abors by emissaries whom they
dispatched to Persia, 'Iraq, India and Egypt; emboldened in their designs
by the attitude of officials whom they bribed or seduced, these
repudiators of a divinely-established Covenant arose, as one man, to
launch a campaign of abuse and vilification which compared in virulence
with the infamous accusations which Mirza Yahya and Siyyid Muhammad had
jointly levelled at Baha'u'llah. To friend and stranger, believer and
unbeliever alike, to officials both high and low, openly and by
insinuation, verbally as well as in writing, they represented 'Abdu'l-Baha
as an ambitious, a self-willed, an unprincipled and pitiless usurper, Who
had deliberately disregarded the testamentary instructions of His Father;
Who had, in language intentionally veiled and ambiguous, assumed a rank
co-equal with the Manifestation Himself; Who in His communications with
the West was beginning to claim to be the return of Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, who had come "in the glory of the Father"; Who, in His letters to
the Indian believers, was proclaiming Himself as the promised _Sh_ah
Bahram, and arrogating to Himself the right to interpret the writing of
His Father, to inaugurate a new Dispensation, and to share with Him the
Most Great Infallibility, the exclusive prerogative of the holders of the
prophetic office. They, furthermore, affirmed that He had, for His private
ends, fomented discord, fostered enmity and brandished the weapon of
excommunication; that He had perverted the purpose of a Testament which
they alleged to be primarily concerned with the private interests of
Baha'u'llah's family by acclaiming it as a Covenant of world importance,
pre-existent, peerless and unique in the history of all religions; that He
had deprived His brothers and sisters of their lawful allowance, and
expended it on officials for His personal advancement; that He had
declined all the repeated invitations made to Him to discuss the issues
that had arisen and to compose the differences which prevailed; that He
had actually corrupted the Holy Text, interpolated passages written by
Himself, and perverted the purpose and meaning of some of the weightiest
Tablets revealed by the pen of His Father; and finally, that the standard
of rebellion had, as a result of such conduct, been raised by the Oriental
believers, that the community of the faithful had been rent asunder, was
rapidly declining and was doomed to extinction.

And yet it was this