ost highly placed amongst the kith and
kin of its founders. No matter how disconcerting to the great mass of its
loyal adherents, however much trumpeted by its adversaries as symptoms of
its decline and impending dissolution, these admitted setbacks and
reverses, from which it has time and again so tragically suffered, have,
as we look back upon them, failed to arrest its march or impair its unity.
Heavy indeed has been the toll which they exacted, unspeakable the agonies
they engendered, widespread and paralyzing for a time the consternation
they provoked. Yet, viewed in their proper perspective, each of them can
be confidently pronounced a blessing in disguise, affording a providential
means for the release of a fresh outpouring of celestial strength, a
miraculous escape from imminent and still more dreadful calamities, an
instrument for the fulfillment of age-old prophecies, an agency for the
purification and revitalization of the life of the community, an impetus
for the enlargement of its limits and the propagation of its influence,
and a compelling evidence of the indestructibility of its cohesive
strength. Sometimes at the height of the crisis itself, more often when
the crisis was past, the significance of these trials has manifested
itself to men's eyes, and the necessity of such experiences has been
demonstrated, far and wide and beyond the shadow of a doubt, to both
friend and foe. Seldom, if indeed at any time, has the mystery underlying
these portentous, God-sent upheavals remained undisclosed, or the profound
purpose and meaning of their occurrence been left hidden from the minds of
men.

Such a severe ordeal the Faith of the Bab, still in the earliest stages of
its infancy, was now beginning to experience. Maligned and hounded from
the moment it was born, deprived in its earliest days of the sustaining
strength of the majority of its leading supporters, stunned by the tragic
and sudden removal of its Founder, reeling under the cruel blows it had
successively sustained in Mazindaran, Tihran, Nayriz and Zanjan, a sorely
persecuted Faith was about to be subjected through the shameful act of a
fanatical and irresponsible Babi, to a humiliation such as it had never
before known. To the trials it had undergone was now added the oppressive
load of a fresh calamity, unprecedented in its gravity, disgraceful in its
character, and devastating in its immediate consequences.

Obsessed by the bitter tragedy of the mar