Not only in the character of the revelation of Baha'u'llah, however
stupendous be His claim, does the greatness of this Dispensation reside.
For among the distinguishing features of His Faith ranks, as a further
evidence of its uniqueness, the fundamental truth that in the person of
its Forerunner, the Bab, every follower of Baha'u'llah recognizes not
merely an inspired annunciator but a direct Manifestation of God. It is
their firm belief that, no matter how short the duration of His
Dispensation, and however brief the period of the operation of His laws,
the Bab had been endowed with a potency such as no founder of any of the
past religions was, in the providence of the Almighty, allowed to possess.
That He was not merely the precursor of the Revelation of Baha'u'llah,
that He was more than a divinely-inspired personage, that His was the
station of an independent, self-sufficient Manifestation of God, is
abundantly demonstrated by Himself, is affirmed in unmistakable terms by
Baha'u'llah, and is finally attested by the Will and Testament of
'Abdu'l-Baha.
Nowhere but in the Kitab-i-Iqan, Baha'u'llah's masterly exposition of the
one unifying truth underlying all the Revelations of the past, can we
obtain a clearer apprehension of the potency of those forces inherent in
that Preliminary Manifestation with which His own Faith stands
indissolubly associated. Expatiating upon the unfathomed import of the
signs and tokens that have accompanied the Revelation proclaimed by the
Bab, the promised Qa'im, He recalls these prophetic words: "Knowledge is
twenty and seven letters. All that the Prophets have revealed are two
letters thereof. No man thus far hath known more than these two letters.
But when the Qa'im shall arise, He will cause the remaining twenty and
five letters to be made manifest." "Behold," adds Baha'u'llah, "how great
and lofty is His station!" "Of His Revelation," He further adds, "the
Prophets of God, His saints and chosen ones, have either not been
informed, or in pursuance of God's inscrutable Decree, they have not
disclosed."
And yet, immeasurably exalted as is the station of the Bab, and marvellous
as have been the happenings that have signalized the advent of His Cause,
so wondrous a Revelation cannot but pale before the effulgence of that Orb
of unsurpassed splendor Whose rise He foretold and whose superiority He
readily acknowledged. We have but to turn to the writings of the Bab
Himself in order to estimate the significance of that Quintessence of
Light of which He, with all the majesty of His power, was but its humble
and chosen Precursor.
Again and again the Bab admits, in glowing and unequivocal language, the
preeminent character of a Faith destined to be made manifest after Him and
to supersede His Cause. "The germ," He asserts in the Persian Bayan, the
chief and best-preserved repository of His laws, "that holds within itself
the potentialities of the Revelation that is to come is endowed with a
potency superior to the combined forces of all those who follow me." "Of
all the tributes," the Bab repeatedly proclaims in His writings, "I have
paid to Him Who is to come after Me, the greatest is this, My written
confession, that no words of Mine can adequately describe Him, nor can any
reference to Him in my Book, the Bayan, do justice to His Cause."
Addressing Siyyid Yahyay-i-Darabi, surnamed Vahid, the most learned and
influential among his followers, He says: "By the righteousness of Him
Whose power causeth the seed to germinate and Who breatheth the spirit of
life into all things, were I to be assured that in the day of His
Manifestation thou wilt deny Him, I would unhesitatingly disown thee and
repudiate thy faith.... If, on the other hand, I be told that a Christian,
who beareth no allegiance to My Faith, will believe in Him, the same will
I regard as the apple of Mine eye."