How unfair, how irrelevant, to venture any comparison between the slow and
gradual consolidation of the Faith proclaimed by Baha'u'llah and those
man-created movements which, having their origin in human desires and with
their hopes centered on mortal dominion, must inevitably decline and
perish! Springing from a finite mind, begotten of human fancy, and
oftentimes the product of ill-conceived designs, such movements succeed,
by reason of their novelty, their appeal to man's baser instincts and
their dependence upon the resources of a sordid world, in dazzling for a
time the eyes of men, only to plunge finally from the heights of their
meteoric career into the darkness of oblivion, dissolved by the very
forces that had assisted in their creation.
Not so with the Revelation of Baha'u'llah. Born in an environment of
appalling degradation, springing from a soil steeped in age-long
corruptions, hatreds and prejudice, inculcating principles irreconcilable
with the accepted standards of the times, and faced from the beginning
with the relentless enmity of government, church and people, this nascent
Faith of God has, by virtue of the celestial potency with which it has
been endowed, succeeded, in less than four score years and ten, in
emancipating itself from the galling chains of Islamic domination, in
proclaiming the self-sufficiency of its ideals and the independent
integrity of its laws, in planting its banner in no less than forty of the
most advanced countries of the world, in establishing its outposts in
lands beyond the farthest seas, in consecrating its religious edifices in
the midmost heart of the Asiatic and American continents, in inducing two
of the most powerful governments of the West to ratify the instruments
essential to its administrative activities, in obtaining from royalty
befitting tributes to the excellence of its teachings, and, finally, in
forcing its grievances upon the attention of the representatives of the
highest Tribunal in the civilized world, and in securing from its members
written affirmations that are tantamount to a tacit recognition of its
religious status and to an express declaration of the justice of its
cause.
Circumscribed though its power as a social force may as yet appear, and
however obvious may seem the present ineffectiveness of its
world-embracing program, we, who stand identified with its blessed name,
cannot but marvel at the measure of its achievements if we but compare
them with the modest accomplishments that have marked the rise of the
Dispensations of the past. Where else, if not in the Revelation of
Baha'u'llah, can the unbiased student of comparative religion cite
instances of a claim as stupendous as that which the Author of that Faith
advanced, foes as relentless as those which He faced, a devotion more
sublime than that which He kindled, a life as eventful and as enthralling
as that which He led? Has Christianity or Islam, has any Dispensation that
preceded them, offered instances of such combinations of courage and
restraint, of magnanimity and power, of broad-mindedness and loyalty, as
those which characterized the conduct of the heroes of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah? Where else do we find evidences of a transformation as swift,
as complete, and as sudden, as those effected in the lives of the apostles
of the Bab? Few, indeed, are the instances recorded in any of the
authenticated annals of the religions of the past of a self-abnegation as
complete, a constancy as firm, a magnanimity as sublime, a loyalty as
uncompromising, as those which bore witness to the character of that
immortal band which stands identified with this Divine Revelation--this
latest and most compelling manifestation of the love and the omnipotence
of the Almighty!