every loyal and intelligent upholder of Baha'u'llah's
incomparable Covenant--a Covenant designed by Him as the sole refuge
against schism, disruption and anarchy--will readily recognize the
hall-mark of His Faith, and will acclaim it as the supreme gift conferred
by Him Who is the Lord of Revelation upon the present and future
generations who are destined, in this greatest of all Dispensations, to
flock, from every creed and religion, to the banner, and espouse the
Cause, of His Most Great Name.

Dear friends! Manifold, various, and at times extremely perilous, have
been the tragic crises which the blind hatred, the unfounded presumption,
the incredible folly, the abject perfidy, the vaulting ambition, of the
enemy have intermittently engendered within the pale of the Faith. From
some of its most powerful and renowned votaries, at the hands of its once
trusted and ablest propagators, champions, and administrators, from the
ranks of its most revered and highly-placed trustees whether as
companions, amanuenses or appointed lieutenants of the Herald of the
Faith, of its Author, and of the Center of His Covenant, from even those
who were numbered among the kindred of the Manifestation, not excluding
the brother, the sons and daughters of Baha'u'llah, and the nominee of the
Bab Himself, a Faith, of such tender age, and enshrining so priceless a
promise, has sustained blows as dire and treacherous as any recorded in
the world's religious history.

From the record of its tumultuous history, almost every page of which
portrays a fresh crisis, is laden with the description of a new calamity,
recounts the tale of a base betrayal, and is stained with the account of
unspeakable atrocities, there emerges, clear and incontrovertible, the
supreme truth that with every fresh outbreak of hostility to the Faith,
whether from within or from without, a corresponding measure of outpouring
grace, sustaining its defenders and confounding its adversaries, has been
providentially released, communicating a fresh impulse to the onward march
of the Faith, while this impetus, in its turn, would through its
manifestations, provoke fresh hostility in quarters heretofore unaware of
its challenging implications--this increased hostility being accompanied by
a still more arresting revelation of Divine Power and a more abundant
effusion of celestial grace, which, by enabling the upholders of that
Faith to register still more brilliant victories, would th