ts the
time-honored sacerdotal orders of the Christian, the Buddhist and Hindu
religions. They foreshadow the turmoil which its emancipation from the
fetters of religious orthodoxy will cast in the American, the European,
the Asiatic and African continents. They foreshadow the gathering of the
children of Israel in their ancient homeland; the erection of the banner
of Baha'u'llah in the Egyptian citadel of Sunni Islam; the extinction of
the powerful influence wielded by the _Sh_i'ah ecclesiastics in Persia;
the load of misery which must needs oppress the pitiful remnants of the
breakers of Baha'u'llah's Covenant at the world center of His Faith; the
splendor of the institutions which that triumphant Faith must erect on the
slopes of a mountain, destined to be so linked with the city of Akka that
a single grand metropolis will be formed to enshrine the spiritual as well
as the administrative seats of the future Baha'i Commonwealth; the
conspicuous honor which the inhabitants of Baha'u'llah's native land in
general, and its government in particular, must enjoy in a distant future;
the unique and enviable position which the community of the Most Great
Name in the North American continent must occupy, as a direct consequence
of the execution of the world mission which He entrusted to them: finally
they foreshadow, as the sum and summit of all, the "hoisting of the
standard of God among all nations" and the unification of the entire human
race, when "all men will adhere to one religion ... will be blended into
one race, and become a single people."

Nor can the revolutionary changes in the great world which that ministry
has witnessed be allowed to pass unnoticed--most of them flowing directly
from the warnings which were uttered by the Bab, in the first chapter of
His Qayyumu'l-Asma, on the very night of the Declaration of His Mission in
_Sh_iraz, and which were later reinforced by the pregnant passages
addressed by Baha'u'llah to the kings of the earth and the world's
religious leaders, in both the Suriy-i-Muluk and the Kitab-i-Aqdas. The
conversion of the Portuguese monarchy and the Chinese empire into
republics; the collapse of the Russian, the German and Austrian empires,
and the ignominious fate which befell their rulers; the assassination of
Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, the fall of Sultan 'Abdu'l-Hamid--these may be said to
have marked further stages in the operation of that catastrophic process
the inception of which was sign