holy
mountain, overlooking the Most Great Prison, had been imparted. And
finally, the first banners of a spiritual conquest which, ere the
termination of that century, was to embrace no less than sixty countries
in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres had been triumphantly planted.

In the vastness and diversity of its Holy Writ; in the number of its
martyrs; in the valor of its champions; in the example set by its
followers; in the condign punishment suffered by its adversaries; in the
pervasiveness of its influence; in the incomparable heroism of its Herald;
in the dazzling greatness of its Author; in the mysterious operation of
its irresistible spirit; the Faith of Baha'u'llah, now standing at the
threshold of the sixth decade of its existence, had amply demonstrated its
capacity to forge ahead, indivisible and incorruptible, along the course
traced for it by its Founder, and to display, before the gaze of
successive generations, the signs and tokens of that celestial potency
with which He Himself had so richly endowed it.

To the fate that has overtaken those kings, ministers and ecclesiastics,
in the East as well as in the West, who have, at various stages of
Baha'u'llah's ministry, either deliberately persecuted His Cause, or have
neglected to heed the warnings He had uttered, or have failed in their
manifest duty to respond to His summons or to accord Him and His message
the treatment they deserved, particular attention, I feel, should at this
juncture be directed. Baha'u'llah Himself, referring to those who had
actively arisen to destroy or harm His Faith, had declared that "God hath
not blinked, nor will He ever blink His eyes at the tyranny of the
oppressor. More particularly in this Revelation hath He visited each and
every tyrant with His vengeance." Vast and awful is, indeed, the spectacle
which meets our eyes, as we survey the field over which the retributory
winds of God have, since the inception of the ministry of Baha'u'llah,
furiously swept, dethroning monarchs, extinguishing dynasties, uprooting
ecclesiastical hierarchies, precipitating wars and revolutions, driving
from office princes and ministers, dispossessing the usurper, casting down
the tyrant, and chastising the wicked and the rebellious.

Sultan 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, who with Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah was the author of the
calamities heaped upon Baha'u'llah, and was himself responsible for three
decrees of banishment against the Prophet; who had bee