The voice of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of the Covenant of God, has, likewise, been raised, announcing the dire misfortunes which were to overtake, soon after His passing, the ecclesiastical hierarchies of both Sunní and _Sh_í’ih Islám. “This glory,” He has written, “shall be turned into the most abject abasement, and this pomp and might converted into the most complete subjugation. Their palaces will be transformed into prisons, and the course of their ascendant star terminate in the depths of the pit. Laughter and merriment will vanish, nay more, the voice of their weeping will be raised.” “Even as the snow,” He moreover has written, “they will melt away in the July sun.” The dissolution of the institution of the Caliphate, the complete secularization of the state which had enshrined the most august institution of Islám, and the virtual collapse of the _Sh_í’ih hierarchy in Persia, were the visible and immediate consequences of the treatment meted out to the Cause of God by the clergy of the two largest communions of the Muslim world. THE FALLING FORTUNES OF _SH_Í’IH ISLÁM Let us first consider the visitations that have marked the falling fortunes of _Sh_í’ih Islám. The iniquities summarized in the beginning of these pages, and for which the _Sh_í’ih ecclesiastical order in Persia is to be held primarily answerable; iniquities which, in the words of Bahá’u’lláh, had caused “the Apostle [Muḥammad] to lament, and the Chaste One [Fátimih] to cry out,” and “all created things to groan, and the limbs of the holy ones to quake”; iniquities which had riddled the breast of the Báb with bullets, and bowed down Bahá’u’lláh, and turned His hair white, and caused Him to groan aloud in anguish, and made Muḥammad to weep over Him, and Jesus to beat Himself upon the head, and the Báb to bewail His plight—such iniquities indeed could not, and were not to, remain unpunished. God, the Fiercest of Avengers, was lying in wait, pledged “not to forgive any man’s injustice.” The scourge of His chastisement, swift, sudden and terrible, was, at long last, let loose upon the perpetrators of these iniquities. A revolution, formidable in its proportions, far-reaching in its repercussions, amazing in the absence of bloodshed and even of violence which marked its progress, challenged that ecclesiastical ascendency which, for centuries, had been of the essence of Islám in that country, and virtually overthrew a hierarchy with which the machinery of the state and the life of the people had been inextricably interwoven. Such a revolution did not signalize the disestablishment of a state-church. It indeed was tantamount to the disruption of what may be called a church-state—a state that had been hopefully awaiting, even up till the moment of its expiry, the gladsome advent of the Hidden Imám, who would not only seize the reins of authority from the _sh_áh, the chief magistrate who was merely representing him, but would also assume dominion over the whole earth.