A successor or
vicegerent the Báb never named, an interpreter of His teachings He refrained
from appointing. So transparently clear were His references to the Promised
One, so brief was to be the duration of His own Dispensation, that neither the
one nor the other was deemed necessary. All He did was, according to the
testimony of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in “A Traveller’s Narrative,” to nominate, on the
advice of Bahá’u’lláh and of another disciple, Mírzá Yahyá, who would act
solely as a figure-head pending the manifestation of the Promised One, thus
enabling Bahá’u’lláh to promote, in relative security, the Cause so dear to His
heart.
(Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)
