e woman, shining in
solitary glory, who has, in however small a measure, felt impelled to
respond to the poignant call of Baha'u'llah? Who amongst the great ones of
the earth was inclined to extend this infant Faith of God the benefit of
his recognition or support? Which one of the multitudes of creeds, sects,
races, parties and classes and of the highly diversified schools of human
thought, considered it necessary to direct its gaze towards the rising
light of the Faith, to contemplate its unfolding system, to ponder its
hidden processes, to appraise its weighty message, to acknowledge its
regenerative power, to embrace its salutary truth, or to proclaim its
eternal verities? Who among the worldly wise and the so-called men of
insight and wisdom can justly claim, after the lapse of nearly a century,
to have disinterestedly approached its theme, to have considered
impartially its claims, to have taken sufficient pains to delve into its
literature, to have assiduously striven to separate facts from fiction, or
to have accorded its cause the treatment it merits? Where are the
preeminent exponents, whether of the arts or sciences, with the exception
of a few isolated cases, who have lifted a finger, or whispered a word of
commendation, in either the defense or the praise of a Faith that has
conferred upon the world so priceless a benefit, that has suffered so long
and so grievously, and which enshrines within its shell so enthralling a
promise for a world so woefully battered, so manifestly bankrupt?

To the mounting tide of trials which laid low the Bab, to the
long-drawn-out calamities which rained on Baha'u'llah, to the warnings
sounded by both the Herald and the Author of the Baha'i Revelation, must
be added the sufferings which, for no less than seventy years, were
endured by 'Abdu'l-Baha, as well as His pleas, and entreaties, uttered in
the evening of His life, in connection with the dangers that increasingly
threatened the whole of mankind. Born in the very year that witnessed the
inception of the Babi Revelation; baptized with the initial fires of
persecution that raged around that nascent Cause; an eyewitness, when a
boy of eight, of the violent upheavals that rocked the Faith which His
Father had espoused; sharing with Him, the ignominy, the perils, and
rigors consequent upon the successive banishments from His native-land to
countries far beyond its confines; arrested and forced to support, in a
dark cell, the in