red in, and the first of
the "two Witnesses" into Whom, "after three days and a half the Spirit of
Life from God" would enter, had arisen and had "ascended up to heaven in a
cloud." The "remaining twenty and five letters to be made manifest,"
according to Islamic tradition, out of the "twenty and seven letters" of
which Knowledge has been declared to consist, had been revealed. The "Man
Child," mentioned in the Book of Revelation, destined to "rule all nations
with a rod of iron," had released, through His coming, the creative
energies which, reinforced by the effusions of a swiftly succeeding and
infinitely mightier Revelation, were to instill into the entire human race
the capacity to achieve its organic unification, attain maturity and
thereby reach the final stage in its age-long evolution. The clarion-call
addressed to the "concourse of kings and of the sons of kings," marking
the inception of a process which, accelerated by Baha'u'llah's subsequent
warnings to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West, was to
produce so widespread a revolution in the fortunes of royalty, had been
raised in the Qayyumu'l-Asma. The "Order," whose foundation the Promised
One was to establish in the Kitab-i-Aqdas, and the features of which the
Center of the Covenant was to delineate in His Testament, and whose
administrative framework the entire body of His followers are now
erecting, had been categorically announced in the Persian Bayan. The laws
which were designed, on the one hand, to abolish at a stroke the
privileges and ceremonials, the ordinances and institutions of a
superannuated Dispensation, and to bridge, on the other, the gap between
an obsolete system and the institutions of a world-encompassing Order
destined to supersede it, had been clearly formulated and proclaimed. The
Covenant which, despite the determined assaults launched against it,
succeeded, unlike all previous Dispensations, in preserving the integrity
of the Faith of its Author, and in paving the way for the advent of the
One Who was to be its Center and Object, had been firmly and irrevocably
established. The light which, throughout successive periods, was to
propagate itself gradually from its cradle as far as Vancouver in the West
and the China Sea in the East, and to diffuse its radiance as far as
Iceland in the North and the Tasman Sea in the South, had broken. The
forces of darkness, at first confined to the concerted hostility of the
civil and