At a time when the Cause of the Báb seemed to be hovering on
the brink of extinction, when the hopes and ambitions which animated it had, to
all human seeming, been frustrated, when the colossal sacrifices of its
unnumbered lovers appeared to have been made in vain, the Divine Promise
enshrined within it was about to be suddenly redeemed, and its final perfection
mysteriously manifested. The Bábí Dispensation was being brought to its close
(not prematurely but in its own appointed time), and was yielding its destined
fruit and revealing its ultimate purpose—the birth of the Mission of
Bahá’u’lláh. In this most dark and dreadful hour a New Light was about to break
in glory on Persia’s somber horizon. As a result of what was in fact an
evolving, ripening process, the most momentous if not the most spectacular
stage in the Heroic Age of the Faith was now about to open.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
