nd feet. Now,
however, the knowledge of His Revelation had galvanized my being. I felt
possessed of such courage and power that were the world, all its peoples
and its potentates, to rise against me, I would, alone and undaunted,
withstand their onslaught. The universe seemed but a handful of dust in my
grasp. I seemed to be the voice of Gabriel personified, calling unto all
mankind: 'Awake, for, lo! the morning Light has broken. Arise, for His
Cause is made manifest. The portal of His grace is open wide; enter
therein, O peoples of the world! For He Who is your promised One is
come!'"

A more significant light, however, is shed on this episode, marking the
Declaration of the Mission of the Bab, by the perusal of that "first,
greatest and mightiest" of all books in the Babi Dispensation, the
celebrated commentary on the Surih of Joseph, the first chapter of which,
we are assured, proceeded, in its entirety, in the course of that night of
nights from the pen of its divine Revealer. The description of this
episode by Mulla Husayn, as well as the opening pages of that Book attest
the magnitude and force of that weighty Declaration. A claim to be no less
than the mouthpiece of God Himself, promised by the Prophets of bygone
ages; the assertion that He was, at the same time, the Herald of One
immeasurably greater than Himself; the summons which He trumpeted forth to
the kings and princes of the earth; the dire warnings directed to the
Chief Magistrate of the realm, Muhammad _Sh_ah; the counsel imparted to
Haji Mirza Aqasi to fear God, and the peremptory command to abdicate his
authority as grand vizir of the _Sh_ah and submit to the One Who is the
"Inheritor of the earth and all that is therein"; the challenge issued to
the rulers of the world proclaiming the self-sufficiency of His Cause,
denouncing the vanity of their ephemeral power, and calling upon them to
"lay aside, one and all, their dominion," and deliver His Message to
"lands in both the East and the West"--these constitute the dominant
features of that initial contact that marked the birth, and fixed the
date, of the inception of the most glorious era in the spiritual life of
mankind.

With this historic Declaration the dawn of an Age that signalizes the
consummation of all ages had broken. The first impulse of a momentous
Revelation had been communicated to the one "but for whom," according to
the testimony of the Kitab-i-Iqan, "God would not have been establish