His own writings, and adduces proofs establishing the validity of His
Cause.

With this book, revealed about one year prior to His ascension, the
prodigious achievement as author of a hundred volumes, repositories of the
priceless pearls of His Revelation, may be said to have practically
terminated--volumes replete with unnumbered exhortations, revolutionizing
principles, world-shaping laws and ordinances, dire warnings and
portentous prophecies, with soul-uplifting prayers and meditations,
illuminating commentaries and interpretations, impassioned discourses and
homilies, all interspersed with either addresses or references to kings,
to emperors and to ministers, of both the East and the West, to
ecclesiastics of divers denominations, and to leaders in the intellectual,
political, literary, mystical, commercial and humanitarian spheres of
human activity.

"We, verily," wrote Baha'u'llah, surveying, in the evening of His life,
from His Most Great Prison, the entire range of this vast and weighty
Revelation, "have not fallen short of Our duty to exhort men, and to
deliver that whereunto I was bidden by God, the Almighty, the
All-Praised." "Is there any excuse," He further has stated, "left for any
one in this Revelation? No, by God, the Lord of the Mighty Throne! My
signs have encompassed the earth, and my power enveloped all mankind."

Chapter XIII: Ascension of Baha'u'llah

Well nigh half a century had passed since the inception of the Faith.
Cradled in adversity, deprived in its infancy of its Herald and Leader, it
had been raised from the dust, in which a hostile despot had thrown it, by
its second and greatest Luminary Who, despite successive banishments, had,
in less than half a century, succeeded in rehabilitating its fortunes, in
proclaiming its Message, in enacting its laws and ordinances, in
formulating its principles and in ordaining its institutions, and it had
just begun to enjoy the sunshine of a prosperity never previously
experienced, when suddenly it was robbed of its Author by the Hand of
Destiny, its followers were plunged into sorrow and consternation, its
repudiators found their declining hopes revive, and its adversaries,
political as well as ecclesiastical, began to take heart again.

Already nine months before His ascension Baha'u'llah, as attested by
'Abdu'l-Baha, had voiced His desire to depart from this world. From that
time onward it became increasingly evident, from the tone of