nce of a
struggling Cause.

The storm which subsequently burst, with unexampled violence, on a
community already beaten to its knees, had, moreover, robbed it of its
greatest heroine, the incomparable Tahirih, still in the full tide of her
victories, had sealed the doom of Siyyid Husayn, the Bab's trusted
amanuensis and chosen repository of His last wishes, had laid low Mulla
'Abdu'l-Karim-i-Qazvini, admittedly one of the very few who could claim to
possess a profound knowledge of the origins of the Faith, and had plunged
into a dungeon Baha'u'llah, the sole survivor among the towering figures
of the new Dispensation. The Bab--the Fountainhead from whence the
vitalizing energies of a newborn Revelation had flowed--had Himself, ere
the outburst of that hurricane, succumbed, in harrowing circumstances, to
the volleys of a firing squad leaving behind, as titular head of a
well-nigh disrupted community, a mere figurehead, timid in the extreme,
good-natured yet susceptible to the slightest influence, devoid of any
outstanding qualities, who now (loosed from the controlling hand of
Baha'u'llah, the real Leader) was seeking, in the guise of a dervish, the
protection afforded by the hills of his native Mazindaran against the
threatened assaults of a deadly enemy. The voluminous writings of the
Founder of the Faith--in manuscript, dispersed, unclassified, poorly
transcribed and ill-preserved, were in part, owing to the fever and tumult
of the times, either deliberately destroyed, confiscated, or hurriedly
dispatched to places of safety beyond the confines of the land in which
they were revealed. Powerful adversaries, among whom towered the figure of
the inordinately ambitious and hypocritical Haji Mirza Karim _Kh_an, who
at the special request of the _Sh_ah had in a treatise viciously attacked
the new Faith and its doctrines, had now raised their heads, and,
emboldened by the reverses it had sustained, were heaping abuse and
calumnies upon it. Furthermore, under the stress of intolerable
circumstances, a few of the Babis were constrained to recant their faith,
while others went so far as to apostatize and join the ranks of the enemy.
And now to the sum of these dire misfortunes a monstrous calumny, arising
from the outrage perpetrated by a handful of irresponsible enthusiasts,
was added, branding a holy and innocent Faith with an infamy that seemed
indelible, and which threatened to loosen it from its foundations.

And yet the