times, and faced from the beginning
with the relentless enmity of government, church and people, this nascent
Faith of God has, by virtue of the celestial potency with which it has
been endowed, succeeded, in less than four score years and ten, in
emancipating itself from the galling chains of Islamic domination, in
proclaiming the self-sufficiency of its ideals and the independent
integrity of its laws, in planting its banner in no less than forty of the
most advanced countries of the world, in establishing its outposts in
lands beyond the farthest seas, in consecrating its religious edifices in
the midmost heart of the Asiatic and American continents, in inducing two
of the most powerful governments of the West to ratify the instruments
essential to its administrative activities, in obtaining from royalty
befitting tributes to the excellence of its teachings, and, finally, in
forcing its grievances upon the attention of the representatives of the
highest Tribunal in the civilized world, and in securing from its members
written affirmations that are tantamount to a tacit recognition of its
religious status and to an express declaration of the justice of its
cause.

Circumscribed though its power as a social force may as yet appear, and
however obvious may seem the present ineffectiveness of its
world-embracing program, we, who stand identified with its blessed name,
cannot but marvel at the measure of its achievements if we but compare
them with the modest accomplishments that have marked the rise of the
Dispensations of the past. Where else, if not in the Revelation of
Baha'u'llah, can the unbiased student of comparative religion cite
instances of a claim as stupendous as that which the Author of that Faith
advanced, foes as relentless as those which He faced, a devotion more
sublime than that which He kindled, a life as eventful and as enthralling
as that which He led? Has Christianity or Islam, has any Dispensation that
preceded them, offered instances of such combinations of courage and
restraint, of magnanimity and power, of broad-mindedness and loyalty, as
those which characterized the conduct of the heroes of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah? Where else do we find evidences of a transformation as swift,
as complete, and as sudden, as those effected in the lives of the apostles
of the Bab? Few, indeed, are the instances recorded in any of the
authenticated annals of the religions of the past of a self-abnegation as
comp