Conceived by Bahá’u’lláh as the Instrument which, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, was “to perpetuate the influence of [the] Faith, insure its integrity, safeguard it from schism, and stimulate its world-wide expansion,”(31) the Covenant had been violated by members of Bahá’u’lláh’s own family almost immediately after His ascension. Recognizing that the authority invested in the Master by the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd, the Tablet of the Branch and related documents frustrated their private hopes to turn the Cause to their personal advantage, these persons began a persistent campaign to undermine His position, first in the Holy Land and then in Persia, where the bulk of the Bahá’í community was concentrated. When these schemes failed, they next sought to manipulate the fears of the Ottoman government and the avarice of its representatives in Palestine. This hope too collapsed when the “Young Turk Revolution” overthrew the regime in Constantinople, hanging some thirty-one of its leading officials, including several who had been implicated in the plans of the Covenant-breakers. In the West, during the early years of the Master’s ministry, representatives sent by Him had already successfully countered the machinations of Ibrahim _Kh_ayru’lláh—ironically, the individual who had introduced many of the American believers to the Cause—who had aimed at securing a position of leadership through association with the Covenant-breakers in the Holy Family. Such experiences had doubtless prepared the Western believers for the Master’s formal proclamation of His station and for the firmness with which He enjoined on believers avoidance of any involvement with such agents of division: “Certain weak, capricious, malicious and ignorant souls ... have striven to efface the Divine Covenant and Testament, and render the clear water muddy so that in it they might fish.(32) It would be only gradually, however, as the new communities struggled to overcome differences of opinion and resist the perennial human temptation to factionalism, that the implications of this great organizing law of the new Dispensation would emerge. While laying out in both public addresses and private discussions the vision of a world of unity and peace that the Revelation of God for our day will bring into being, the Master warned emphatically of the dangers that lay on the immediate horizon—both for the Faith and for the world. For both, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá foresaw, in the words of Shoghi Effendi, a “winter of unprecedented severity”.