Strange, indeed, as we look back over the last fifty years that have witnessed the creation and unfoldment of so powerful an agency for the execution of Bahá’u’lláh’s purpose for mankind, that he who had first raised his voice in public on behalf of so mighty a Faith should have sprung from the ranks and been recognized as one of the leading representatives of that narrow and hostile ecclesiastical order which, as the Faith advances and storms still greater heights, will increasingly launch against it its determined attacks. Stranger still that he whom posterity will recognize to have been the founder of that Faith in the Western Hemisphere, whom the Center of the Covenant, in recognition of so signal a service, had acclaimed as “Bahá’s Peter” and “the Second Columbus”, should have, in his vanity and ambition, deserted the Fold he had labored to gather, should have allied himself with the Arch-Breaker of the Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh, and remained until the end of his life, a sworn and bitter enemy of the One Who had entrusted him with such a holy and historic errand, and conferred upon him such glowing tributes. More extraordinary still that he who had been instrumental in carrying the Tablets of the Divine Plan from the One Who had revealed them to those into whose care they were to be committed, who had enjoyed, for so long and so intimately, near access to his Master as amanuensis, companion and interpreter, should have been blinded by his inordinate ambition, and should have arisen, with all the resources at his disposal, to attack and undermine the institutions of an Order which, springing from the authentic Will of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, had been designed by Him to be the chief instrument for the vigorous prosecution of that Plan and the fulfillment of its ultimate purpose. Such reflections, far from engendering in our minds and hearts the slightest trace of perplexity, of discouragement or doubt, should reinforce the basis of our convictions, demonstrate to us the incorruptibility, the strange workings and the invincibility of a Faith which, despite the assaults which malignant and redoubtable enemies from the ranks of kings, princes and ecclesiastics have repeatedly launched against it, and the violent internal tests that have shaken it for more than a century, and the relative obscurity of its champions, and the unpropitiousness of the times and the perversity of the generations contemporaneous with its rise and growth, has gone from strength to strength, has preserved its unity and integrity, has diffused its light over five continents, reared the institutions of its Administrative Order and spread its ramifications to the four corners of the earth, and launched its systematic campaigns in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres.