nformed, none hath believed in
Him. Who knoweth, they may leave this world below full of desire, and
without having realized that the thing for which they were waiting had
come to pass. This is what happened to the monarchs that held fast unto
the Gospel. They awaited the coming of the Prophet of God [Muhammad], and
when He did appear, they failed to recognize Him. Behold how great are the
sums which these sovereigns expend without even the slightest thought of
appointing an official charged with the task of acquainting them in their
own realms with the Manifestation of God! They would thereby have
fulfilled the purpose for which they have been created. All their desires
have been and are still fixed upon leaving behind them traces of their
names." The Bab, moreover, in that same treatise, censuring the failure of
the Christian divines to acknowledge the truth of Muhammad's mission,
makes this illuminating statement: "The blame falleth upon their doctors,
for if these had believed, they would have been followed by the mass of
their countrymen. Behold then, that which hath come to pass! The learned
men of Christendom are held to be learned by virtue of their safeguarding
the teaching of Christ, and yet consider how they themselves have been the
cause of men's failure to accept the Faith and attain unto salvation!"

RECIPIENTS OF THE MESSAGE

It should not be forgotten that it was the kings of the earth and the
world's religious leaders who, above all other categories of men, were
made the direct recipients of the Message proclaimed by both the Bab and
Baha'u'llah. It was they who were deliberately addressed in numerous and
historic Tablets, who were summoned to respond to the Call of God, and to
whom were directed, in clear and forcible language, the appeals, the
admonitions and warnings of His persecuted Messengers. It was they who,
when the Faith was born, and later when its mission was proclaimed, were
still, for the most part, wielding unquestioned and absolute civil and
ecclesiastical authority over their subjects and followers. It was they
who, whether glorying in the pomp and pageantry of a kingship as yet
scarcely restricted by constitutional limitations, or entrenched within
the strongholds of a seemingly inviolable ecclesiastical power, assumed
ultimate responsibility for any wrongs inflicted by those whose immediate
destinies they controlled. It would be no exaggeration to say that in most
of the cou