in the West to better understand and more readily grasp the tremendous
implications of His exalted station and to more ardently admire and love
Him.

There can be no doubt that the claim to the twofold station ordained for
the Bab by the Almighty, a claim which He Himself has so boldly advanced,
which Baha'u'llah has repeatedly affirmed, and to which the Will and
Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha has finally given the sanction of its testimony,
constitutes the most distinctive feature of the Baha'i Dispensation. It is
a further evidence of its uniqueness, a tremendous accession to the
strength, to the mysterious power and authority with which this holy cycle
has been invested. Indeed the greatness of the Bab consists primarily, not
in His being the divinely-appointed Forerunner of so transcendent a
Revelation, but rather in His having been invested with the powers
inherent in the inaugurator of a separate religious Dispensation, and in
His wielding, to a degree unrivaled by the Messengers gone before Him, the
scepter of independent Prophethood.

The short duration of His Dispensation, the restricted range within which
His laws and ordinances have been made to operate, supply no criterion
whatever wherewith to judge its Divine origin and to evaluate the potency
of its message. "That so brief a span," Baha'u'llah Himself explains,
"should have separated this most mighty and wondrous Revelation from Mine
own previous Manifestation, is a secret that no man can unravel and a
mystery such as no mind can fathom. Its duration had been foreordained,
and no man shall ever discover its reason unless and until he be informed
of the contents of My Hidden Book." "Behold," Baha'u'llah further explains
in the Kitab-i-Badi', one of His works refuting the arguments of the
people of the Bayan, "behold, how immediately upon the completion of the
ninth year of this wondrous, this most holy and merciful Dispensation, the
requisite number of pure, of wholly consecrated and sanctified souls had
been most secretly consummated."

The marvelous happenings that have heralded the advent of the Founder of
the Babi Dispensation, the dramatic circumstances of His own eventful
life, the miraculous tragedy of His martyrdom, the magic of His influence
exerted on the most eminent and powerful among His countrymen, to all of
which every chapter of Nabil's stirring narrative testifies, should in
themselves be regarded as sufficient evidence of the validity of His