eated things." "Should a man appear," is yet another
conclusive statement, "ere the lapse of a full thousand years--each year
consisting of twelve months according to the Qur'an, and of nineteen
months of nineteen days each, according to the Bayan--and if such a man
reveal to your eyes all the signs of God, unhesitatingly reject him!"

'Abdu'l-Baha's own statements, in confirmation of this warning, are no
less emphatic and binding: "This is," He declares, "my firm, my unshakable
conviction, the essence of my unconcealed and explicit belief--a conviction
and belief which the denizens of the Abha Kingdom fully share: The Blessed
Beauty is the Sun of Truth, and His light the light of truth. The Bab is
likewise the Sun of Truth, and His light the light of truth... My station
is the station of servitude--a servitude which is complete, pure and real,
firmly established, enduring, obvious, explicitly revealed and subject to
no interpretation whatever... I am the Interpreter of the Word of God;
such is my interpretation."

Does not 'Abdu'l-Baha in His own Will--in a tone and language that might
well confound the most inveterate among the breakers of His Father's
Covenant--rob of their chief weapon those who so long and so persistently
had striven to impute to Him the charge of having tacitly claimed a
station equal, if not superior, to that of Baha'u'llah? "The foundation of
the belief of the people of Baha is this," thus proclaims one of the
weightiest passages of that last document left to voice in perpetuity the
directions and wishes of a departed Master, "His Holiness the Exalted One
(the Bab) is the Manifestation of the unity and oneness of God and the
Forerunner of the Ancient Beauty. His Holiness the Abha Beauty
(Baha'u'llah) (may my life be a sacrifice for His steadfast friends) is
the supreme Manifestation of God and the Day-Spring of His most divine
Essence. All others are servants unto Him and do His bidding."

From such clear and formally laid down statements, incompatible as they
are with any assertion of a claim to Prophethood, we should not by any
means infer that 'Abdu'l-Baha is merely one of the servants of the Blessed
Beauty, or at best one whose function is to be confined to that of an
authorized interpreter of His Father's teachings. Far be it from me to
entertain such a notion or to wish to instill such sentiments. To regard
Him in such a light is a manifest betrayal of the priceless heritage
bequeathed by