evealed to them the
wondrous signs of Thy sovereign and everlasting power. How bitter the
humiliations heaped upon me, in a subsequent age, on the plain of Karbila!
How lonely did I feel amidst Thy people; to what state of helplessness I
was reduced in that land! Unsatisfied with such indignities, my
persecutors decapitated me and carrying aloft my head from land to land
paraded it before the gaze of the unbelieving multitude and deposited it
on the seats of the perverse and faithless. In a later age I was suspended
and my breast was made a target to the darts of the malicious cruelty of
my foes. My limbs were riddled with bullets and my body was torn asunder.
Finally, behold how in this day my treacherous enemies have leagued
themselves against me, and are continually plotting to instill the venom
of hate and malice into the souls of Thy servants. With all their might
they are scheming to accomplish their purpose... Grievous as is my plight,
O God, my Well-beloved, I render thanks unto Thee, and my spirit is
grateful for whatsoever hath befallen me in the path of Thy good-pleasure.
I am well pleased with that which Thou didst ordain for me, and welcome,
however calamitous, the pains and sorrows I am made to suffer."

The Bab

Dearly-beloved friends! That the Bab, the inaugurator of the Babi
Dispensation, is fully entitled to rank as one of the self-sufficient
Manifestations of God, that He has been invested with sovereign power and
authority, and exercises all the rights and prerogatives of independent
Prophethood, is yet another fundamental verity which the Message of
Baha'u'llah insistently proclaims and which its followers must
uncompromisingly uphold. That He is not to be regarded merely as an
inspired Precursor of the Baha'i Revelation, that in His person, as He
Himself bears witness in the Persian Bayan, the object of all the Prophets
gone before Him has been fulfilled, is a truth which I feel it my duty to
demonstrate and emphasize. We would assuredly be failing in our duty to
the Faith we profess and would be violating one of its basic and sacred
principles if in our words or by our conduct we hesitate to recognize the
implications of this root principle of Baha'i belief, or refuse to uphold
unreservedly its integrity and demonstrate its truth. Indeed the chief
motive actuating me to undertake the task of editing and translating
Nabil's immortal Narrative has been to enable every follower of the Faith