It should not be forgotten that it was the kings of the earth and the
world's religious leaders who, above all other categories of men, were
made the direct recipients of the Message proclaimed by both the Bab and
Baha'u'llah. It was they who were deliberately addressed in numerous and
historic Tablets, who were summoned to respond to the Call of God, and to
whom were directed, in clear and forcible language, the appeals, the
admonitions and warnings of His persecuted Messengers. It was they who,
when the Faith was born, and later when its mission was proclaimed, were
still, for the most part, wielding unquestioned and absolute civil and
ecclesiastical authority over their subjects and followers. It was they
who, whether glorying in the pomp and pageantry of a kingship as yet
scarcely restricted by constitutional limitations, or entrenched within
the strongholds of a seemingly inviolable ecclesiastical power, assumed
ultimate responsibility for any wrongs inflicted by those whose immediate
destinies they controlled. It would be no exaggeration to say that in most
of the countries of the European and Asiatic continents absolutism, on the
one hand, and complete subservience to ecclesiastical hierarchies, on the
other, were still the outstanding features of the political and religious
life of the masses. These, dominated and shackled, were robbed of the
necessary freedom that would enable them to either appraise the claims and
merits of the Message proffered to them, or to embrace unreservedly its
truth.
Small wonder, then, that the Author of the Baha'i Faith, and to a lesser
degree its Herald, should have directed at the world's supreme rulers and
religious leaders the full force of Their Messages, and made them the
recipients of some of Their most sublime Tablets, and invited them, in a
language at once clear and insistent, to heed Their call. Small wonder
that They should have taken the pains to unroll before their eyes the
truths of Their respective Revelations, and should have expatiated on
Their woes and sufferings. Small wonder that They should have stressed the
preciousness of the opportunities which it was in the power of these
rulers and leaders to seize, and should have warned them in ominous tones
of the grave responsibilities which the rejection of God's Message would
entail, and should have predicted, when rebuffed and refused, the dire
consequences which such a rejection involved. Small wonder that He Who is
the King of kings and Vicegerent of God Himself should, when abandoned,
contemned and persecuted, have uttered this epigrammatic and momentous
prophecy: "From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and
ecclesiastics."
As to the kings and emperors who not only symbolized in their persons the
majesty of earthly dominion but who, for the most part, actually held
unchallengeable sway over the multitudes of their subjects, their relation
to the Faith of Baha'u'llah constitutes one of the most illuminating
episodes in the history of the Heroic and Formative Ages of that Faith.
The Divine summons which embraced within its scope so large a number of
the crowned heads of both Europe and Asia; the theme and language of the
Messages that brought them into direct contact with the Source of God's
Revelation; the nature of their reaction to so stupendous an impact; and
the consequences which ensued and can still be witnessed today are the
salient features of a subject upon which I can but inadequately touch, and
which will be fully and befittingly treated by future Baha'i historians.
The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the
European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of the
highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both temporal
and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian Empire,
Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose sovereignty extended over
the greatest political combination the world has witnessed; William I, the
conqueror of Napoleon III, King of Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch
of a unified Germany; Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire;
the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power
vested in the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Nasiri'd-Din
_Sh_ah, the despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of
_Sh_i'ih Islam--in a word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and
of sovereignty in His day became, one by one, the object of Baha'u'llah's
special attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the
weight of the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.
It should be borne in mind, however, that Baha'u'llah has not restricted
the delivery of His Message to a few individual sovereigns, however potent
the scepters they severally wielded, and however vast the dominions which
they ruled. All the kings of the earth have been collectively addressed by
His Pen, appealed to, and warned, at a time when the star of His
Revelation was mounting its zenith, and whilst He lay a prisoner in the
hands, and in the vicinity of the court, of His royal enemy. In a
memorable Tablet, designated as the Suriy-i-Muluk (Surih of Kings) in
which the Sultan himself and his ministers, and the kings of Christendom,
and the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to the Sublime Porte,
and the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople, and its wise men
and its inhabitants, and the people of Persia, and the philosophers of the
world have been specifically addressed and admonished, He thus directs His
words to the entire company of the monarchs of East and West: