turning
point of the utmost significance in the history of the first Baha'i
century. The tide of the fortunes of the Faith, having reached its lowest
ebb, was now beginning to surge back, and was destined to roll on,
steadily and mightily, to a new high water-mark, associated this time with
the Declaration of His Mission, on the eve of His banishment to
Constantinople. With His return to Ba_gh_dad a firm anchorage was now
being established, an anchorage such as the Faith had never known in its
history. Never before, except during the first three years of its life,
could that Faith claim to have possessed a fixed and accessible center to
which its adherents could turn for guidance, and from which they could
derive continuous and unobstructed inspiration. No less than half of the
Bab's short-lived ministry was spent on the remotest border of His native
country, where He was concealed and virtually cut off from the vast
majority of His disciples. The period immediately after His martyrdom was
marked by a confusion that was even more deplorable than the isolation
caused by His enforced captivity. Nor when the Revelation which He had
foretold made its appearance was it succeeded by an immediate declaration
that could enable the members of a distracted community to rally round the
person of their expected Deliverer. The prolonged self-concealment of
Mirza Yahya, the center provisionally appointed pending the manifestation
of the Promised One; the nine months' absence of Baha'u'llah from His
native land, while on a visit to Karbila, followed swiftly by His
imprisonment in the Siyah-_Ch_al, by His banishment to 'Iraq, and
afterwards by His retirement to Kurdistan--all combined to prolong the
phase of instability and suspense through which the Babi community had to
pass.

Now at last, in spite of Baha'u'llah's reluctance to unravel the mystery
surrounding His own position, the Babis found themselves able to center
both their hopes and their movements round One Whom they believed
(whatever their views as to His station) capable of insuring the stability
and integrity of their Faith. The orientation which the Faith had thus
acquired and the fixity of the center towards which it now gravitated
continued, in one form or another, to be its outstanding features, of
which it was never again to be deprived.

The Faith of the Bab, as already observed, had, in consequence of the
successive and formidable blows it had received, reached th