tling a manner, a number of princes, ministers and mujtahids, who had
actively participated in the suppression of a persecuted community,
including Kamran Mirza, the Na'ibu's-Saltanih, the Jalalu'd-Dawlih and
Mirza 'Ali-As_gh_ar _Kh_an, the Atabik-i-A'zam, and _Sh_ay_kh_
Muhammad-Taqiy-i-Najafi, the "Son of the Wolf," lost, one by one, their
prestige and authority, sank into obscurity, abandoned all hope of
achieving their malevolent purpose, and lived, some of them, long enough
to behold the initial evidences of the ascendancy of a Cause they had so
greatly feared and so vehemently hated.

When we note that in the Holy Land, in Persia, and in the United States of
America certain exponents of Christian ecclesiasticism such as Vatralsky,
Wilson, Richardson or Easton, observing, and in some cases fearing, the
vigorous advances made by the Faith of Baha'u'llah in Christian lands,
arose to stem its progress; and when we watch the recent and steady
deterioration of their influence, the decline of their power, the
confusion in their ranks and the dissolution of some of their old standing
missions and institutions, in Europe, in the Middle East and in Eastern
Asia--may we not attribute this weakening to the opposition which members
of various Christian sacerdotal orders began, in the course of
'Abdu'l-Baha's ministry, to evince towards the followers and institutions
of a Faith which claims to be no less than the fulfilment of the Promise
given by Jesus Christ, and the establisher of the Kingdom He Himself had
prayed for and foretold?

And finally, he who, from the moment the Divine Covenant was born until
the end of his life, showed a hatred more unrelenting than that which
animated the afore-mentioned adversaries of 'Abdu'l-Baha, who plotted more
energetically than any one of them against Him, and afflicted his Father's
Faith with a shame more grievous than any which its external enemies had
inflicted upon it--such a man, together with the infamous crew of
Covenant-breakers whom he had misled and instigated, was condemned to
witness, in a growing measure, as had been the case with Mirza Yahya and
his henchmen, the frustration of his evil designs, the evaporation of all
his hopes, the exposition of his true motives and the complete extinction
of his erstwhile honor and glory. His brother, Mirza Diya'u'llah, died
prematurely; Mirza Aqa Jan, his dupe, followed that same brother, three
years later, to the grave; and Mirza Badi'u'