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Already in more than one country the trustees and elected representatives of this indestructible world- embracing Order have been summoned by civil authorities or ecclesiastical courts, ignorant of its claims, or hostile to its principles or fearful of its rising strength, to defend its cause, or to renounce their allegiance to it, or to curtail the range of its operation. Already an aggressive hand, unmindful of God's avenging wrath, has been stretched out against its sanctuaries and edifices. Already its defenders and champions have, in some countries, been declared heretics, or stigmatized as subverters of law and order, or branded as visionaries, unpatriotic and careless of their civic duties and responsibilities, or peremptorily ordered to suspend their activities and dissolve their institutions. (355:1) In the Holy Land, the world seat of this System, where its heart pulsates, where the dust of its Founders reposes, where the processes disclosing its purposes, energizing its life and shaping its destiny all originate, there fell, at the very hour of its inception, the first blow which served to proclaim to high and low alike the solidity of the foundations on which it has been established. The Covenant- breakers, now dwindled to a mere handful, instigated by Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali, the Arch- rebel, whose dormant hopes had been awakened by Abdu'l- Baha's sudden ascension, and headed by the arrogant Mirza Badi'u'llah, seized forcibly the keys of the Tomb of Baha'u'llah, expelled its keeper, the brave- souled Abu'l- Qasim- i- Khurasani, and demanded that their chief be recognized by the authorities as the legal custodian of that Shrine. Unadmonished by their abject failure, as witnessed by the firm action of the Palestine authorities, who, after prolonged investigations, instructed the British officer in Akka to deliver the keys into the hands of that same keeper, they resorted to other methods in the hope of creating a cleavage in the ranks of the bereaved yet resolute disciples of Abdu'l- Baha and of ultimately undermining the foundations of the institutions His followers were laboring to erect. Through their mischievous misrepresentations of the ideals animating the builders of the Baha'i Administrative Order; through the maintenance, though not on its original scale, of a subversive correspondence with individuals whose loyalty they hoped they could sap; through deliberate distortions of the truth in their contact with officials and notables whom they could approach; through attempts, made through bribery and intimidation, to purchase a part of the Mansion of Baha'u'llah; through efforts directed at preventing the acquisition by the Baha'i community of certain properties situated in the vicinity of the Tomb of the Bab, and at frustrating the design to consolidate the foundation of some of these properties by transferring their title- deeds to incorporated Baha'i assemblies, they continued to labor intermittently for several years until the extinction of the life of the Arch- breaker of the Covenant himself virtually sealed their doom.
(355:2)
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