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Despite the blows leveled at its nascent strength, whether by the wielders of temporal and spiritual authority from without, or by black- hearted foes from within, the Faith of Baha'u'llah had, far from breaking or bending, gone from strength to strength, from victory to victory. Indeed its history, if read aright, may be said to resolve itself into a series of pulsations, of alternating crises and triumphs, leading it ever nearer to its divinely appointed destiny. The outburst of savage fanaticism that greeted the birth of the Revelation proclaimed by the Bab, His subsequent arrest and captivity, had been followed by the formulation of the laws of His Dispensation, by the institution of His Covenant, by the inauguration of that Dispensation in Badasht, and by the public assertion of His station in Tabriz. Widespread and still more violent uprisings in the provinces, His own execution, the blood bath which followed it and Baha'u'llah's imprisonment in the Siyah- Chal had been succeeded by the breaking of the dawn of the Baha'i Revelation in that dungeon. Baha'u'llah's banishment to Iraq, His withdrawal to Kurdistan and the confusion and distress that afflicted His fellow- disciples in Baghdad had, in turn, been followed by the resurgence of the Babi community, culminating in the Declaration of His Mission in the Najibiyyih Garden. Sultan Abdu'l- 'Aziz's decree summoning Him to Constantinople and the crisis precipitated by Mirza Yahya had been succeeded by the proclamation of that Mission to the crowned heads of the world and its ecclesiastical leaders. Baha'u'llah's banishment to the penal colony of Akka, with all its attendant troubles and miseries, had, in its turn, led to the promulgation of the laws and ordinances of His Revelation and to the institution of His Covenant, the last act of His life. The fiery tests engendered by the rebellion of Mirza Muhammad- 'Ali and his associates had been succeeded by the introduction of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in the West and the transfer of the Bab's remains to the Holy Land. The renewal of Abdu'l- Baha's incarceration and the perils and anxieties consequent upon it had resulted in the downfall of Abdu'l- Hamid, in Abdu'l- Baha's release from His confinement, in the entombment of the Bab's remains on Mt. Carmel, and in the triumphal journeys undertaken by the Center of the Covenant Himself in Europe and America. The outbreak of a devastating world war and the deepening of the dangers to which Jamal Pasha and the Covenant- breakers had exposed Him had led to the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, to the flight of that overbearing Commander, to the liberation of the Holy Land, to the enhancement of the prestige of the Faith at its world center, and to a marked expansion of its activities in East and West. Abdu'l- Baha's passing and the agitation which His removal had provoked had been followed by the promulgation of His Will and Testament, by the inauguration of the Formative Age of the Baha'i era and by the laying of the foundations of a world- embracing Administrative Order. And finally, the seizure of the keys of the Tomb of Baha'u'llah by the Covenant- breakers, the forcible occupation of His House in Baghdad by the Shi'ah community, the outbreak of persecution in Russia and the expulsion of the Baha'i community from Islam in Egypt had been succeeded by the public assertion of the independent religious status of the Faith by its followers in East and West, by the recognition of that status at its world center, by the pronouncement of the Council of the League of Nations testifying to the justice of its claims, by a remarkable expansion of its international teaching activities and its literature, by the testimonials of royalty to its Divine origin, and by the completion of the exterior ornamentation of its first House of Worship in the western world.
(409:1)
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