige, the enrichment of its doctrine, and
culminating in the Declaration of His Mission in the garden of Najibiyyih
to His immediate companions on the eve of His banishment to
Constantinople. Another crisis--the severest a struggling Faith was
destined to experience in the course of its history--precipitated by the
rebellion of the Bab's nominee and the iniquities perpetrated by him and
by the evil genius that had seduced him, had, in Adrianople, well nigh
disrupted the newly consolidated forces of the Faith and all but destroyed
in a baptism of fire the community of the Most Great Name which
Baha'u'llah had called into being. Cleansed of the pollution of this "Most
Great Idol," undeterred by the convulsion that had seized it, an
indestructible Faith had, in the strength of the Covenant instituted by
the Bab, now surmounted the most formidable obstacles it was ever to meet;
and in this very hour it reached its meridian glory through the
proclamation of the Mission of Baha'u'llah to the kings, the rulers and
ecclesiastical leaders of the world in both the East and the West. Close
on the heels of this unprecedented victory had followed the climax of His
sufferings, a banishment to the penal colony of Akka, decreed by Sultan
'Abdu'l-'Aziz. This had been hailed by vigilant enemies as the signal for
the final extermination of a much feared and hated adversary, and it had
heaped upon that Faith in this fortress-town, designated by Baha'u'llah as
His "Most Great Prison," calamities from both within and without, such as
it had never before experienced. The formulation of the laws and
ordinances of a new-born Dispensation and the enunciation and
reaffirmation of its fundamental principles--the warp and woof of a future
Administrative Order--had, however, enabled a slowly maturing Revelation,
in spite of this tide of tribulations, to advance a stage further and
yield its fairest fruit.

The ascension of Baha'u'llah had plunged into grief and bewilderment His
loyal supporters, quickened the hopes of the betrayers of His Cause, who
had rebelled against His God-given authority, and rejoiced and encouraged
His political as well as ecclesiastical adversaries. The Instrument He had
forged, the Covenant He had Himself instituted, had canalized, after His
passing, the forces released by Him in the course of