The Promised Day Is Come Part 5

The Sul?an's reaction to these words, bearing upon his person, his empire, his throne, his capital, and his ministers, can be gathered from the recital of the sufferings he inflicted on Baha'u'llah, and already referred to in the beginning of these pages. The extinction of the "outward splendor" surrounding that proud seat of Imperial power is the theme I now proceed to expose.

THE DOOM OF IMPERIAL TURKEY

A cataclysmic process, one of the most remarkable in modern history, was set in motion ever since Baha'u'llah, while a prisoner in Constantinople, delivered to a Turkish official His Tablet, addressed to Sul?an 'Abdu'l-'Aziz and his ministers, to be transmitted to 'Ali Pa_sh_a, the Grand Vizir. It was this Tablet which, as attested by that officer and affirmed by Nabil in his chronicle, affected the Vizir so profoundly that he paled while reading it. This process received fresh impetus after the Law?-i-Ra'is was revealed on the morrow of its Author's final banishment from Adrianople to Akka. Relentless, devastating, and with ever-increasing momentum, it ominously unfolded, damaging the prestige of the Empire, dismembering its territory, dethroning its sul?ans, sweeping away their dynasty, degrading and deposing its Caliph, disestablis.h.i.+ng its religion, and extinguis.h.i.+ng its glory. The "sick man" of Europe, whose condition had been unerringly diagnosed by the Divine Physician, and whose doom was p.r.o.nounced inevitable, fell a prey, during the reign of five successive sul?ans, all degenerate, all deposed, to a series of convulsions which, in the end, proved fatal to his life. Imperial Turkey that had, under 'Abdu'l-Majid, been admitted into the European Concert, and had emerged victorious from the Crimean War, entered, under his successor, 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, upon a period of swift decline, culminating, soon after 'Abdu'l-Baha's pa.s.sing, in the doom which the judgment of G.o.d had p.r.o.nounced against it.

Risings in Crete and the Balkans marked the reign of this, the 32nd sul?an of his dynasty, a despot whose mind was vacuous, whose recklessness was extreme, whose extravagance knew no bounds. The Eastern Question entered upon an acute phase. His gross misrule gave rise to movements which were to exercise far-reaching effects upon his realm, while his continual and enormous borrowings, leading to a state of semibankruptcy, introduced the principle of foreign control over the finances of his empire. A conspiracy, leading to a palace revolution, finally deposed him. A fatva of the mufti denounced his incapacity and extravagance. Four days later he was a.s.sa.s.sinated, and was succeeded by his nephew, Murad V, whose mind had been reduced to a nullity by intemperance and by a long seclusion in the Cage. Declared to be imbecile, he, after a reign of three months, was deposed and was succeeded by the subtle, the resourceful, the suspicious, the tyrannical 'Abdu'l-?amid II who "proved to be the most mean, cunning, untrustworthy and cruel intriguer of the long dynasty of U_th_man." "No one knew," it was written of him, "from day to day who was the person on whose advice the sul?an overruled his ostensible ministers, whether a favorite lady of his harem, or a eunuch, or some fanatical dervish, or an astrologer, or a spy." The Bulgarian atrocities heralded the black reign of this "Great a.s.sa.s.sin," which thrilled Europe with horror, and were characterized by Gladstone as "the basest and blackest outrages upon record in that [XIX] century." The War of 187778 accelerated the process of the empire's dismemberment. No less than eleven million people were emanc.i.p.ated from Turkish yoke. The Russian troops occupied Adrianople.

Serbia, Montenegro and Rumania proclaimed their independence. Bulgaria became a self-governing state, tributary to the sul?an. Cyprus and Egypt were occupied. The French a.s.sumed a protectorate over Tunis. Eastern Rumelia was ceded to Bulgaria. The wholesale ma.s.sacres of Armenians, involving directly and indirectly a hundred thousand souls, were but a foretaste of the still more extensive bloodbaths to come in a later reign.

Bosnia and Herzegovina were lost to Austria. Bulgaria obtained her independence. Universal contempt and hatred of an infamous sovereign, shared alike by his Christian and Muslim subjects, finally culminated in a revolution, swift and sweeping. The Committee of Young Turks secured from the _Sh_ay_kh_u'l-Islam the condemnation of the sul?an. Deserted and friendless, execrated by his subjects, and despised by his fellow-rulers, he was forced to abdicate, and was made a prisoner of state, thus ending a reign "more disastrous in its immediate losses of territory and in the certainty of others to follow, and more conspicuous for the deterioration of the condition of his subjects, than that of any other of his twenty-three degenerate predecessors since the death of Soliman the Magnificent."

The end of so shameful a reign was but the beginning of a new era which, however auspiciously hailed at first, was destined to witness the collapse of the Ottoman ramshackle and worm-eaten state. Mu?ammad V, a brother of 'Abdu'l-?amid II, an absolute nonent.i.ty, failed to improve the status of his subjects. The follies of his government ultimately sealed the doom of the empire. The War of 191418 provided the occasion. Military reverses brought to a head the forces that were sapping its foundations. While the war was still being fought the defection of the Sherif of Mecca and the revolt of the Arabian provinces portended the convulsion which was to seize the Turkish throne. The precipitate flight and complete destruction of the army of Jamal Pa_sh_a, the commander-in-chief in Syria-he who had sworn to raze to the ground, after his triumphant return from Egypt, the Tomb of Baha'u'llah, and to publicly crucify the Center of His Covenant in a public square of Constantinople-was the signal for the nemesis that was to overtake an empire in distress. Nine-tenths of the large Turkish armies had melted away. A fourth of the whole population had perished from war, disease, famine and ma.s.sacre.

A new ruler, Mu?ammad VI, the last of the twenty-five successive degenerate sul?ans, had meanwhile succeeded his wretched brother. The edifice of the empire was now quaking and tottering to its fall. Mu??afa Kamal dealt it the final blows. Turkey, that had already shrunk to a small Asiatic state, became a republic. The sul?an was deposed, the Ottoman Sultanate was ended, a rulers.h.i.+p that had remained unbroken for six and a half centuries was extinguished. An empire which had stretched from the center of Hungary to the Persian Gulf and the Sudan, and from the Caspian Sea to Oran in Africa, had now dwindled to a small Asiatic republic.

Constantinople itself, which, after the fall of Byzantium, had been honored as the splendid metropolis of the Roman Empire, and had been made the capital of the Ottoman government, was abandoned by its conquerors, and stripped of its pomp and glory-a mute reminder of the base tyranny that had for so long stained its throne.

Such, in their bare outline, were the awful evidences of that retributive justice which so tragically afflicted 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, his successors, his throne and his dynasty. What of Na?iri'd-Din _Sh_ah, the other partner in that imperial conspiracy which sought to extirpate, root and branch, the budding Faith of G.o.d? His reaction to the Divine Message borne to him by the fearless Badi, the "Pride of Martyrs," who had spontaneously dedicated himself to this purpose, was characteristic of that implacable hatred which, throughout his reign, glowed so fiercely in his breast.

DIVINE RETRIBUTION ON THE QaJaR DYNASTY

The French Emperor had, it was reported, flung away Baha'u'llah's Tablet, and directed his minister, as Baha'u'llah Himself a.s.serts, to address to its Author an irreverent reply. The Grand Vizir of 'Abdu'l-'Aziz, it is reliably stated, blanched while reading the communication addressed to his Imperial master and his ministers, and made the following comment: "It is as if the king of kings were issuing his behest to his humblest va.s.sal king, and regulating his conduct!" Queen Victoria, it is said, upon reading the Tablet revealed for her remarked: "If this is of G.o.d, it will endure; if not, it can do no harm." It was reserved for Na?iri'd-Din _Sh_ah, however, to wreak, at the instigation of the divines, his vengeance on One Whom he could no longer personally chastise by arresting His messenger, a lad of about seventeen, by freighting him with chains, by torturing him on the rack, and finally slaying him.

To this despotic sovereign Baha'u'llah, Who denounced him as the "Prince of Oppressors," and as one who would soon be made "an object-lesson for the world," had written: "Look upon this Youth, O king, with the eyes of justice; judge thou, then, with truth concerning what hath befallen Him.

Of a verity, G.o.d hath made thee His shadow amongst men, and the sign of His power unto all that dwell on earth." And again: "O king! Wert thou to incline thine ears unto the shrill of the Pen of Glory and the cooing of the Dove of Eternity ... thou wouldst attain unto a station from which thou wouldst behold in the world of being naught save the effulgence of the Adored One, and wouldst regard thy sovereignty as the most contemptible of thy possessions, abandoning it to whosoever might desire it, and setting thy face toward the horizon aglow with the light of His countenance." And again: "We fain would hope, however, that His Majesty the _Sh_ah will himself examine these matters, and bring hope to the hearts. That which We have submitted to thee is indeed for thine highest good."

This hope, however, was to remain unfulfilled. It was indeed shattered by a reign which had been inaugurated by the execution of the Bab, and the imprisonment of Baha'u'llah in the Siyah-_Ch_al of ?ihran, by a sovereign who had repeatedly instigated Baha'u'llah's successive banishments, and by a dynasty that had been sullied by the slaughter of no less than twenty thousand of His followers. The _Sh_ah's dramatic a.s.sa.s.sination, the ign.o.ble rule of the last sovereigns of the House of Qajar, and the extinction of that dynasty, were signal instances of the Divine retribution which these horrid atrocities had provoked.

The Qajars, members of the alien Turkoman tribe, had, indeed, usurped the Persian throne. aqa Mu?ammad _Kh_an, the eunuch _Sh_ah and founder of the dynasty, was such an atrocious, avaricious, bloodthirsty tyrant that the memory of no Persian is so detested and universally execrated as his memory. The record of his reign and that of his immediate successors is one of vandalism, of internal warfare, of recalcitrant and rebellious chieftains, of brigandage, and medieval oppression, whilst the annals of the reigns of the later Qajars are marked by the stagnation of the nation, the illiteracy of the people, the corruption and incompetence of the government, the scandalous intrigues of the court, the decadence of the princes, the irresponsibility and extravagance of the sovereign, and his abject subservience to a notoriously degraded clerical order.

The successor of aqa Mu?ammad _Kh_an, the uxorious, philoprogenetive Fat?-'Ali _Sh_ah, the so-called "Darius of the Age," was a vain, an arrogant, and unscrupulous miser, notorious for the enormous number of his wives and concubines, numbering above a thousand, his incalculable progeny, and the disasters which his rule brought upon his country. He it was who commanded that his vizir, to whom he owed his throne, be cast into a caldron of boiling oil. As to his successor, the bigoted Mu?ammad _Sh_ah, one of his earliest acts, definitely condemned by the pen of Baha'u'llah, was the order to strangle his first minister, the ill.u.s.trious Qa'im-Maqam, immortalized by that same pen as the "Prince of the City of Statesmans.h.i.+p and Literary Accomplishment," and to have him replaced by that lowbred, consummate scoundrel, ?aji Mirza Aqasi, who brought the country to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution. It was this same _Sh_ah who refused to interview the Bab and imprisoned Him in a_dh_irbayjan, and who, at the age of forty, was afflicted by a complication of maladies to which he succ.u.mbed, hastening the doom forecast in these words of the Qayyum-i-Asma: "I swear by G.o.d, O _Sh_ah! If thou showest enmity unto Him Who is His Remembrance, G.o.d will, on the Day of Resurrection, condemn thee, before the kings, unto h.e.l.lfire, and thou shalt not, in very truth, find on that day any helper except G.o.d, the Exalted."

Na?iri'd-Din _Sh_ah, a selfish, capricious, imperious monarch, succeeded to the throne, and, for half a century, was destined to remain the sole arbiter of the fortunes of his hapless country. A disastrous obscurantism, a chaotic administration in the provinces, the disorganization of the finances of the realm, the intrigues, the vindictiveness, and profligacy of the pampered and greedy courtiers, who buzzed and swarmed round his throne, his own despotism which, but for the restraining fear of European public opinion and the desire to be thought well of in the capitals of the West, would have been more cruel and savage, were the distinguis.h.i.+ng features of the b.l.o.o.d.y reign of one who styled himself "Footpath of Heaven," and "Asylum of the Universe." A triple darkness of chaos, bankruptcy and oppression enveloped the country. His own a.s.sa.s.sination was the first portent of the revolution which was to restrict the prerogatives of his son and successor, depose the last two monarchs of the House of Qajar, and extinguish their dynasty. On the eve of his jubilee, which was to inaugurate a new era, and the celebration of which had been elaborately prepared, he fell, in the shrine of _Sh_ah 'Abdu'l-'A?im, a victim to an a.s.sa.s.sin's pistol, his dead body driven back to his capitol, propped up in the royal carriage in front of his Grand Vizir, in order to defer the news of his murder.

"It was whispered," writes an eyewitness of both the ceremony and the a.s.sa.s.sination, "that the day of the _Sh_ah's celebration was to be the greatest in the history of Persia.... Prisoners were to be released without condition, and a general amnesty was to be proclaimed; peasants were promised exemption from taxes for at least two years. ...the poor were to be fed for months. Ministers and officials were already intriguing for honors and pension from the _Sh_ah. Shrines and sacred places were to open their gates to all wayfarers and pilgrims, and the siyyids and mullas were taking cough medicine to clear their throats to sing and chant the praises of the _Sh_ah in all the pulpits. The mosques were swept and prepared for general meetings and public prayers in behalf of the Sovereign.... Sacred fountains were enlarged to hold more holy water, and the rightful authorities had foreseen that many miracles might take place on the day of the jubilee, with the aid of these fountains.... The _Sh_ah had declared ... that he would renounce his prerogatives as despot, and proclaim himself 'The Majestic Father of all the Persians.' The city authority was to relax its vigilant watch. No record was to be kept of the strangers who flocked to the caravanserais, and the population was to be left free to wander the streets during the whole night." Even the great mujtahids had, according to what had been reported to that same eyewitness, "decided, for the time being, to discontinue persecuting the Babis and other infidels."

Thus fell the one whose reign will remain forever a.s.sociated with the most heinous crime in history-the martyrdom of that One Whom the Supreme Manifestation of G.o.d proclaimed to be the "Point round Whom the realities of the Prophets and Messengers revolve." In a Tablet in which the pen of Baha'u'llah condemns him, we read: "Among them [kings of the earth] is the King of Persia, who suspended Him Who is the Temple of the Cause [the Bab]

in the air, and put Him to death with such cruelty that all created things, and the inmates of Paradise, and the Concourse on high wept for Him. He slew, moreover, some of Our kindred, and plundered Our property, and made Our family captives in the hands of the oppressors. Once and again he imprisoned Me. By G.o.d, the True One! None can reckon the things which befell Me in prison, save G.o.d, the Reckoner, the Omniscient, the Almighty. Subsequently he banished Me and My family from My country, whereupon We arrived in 'Iraq in evident sorrow. We tarried there until the time when the King of Rum [Sul?an of Turkey] arose against Us, and summoned Us unto the seat of his sovereignty. When We reached it there flowed over Us that whereat the King of Persia rejoiced. Later We entered this Prison, wherein the hands of Our loved ones were torn from the hem of Our robe. In such a manner hath he dealt with Us!"

The days of the Qajar dynasty were now numbered. The torpor of the national consciousness had vanished. The reign of Na?iri'd-Din _Sh_ah's successor, Muzaffari'd-Din _Sh_ah, a weak and timid creature, extravagant and lavish to his courtiers, led the country down the broad road to ruin.

The movement in favor of a const.i.tution, limiting the sovereign's prerogatives, gathered force, and culminated in the signature of the const.i.tution by the dying _Sh_ah, who expired a few days later.

Mu?ammad-'Ali _Sh_ah, a despot of the worst type, unprincipled and avaricious, succeeded to the throne. Hostile to the const.i.tution, he, by his summary action, involving the bombardment of the Baharistan, where the a.s.sembly met, precipitated a revolution which led to his deposition by the nationalists. Accepting, after much bargaining, a large pension, he ignominiously withdrew to Russia. The boy-king, A?mad _Sh_ah, who succeeded him, was a mere cipher and careless of his duties. The crying needs of his country continued to be ignored. Increasing anarchy, the impotence of the central government, the state of the national finances, the progressive deterioration of the general condition of the country, practically abandoned by a sovereign who preferred the gaieties and frivolities of society life in the European capitals to the discharge of the stern and urgent responsibilities which the plight of his nation demanded, sounded the death knell of a dynasty which, it was generally felt, had forfeited the crown. Whilst abroad, on one of his periodic visits, Parliament deposed him, and proclaimed the extinction of his dynasty, which had occupied the throne of Persia for a hundred and thirty years, whose rulers proudly claimed no less a descent than from j.a.phet, son of Noah, and whose successive monarchs, with only one exception, were either a.s.sa.s.sinated, deposed, or struck down by mortal disease.

Their myriad progeny, a veritable "beehive of princelings," a "race of royal drones," were both a disgrace and a menace to their countrymen. Now, however, these luckless descendants of a fallen house, shorn of all power, and some of them reduced even to beggary, proclaim, in their distress, the consequences of the abominations which their progenitors have perpetrated.

Swelling the ranks of the ill-fated scions of the House of U_th_man, and of the rulers of the Romanov, the Hohenzollern, the Hapsburg, and the Napoleonic dynasties, they roam the face of the earth, scarcely aware of the character of those forces which have operated such tragic revolutions in their lives, and so powerfully contributed to their present plight.

Already grandsons of both Na?iri'd-Din _Sh_ah and of Sul?an 'Abdu'l-'Aziz have, in their powerlessness and dest.i.tution, turned to the World Center of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, and sought respectively political aid and pecuniary a.s.sistance. In the case of the former, the request was promptly and firmly refused, whilst in the case of the latter it was unhesitatingly offered.

THE DECLINE IN THE FORTUNES OF ROYALTY

And as we survey in other fields the decline in the fortunes of royalty, whether in the years immediately preceding the Great War or after, and contemplate the fate that has overtaken the Chinese Empire, the Portuguese and Spanish Monarchies, and more recently the vicissitudes that have afflicted, and are still afflicting, the sovereigns of Norway, of Denmark and of Holland, and observe the impotence of their fellow-sovereigns, and note the fear and trembling that has seized their thrones, may we not a.s.sociate their plight with the opening pa.s.sages of the Suriy-i-Muluk, which, in view of their momentous significance, I feel impelled to quote a second time: "Fear G.o.d, O concourse of kings, and suffer not yourselves to be deprived of this most sublime grace.... Set your hearts towards the face of G.o.d, and abandon that which your desires have bidden you to follow, and be not of those who perish.... Ye examined not His [the Bab's]

Cause, when so to do had been better for you than all that the sun s.h.i.+neth upon, could ye but perceive it.... Beware that ye be not careless henceforth, as ye have been careless aforetime.... My face hath come forth from the veils, and shed its radiance upon all that is in heaven and on earth, and yet ye turned not towards Him.... Arise then ... and make ye amends for that which hath escaped you.... If ye pay no heed unto the counsels which, in peerless and unequivocal language, We have revealed in this Tablet, Divine chastis.e.m.e.nt shall a.s.sail you from every direction, and the sentence of His justice shall be p.r.o.nounced against you.... Twenty years have pa.s.sed, O kings, during which We have, each day, tasted the agony of a fresh tribulation.... Though aware of most of Our afflictions, ye, nevertheless, have failed to stay the hand of the aggressor. For is it not your clear duty to restrain the tyranny of the oppressor, and to deal equitably with your subjects, that your high sense of justice may be fully demonstrated to all mankind?"

No wonder that Baha'u'llah, in view of the treatment meted out to Him by the sovereigns of the earth, should, as already quoted, have written these words: "From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and ecclesiastics." Indeed, He even goes further, and states in His Tablet addressed to _Sh_ay_kh_ Salman: "One of the signs of the maturity of the world is that no one will accept to bear the weight of kings.h.i.+p. Kings.h.i.+p will remain with none willing to bear alone its weight. That day will be the day whereon wisdom will be manifested among mankind. Only in order to proclaim the Cause of G.o.d and spread abroad His Faith will anyone be willing to bear this grievous weight. Well is it with him who, for love of G.o.d and His Cause, and for the sake of G.o.d and for the purpose of proclaiming His Faith, will expose himself unto this great danger, and will accept this toil and trouble."

RECOGNITION OF KINGs.h.i.+P

Let none, however, mistake or unwittingly misrepresent the purpose of Baha'u'llah. Severe as has been His condemnation p.r.o.nounced against those sovereigns who persecuted Him, and however strict the censure expressed collectively against those who failed signally in their clear duty to investigate the truth of His Faith and to restrain the hand of the wrongdoer, His teachings embody no principle that can, in any way, be construed as a repudiation, or even a disparagement, however veiled, of the inst.i.tution of kings.h.i.+p. The catastrophic fall, and the extinction of the dynasties and empires of those monarchs whose disastrous end He particularly prophesied, and the declining fortunes of the sovereigns of His Own generation, whom He generally reproved-both const.i.tuting a pa.s.sing phase of the evolution of the Faith-should, in no wise, be confounded with the future position of that inst.i.tution. Indeed if we delve into the writings of the Author of the Baha'i Faith, we cannot fail to discover unnumbered pa.s.sages in which, in terms that none can misrepresent, the principle of kings.h.i.+p is eulogized, the rank and conduct of just and fair-minded kings is extolled, the rise of monarchs, ruling with justice and even professing His Faith, is envisaged, and the solemn duty to arise and ensure the triumph of Baha'i sovereigns is inculcated. To conclude from the above quoted words, addressed by Baha'u'llah to the monarchs of the earth, to infer from the recital of the woeful disasters that have overtaken so many of them, that His followers either advocate or antic.i.p.ate the definite extinction of the inst.i.tution of kings.h.i.+p, would indeed be tantamount to a distortion of His teaching.

I can do no better than quote some of Baha'u'llah's Own testimonies, leaving the reader to shape his own judgment as to the falsity of such a deduction. In His "Epistle to the Son of the Wolf" He indicates the true source of kings.h.i.+p: "Regard for the rank of sovereigns is divinely ordained, as is clearly attested by the words of the Prophets of G.o.d and His chosen ones. He Who is the Spirit [Jesus]-may peace be upon Him-was asked: 'O Spirit of G.o.d! Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?'

And He made reply: 'Yea, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to G.o.d the things that are G.o.d's.' He forbade it not. These two sayings are, in the estimation of men of insight, one and the same, for if that which belonged to Caesar had not come from G.o.d He would have forbidden it. And likewise in the sacred verse: 'Obey G.o.d and obey the Apostle, and those among you invested with authority.' By 'those invested with authority' is meant primarily and more specially the Imams-the blessings of G.o.d rest upon them. They verily are the manifestations of the power of G.o.d and the sources of His authority, and the repositories of His knowledge, and the daysprings of His commandments. Secondarily these words refer unto the kings and rulers-those through the brightness of whose justice the horizons of the world are resplendent and luminous."

And again: "In the Epistle to the Romans Saint Paul hath written: 'Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of G.o.d; the powers that be are ordained of G.o.d. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of G.o.d.' And further: 'For he is the minister of G.o.d, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.' He saith that the appearance of the kings, and their majesty and power, are of G.o.d."

And again: "A just king enjoyeth nearer access unto G.o.d than anyone. Unto this testifieth He Who speaketh in His Most Great Prison."

Likewise in the Bi_sh_arat (Glad-Tidings) Baha'u'llah a.s.serts that "the majesty of kings.h.i.+p is one of the signs of G.o.d." "We do not wish," He adds, "that the countries of the world should be deprived thereof."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas He sets forth His purpose, and eulogizes the king who will profess His Faith: "By the Righteousness of G.o.d! It is not Our wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men. Upon them the eyes of Baha are fastened. To this testifieth the Kingdom of Names, could ye but comprehend it. Whoso followeth his Lord, will renounce the world and all that is therein; how much greater, then, must be the detachment of Him Who holdeth so august a station!" "How great the blessedness that awaiteth the king who will arise to aid My Cause in My Kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but Me! Such a king is numbered with the Companions of the Crimson Ark-the Ark which G.o.d hath prepared for the people of Baha. All must glorify his name, must reverence his station, and aid him to unlock the cities with the keys of My Name, the Omnipotent Protector of all that inhabit the visible and invisible kingdoms. Such a king is the very eye of mankind, the luminous ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead of blessings unto the whole world. Offer up, O people of Baha, your substance, nay your very lives, for his a.s.sistance."

In the Law?-i-Sul?an Baha'u'llah further reveals the significance of kings.h.i.+p: "A just king is the shadow of G.o.d on earth. All should seek shelter under the shadow of his justice, and rest in the shade of his favor. This is not a matter which is either specific or limited in its scope, that it might be restricted to one or another person, inasmuch as the shadow telleth of the One Who casteth it. G.o.d, glorified be His remembrance, hath called Himself the Lord of the worlds, for He hath nurtured and still nurtureth everyone. Glorified be, then, His grace that hath preceded all created things, and His mercy that hath surpa.s.sed the worlds."

In one of His Tablets Baha'u'llah has also written: "The one true G.o.d, exalted be His glory, hath bestowed the government of the earth upon the kings. To none is given the right to act in any manner that would run counter to the considered views of them who are in authority. That which He hath reserved for Himself are the cities of men's hearts; and of these the loved ones of Him Who is the Sovereign Truth are, in this Day, as the keys."

In the following pa.s.sage He expresses this wish: "We cherish the hope that one of the kings of the earth will, for the sake of G.o.d, arise for the triumph of this wronged, this oppressed people. Such a king will be eternally extolled and glorified. G.o.d hath prescribed unto this people the duty of aiding whosoever will aid them, of serving his best interests, and of demonstrating to him their abiding loyalty."

In the Law?-i-Ra'is He actually and categorically prophesies the rise of such a king: "Erelong will G.o.d raise up from among the kings one who will aid His loved ones. He, verily, encompa.s.seth all things. He will instill in the hearts the love of His loved ones. This, indeed, is irrevocably decreed by One Who is the Almighty, the Beneficent." In the Ridvanu'l-'Adl, wherein the virtue of justice is exalted, He makes a parallel prediction: "Erelong will G.o.d make manifest on earth kings who will recline on the couches of justice, and will rule amongst men even as they rule their own selves. They, indeed, are among the choicest of My creatures in the entire creation."

In the Kitab-i-Aqdas He visualizes in these words the elevation to the throne of His native city, "the Mother of the World" and "the Dayspring of Light," of a king who will be adorned with the twin ornaments of justice and of devotion to His Faith: "Let nothing grieve thee, O Land of Ta, for G.o.d hath chosen thee to be the source of the joy of all mankind. He shall, if it be His will, bless thy throne with one who will rule with justice, who will gather together the flock of G.o.d which the wolves have scattered.

Such a ruler will, with joy and gladness, turn his face towards and extend his favors unto, the people of Baha. He indeed is accounted in the sight of G.o.d as a jewel among men. Upon him rest forever the glory of G.o.d, and the glory of all that dwell in the kingdom of His Revelation."