n Ba_gh_dad
had, in turn, been followed by the resurgence of the Babi community,
culminating in the Declaration of His Mission in the Najibiyyih Garden.
Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz's decree summoning Him to Constantinople and the
crisis precipitated by Mirza Yahya had been succeeded by the proclamation
of that Mission to the crowned heads of the world and its ecclesiastical
leaders. Baha'u'llah's banishment to the penal colony of Akka, with all
its attendant troubles and miseries, had, in its turn, led to the
promulgation of the laws and ordinances of His Revelation and to the
institution of His Covenant, the last act of His life. The fiery tests
engendered by the rebellion of Mirza Muhammad-'Ali and his associates had
been succeeded by the introduction of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in the West
and the transfer of the Bab's remains to the Holy Land. The renewal of
'Abdu'l-Baha's incarceration and the perils and anxieties consequent upon
it had resulted in the downfall of 'Abdu'l-Hamid, in 'Abdu'l-Baha's
release from His confinement, in the entombment of the Bab's remains on
Mt. Carmel, and in the triumphal journeys undertaken by the Center of the
Covenant Himself in Europe and America. The outbreak of a devastating
world war and the deepening of the dangers to which Jamal Pa_sh_a and the
Covenant-breakers had exposed Him had led to the revelation of the Tablets
of the Divine Plan, to the flight of that overbearing Commander, to the
liberation of the Holy Land, to the enhancement of the prestige of the
Faith at its world center, and to a marked expansion of its activities in
East and West. 'Abdu'l-Baha's passing and the agitation which His removal
had provoked had been followed by the promulgation of His Will and
Testament, by the inauguration of the Formative Age of the Baha'i era and
by the laying of the foundations of a world-embracing Administrative
Order. And finally, the seizure of the keys of the Tomb of Baha'u'llah by
the Covenant-breakers, the forcible occupation of His House in Ba_gh_dad
by the _Sh_i'ah community, the outbreak of persecution in Russia and the
expulsion of the Baha'i community from Islam in Egypt had been succeeded
by the public assertion of the independent religious status of the Faith
by its followers in East and West, by the recognition of that status at
its world center, by the pronouncement of the Council of the League of
Nations testifying to the justice of its claims, by a remarkable expansion
of it