in
Adrianople, and who had subsequently been promoted to the rank of Vali,
and through His constant association with officials, notables and leading
ecclesiastics who, in increasing number had besought His presence, during
the final years of His Father's ministry, that He had succeeded in raising
the prestige of the Cause He had championed to a level it had never
previously attained.

He alone had been accorded the privilege of being called "the Master," an
honor from which His Father had strictly excluded all His other sons. Upon
Him that loving and unerring Father had chosen to confer the unique title
of "Sirru'llah" (the Mystery of God), a designation so appropriate to One
Who, though essentially human and holding a station radically and
fundamentally different from that occupied by Baha'u'llah and His
Forerunner, could still claim to be the perfect Exemplar of His Faith, to
be endowed with super-human knowledge, and to be regarded as the stainless
mirror reflecting His light. To Him, whilst in Adrianople, that same
Father had, in the Suriy-i-_Gh_usn (Tablet of the Branch), referred as
"this sacred and glorious Being, this Branch of Holiness," as "the Limb of
the Law of God," as His "most great favor" unto men, as His "most perfect
bounty" conferred upon them, as One through Whom "every mouldering bone is
quickened," declaring that "whoso turneth towards Him hath turned towards
God," and that "they who deprive themselves of the shadow of the Branch
are lost in the wilderness of error." To Him He, whilst still in that
city, had alluded (in a Tablet addressed to Haji Muhammad
Ibrahim-i-_Kh_alil) as the one amongst His sons "from Whose tongue God
will cause the signs of His power to stream forth," and as the one Whom
"God hath specially chosen for His Cause." On Him, at a later period, the
Author of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, in a celebrated passage, subsequently
elucidated in the "Book of My Covenant," had bestowed the function of
interpreting His Holy Writ, proclaiming Him, at the same time, to be the
One "Whom God hath purposed, Who hath branched from this Ancient Root." To
Him in a Tablet, revealed during that same period and addressed to Mirza
Muhammad Quliy-i-Sabzivari, He had referred as "the Gulf that hath
branched out of this Ocean that hath encompassed all created things," and
bidden His followers to turn their faces towards it. To Him, on the
occasion of His visit to Beirut, His Father had, furthermore, in a
communi