merable editions, comprising tens of thousands of printed volumes, in
diverse scripts, and in no less than forty languages, some elaborately
reproduced, others profusely illustrated, all methodically and vigorously
disseminated through the agency of world-wide, properly constituted and
specially organized committees and Assemblies. We perceive a no less
apparent evolution in the scope of its teachings, at first designedly
rigid, complex and severe, subsequently recast, expanded, and liberalized
under the succeeding Dispensation, later expounded, reaffirmed and
amplified by an appointed Interpreter, and lastly systematized and
universally applied to both individuals and institutions. We can discover
a no less distinct gradation in the character of the opposition it has had
to encounter--an opposition, at first kindled in the bosom of _Sh_i'ah
Islam, which, at a later stage, gathered momentum with the banishment of
Baha'u'llah to the domains of the Turkish Sultan and the consequent
hostility of the more powerful Sunni hierarchy and its Caliph, the head of
the vast majority of the followers of Muhammad--an opposition which, now,
through the rise of a divinely appointed Order in the Christian West, and
its initial impact on civil and ecclesiastical institutions, bids fair to
include among its supporters established governments and systems
associated with the most ancient, the most deeply entrenched sacerdotal
hierarchies in Christendom. We can, at the same time, recognize, through
the haze of an ever-widening hostility, the progress, painful yet
persistent, of certain communities within its pale through the stages of
obscurity, of proscription, of emancipation, and of recognition--stages
that must needs culminate in the course of succeeding centuries, in the
establishment of the Faith, and the founding, in the plenitude of its
power and authority, of the world-embracing Baha'i Commonwealth. We can
likewise discern a no less appreciable advance in the rise of its
institutions, whether as administrative centers or places of
worship--institutions, clandestine and subterrene in their earliest
beginnings, emerging imperceptibly into the broad daylight of public
recognition, legally protected, enriched by pious endowments, ennobled at
first by the erection of the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of I_sh_qabad, the
first Baha'i House of Worship, and more recently immortalized, through the
rise in the heart of the North American continent of the