…the Holy Seed [the Báb] of infinite preciousness, holding
within itself incalculable potentialities representing the culmination of the
centuries-old process of the evolution of humanity through the energies released
by the series of progressive Revelations starting with Adam and concluded by
the Revelation of the Seal of the Prophets, marked by the successive appearance
of the branches, leaves, buds, blossoms and plucked, after six brief years by
the hand of destiny, ground in the mill of martyrdom and oppression but
yielding the oil whose first flickering light cast upon the somber,
subterranean walls of the Síyáh-Chál of Tihrán, whose fire gathered brilliance
in Baghdád and shone in full resplendency in its crystal globe in Adrianople,
whose rays warmed and illuminated the fringes of the American, European,
Australian continents through the tender ministerings of the Center of the
Covenant, whose radiance is now overspreading the surface of the globe during
the present Formative Age, whose full splendor is destined in the course of
future milleniums to suffuse the entire planet.
- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter
dated 4 July 1950; ‘Citadel of Faith’)
