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Dearly-beloved brethren in 'Abdu'l-Baha! With the ascension of Baha'u'llah the Day-Star of Divine guidance which, as foretold by Shaykh Ahmad and Siyyid Kazim, had risen in Shiraz, and, while pursuing its westward course, had mounted its zenith in Adrianople, had finally sunk below the horizon of 'Akka, never to rise again ere the complete revolution of one thousand years. The setting of so effulgent an Orb brought to a definite termination the period of Divine Revelation - the initial and most vitalizing stage in the Baha'i era. Inaugurated by the Bab, culminating in Baha'u'llah, anticipated and extolled by the entire company of the Prophets of this great prophetic cycle, this period has, except for the short interval between the Bab's martyrdom and Baha'u'llah's shaking experiences in the Siyah-Chal of Tihran, been characterized by almost fifty years of continuous and progressive Revelation - a period which by its duration and fecundity must be regarded as unparalleled in the entire field of the world's spiritual history. (143:1) The passing of 'Abdu'l-Baha, on the other hand, marks the closing of the Heroic and Apostolic Age of this same Dispensation - that primitive period of our Faith the splendors of which can never be rivaled, much less be eclipsed, by the magnificence that must needs distinguish the future victories of Baha'u'llah's Revelation. For neither the achievements of the champion-builders of the present-day institutions of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, nor the tumultuous triumphs which the heroes of its Golden Age will in the coming days succeed in winning, can measure with, or be included within the same category as, the wondrous works associated with the names of those who have generated its very life and laid its pristine foundations. That first and creative age of the Baha'i era must, by its very nature, stand above and apart from the formative period into which we have entered and the golden age destined to succeed it. (143:2) 'Abdu'l-Baha, Who incarnates an institution for which we can find no parallel whatsoever in any of the world's recognized religious systems, may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened the one in which we are now laboring. His Will and Testament should thus be regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him Who is the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity of the three ages that constitute the component parts of the Baha'i Dispensation. The period in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly germinating is thus intertwined both with the one which must witness its efflorescence and the subsequent age in which that seed will have finally yielded its golden fruit.
(143:3)
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