sedulously striven to discredit their teachings. They were visited by the
wrath of the Almighty, many losing their thrones, some witnessing the
extinction of their dynasties, a few being assassinated or covered with
shame, others finding themselves powerless to avert the cataclysmic
dissolution of their kingdoms, still others being degraded to positions of
subservience in their own realms. The Caliphate, its arch-enemy, had
unsheathed the sword against its Author and thrice pronounced His
banishment. It was humbled to dust, and, in its ignominious collapse,
suffered the same fate as the Jewish hierarchy, the chief persecutor of
Jesus Christ, had suffered at the hands of its Roman masters, in the first
century of the Christian Era, almost two thousand years before. Members of
various sacerdotal orders, _Sh_i'ah, Sunni, Zoroastrian and Christian, had
fiercely assailed the Faith, branded as heretic its supporters, and
labored unremittingly to disrupt its fabric and subvert its foundations.
The most redoubtable and hostile amongst these orders were either
overthrown or virtually dismembered, others rapidly declined in prestige
and influence, all were made to sustain the impact of a secular power,
aggressive and determined to curtail their privileges and assert its own
authority. Apostates, rebels, betrayers, heretics, had exerted their
utmost endeavors, privily or openly, to sap the loyalty of the followers
of that Faith, to split their ranks or assault their institutions. These
enemies were, one by one, some gradually, others with dramatic swiftness,
confounded, dispersed, swept away and forgotten. Not a few among its
leading figures, its earliest disciples, its foremost champions, the
companions and fellow-exiles of its Founders, trusted amanuenses and
secretaries of its Author and of the Center of His Covenant, even some of
those who were numbered among the kindred of the Manifestation Himself,
not excluding the nominee of the Bab and the son of Baha'u'llah, named by
Him in the Book of His Covenant, had allowed themselves to pass out from
under its shadow, to bring shame upon it, through acts of indelible
infamy, and to provoke crises of such dimensions as have never been
experienced by any previous religion. All were precipitated, without
exception, from the enviable positions they occupied, many of them lived
to behold the frustration of their designs, others were plunged into
degradation and misery, utterly impotent to i