tated storm centers of the world.

Strange, indeed, as we look back over the last fifty years that have
witnessed the creation and unfoldment of so powerful an agency for the
execution of Baha'u'llah's purpose for mankind, that he who had first
raised his voice in public on behalf of so mighty a Faith should have
sprung from the ranks and been recognized as one of the leading
representatives of that narrow and hostile ecclesiastical order which, as
the Faith advances and storms still greater heights, will increasingly
launch against it its determined attacks. Stranger still that he whom
posterity will recognize to have been the founder of that Faith in the
Western Hemisphere, whom the Center of the Covenant, in recognition of so
signal a service, had acclaimed as "Baha's Peter" and "the Second
Columbus", should have, in his vanity and ambition, deserted the Fold he
had labored to gather, should have allied himself with the Arch-Breaker of
the Covenant of Baha'u'llah, and remained until the end of his life, a
sworn and bitter enemy of the One Who had entrusted him with such a holy
and historic errand, and conferred upon him such glowing tributes. More
extraordinary still that he who had been instrumental in carrying the
Tablets of the Divine Plan from the One Who had revealed them to those
into whose care they were to be committed, who had enjoyed, for so long
and so intimately, near access to his Master as amanuensis, companion and
interpreter, should have been blinded by his inordinate ambition, and
should have arisen, with all the resources at his disposal, to attack and
undermine the institutions of an Order which, springing from the authentic
Will of 'Abdu'l-Baha, had been designed by Him to be the chief instrument
for the vigorous prosecution of that Plan and the fulfillment of its
ultimate purpose.

Such reflections, far from engendering in our minds and hearts the
slightest trace of perplexity, of discouragement or doubt, should
reinforce the basis of our convictions, demonstrate to us the
incorruptibility, the strange workings and the invincibility of a Faith
which, despite the assaults which malignant and redoubtable enemies from
the ranks of kings, princes and ecclesiastics have repeatedly launched
against it, and the violent internal tests that have shaken it for more
than a century, and the relative obscurity of its champions, and the
unpropitiousness of the times and the perversity of the generations
conte