sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion
and to represent Him as a usurper, as the subverter of the laws instituted
by the Bab, and the wrecker of His Cause, were being incessantly
circulated. His Epistles, interpretations, invocations and commentaries
were being covertly and indirectly criticized, challenged and
misrepresented. An attempt to injure His person was even set afoot but
failed to materialize.

The cup of Baha'u'llah's sorrows was now running over. All His
exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating situation,
had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes was hourly and
visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His soul and the gravity
of the situation confronting Him, His writings, revealed during that
somber period, throw abundant light. In some of His prayers He poignantly
confesses that "tribulation upon tribulation" had gathered about Him, that
"adversaries with one consent" had fallen upon Him, that "wretchedness"
had grievously touched Him, and that "woes at their blackest" had befallen
Him. God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His "sighs and
lamentations," His "powerlessness, poverty and destitution," to the
"injuries" He sustained, and the "abasement" He suffered. "So grievous
hath been My weeping," He, in one of these prayers, avows, "that I have
been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy praises." "So
loud hath been the voice of My lamentation," He, in another passage,
avers, "that every mother mourning for her child would be amazed, and
would still her weeping and her grief." "The wrongs which I suffer," He,
in His Lawh-i-Maryam, laments, "have blotted out the wrongs suffered by My
First Name (the Bab) from the Tablet of creation." "O Maryam!" He
continues, "From the Land of Ta (Tihran), after countless afflictions, We
reached 'Iraq, at the bidding of the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the
fetters of Our foes, We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends.
God knoweth what befell Me thereafter!" And again: "I have borne what no
man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear." "Oceans
of sadness," He testifies in the Tablet of Qullu't-Ta'am, "have surged
over Me, a drop of which no soul could bear to drink. Such is My grief
that My soul hath well nigh departed from My body." "Give ear, O Kamal!"
He, in that same Tablet, depicting His plight, exclaims, "to the voice of
this lowly, this forsaken ant, that hath hid itself i