ulgence of His "peerless, His most sacred and exalted Countenance." The
"thousand two hundred and ninety days," fixed by Daniel in the last
chapter of His Book, as the duration of the "abomination that maketh
desolate" had now elapsed. The "hundred lunar years," destined to
immediately precede that blissful consummation (1335 days), announced by
Daniel in that same chapter, had commenced. The nineteen years,
constituting the first "Vahid," preordained in the Persian Bayan by the
pen of the Bab, had been completed. The Lord of the Kingdom, Jesus Christ
returned in the glory of the Father, was about to ascend His throne, and
assume the sceptre of a world-embracing, indestructible sovereignty. The
community of the Most Great Name, the "companions of the Crimson Colored
Ark," lauded in glowing terms in the Qayyumu'l-Asma, had visibly emerged.
The Bab's own prophecy regarding the "Ridvan," the scene of the unveiling
of Baha'u'llah's transcendent glory, had been literally fulfilled.

Undaunted by the prospect of the appalling adversities which, as predicted
by Himself, were soon to overtake Him; on the eve of a second banishment
which would be fraught with many hazards and perils, and would bring Him
still farther from His native land, the cradle of His Faith, to a country
alien in race, in language and in culture; acutely conscious of the
extension of the circle of His adversaries, among whom were soon to be
numbered a monarch more despotic than Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, and ministers
no less unyielding in their hostility than either Haji Mirza Aqasi or the
Amir-Nizam; undeterred by the perpetual interruptions occasioned by the
influx of a host of visitors who thronged His tent, Baha'u'llah chose in
that critical and seemingly unpropitious hour to advance so challenging a
claim, to lay bare the mystery surrounding His person, and to assume, in
their plenitude, the power and the authority which were the exclusive
privileges of the One Whose advent the Bab had prophesied.

Already the shadow of that great oncoming event had fallen upon the colony
of exiles, who awaited expectantly its consummation. As the year "eighty"
steadily and inexorably approached, He Who had become the real leader of
that community increasingly experienced, and progressively communicated to
His future followers, the onrushing influences of its informing force. The
festive, the soul-entrancing odes which He revealed almost every day; the
Tablets, replete with