ht precedes the
dawn, for the first glimmerings that were to proclaim, to an unsuspecting
world, and amidst the gloom and stench of the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran, the
birth of the Mission of the Founder of our Faith. Less than four months
separate us from the centenary celebrations designed to befittingly
commemorate that glorious event in Baha'i history, an event even more
potent in its implications than the birth of the Babi Dispensation, and
yielding in sacredness to none other except the memorable occasion when
the Founder of the Faith Himself ascended the throne of His spiritual
sovereignty and formally assumed in the City of Ba_gh_dad, His Prophetic
Office. The radiance of God's infant light shining within the walls of
that pestilential Pit--a radiance, an infinitesimal glimmer of which, as
the Founder of the Faith, Himself, later testified, caused the dwellers of
Sinai to swoon away--seemed, as it were, to be intermingled, whilst
Baha'u'llah lay in chains and fetters in that subterranean dungeon, and,
for many months after, with the somberness of the tragedy which enveloped
the members of a persecuted community in almost every province of that
hapless land. The dawning-light of the Revelation promised and lauded by
the Bab marks the termination of the second and darker crisis in the
annals of the Babi Dispensation, and signalizes the commencement of a
ten-year long crisis, the first of the three successive ones that left
their lasting imprint on His Ministry.

Little wonder that, in the months immediately ahead, when our thoughts are
fixed upon those days which heralded the outbreak of this reign of
unprecedented terror, and the outburst of a light of such inconceivable
brightness and in the twelve-month period immediately following when we
commemorate the centenary of that reign of terror as well as throughout
the succeeding decade, constituting the hundredth anniversary of the
period following the birth of so glorious a Mission--little wonder that the
followers of the Author of such a Revelation should be called upon to pour
forth, as a ransom for so much suffering, and in thanksgiving for such
priceless benefits conferred upon mankind, their substance, exert
themselves to the utmost, scale the summits of self-sacrifice, accomplish
the most valorous feats, and, through a concerted, determined, consecrated
ten-year-long effort, achieve their greatest victories in honor of the
Founder of their Faith, in grateful memo