Recipients of the Message
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It should not be forgotten that it was the kings of the earth and the
world’s religious leaders who, above all other categories of men, were
made the direct recipients of the Message proclaimed by both the Báb
and Bahá’u’lláh. It was they who were deliberately addressed in numerous
and historic Tablets, who were summoned to respond to the Call of
God, and to whom were directed, in clear and forcible language, the
appeals, the admonitions and warnings of His persecuted Messengers. It
was they who, when the Faith was born, and later when its mission was
proclaimed, were still, for the most part, wielding unquestioned and
absolute civil and ecclesiastical authority over their subjects and followers.
It was they who, whether glorying in the pomp and pageantry of a
kingship as yet scarcely restricted by constitutional limitations, or
entrenched within the strongholds of a seemingly inviolable ecclesiastical
power, assumed ultimate responsibility for any wrongs inflicted by those
whose immediate destinies they controlled. It would be no exaggeration
to say that in most of the countries of the European and Asiatic
continents absolutism, on the one hand, and complete subservience to
ecclesiastical hierarchies, on the other, were still the outstanding features
of the political and religious life of the masses. These, dominated
and shackled, were robbed of the necessary freedom that would enable
them to either appraise the claims and merits of the Message proffered to
them, or to embrace unreservedly its truth.
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Small wonder, then, that the Author of the Bahá’í Faith, and to a
lesser degree its Herald, should have directed at the world’s supreme
rulers and religious leaders the full force of Their Messages, and made
them the recipients of some of Their most sublime Tablets, and invited
them, in a language at once clear and insistent, to heed Their call.
Small wonder that They should have taken the pains to unroll before
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their eyes the truths of Their respective Revelations, and should have
expatiated on Their woes and sufferings. Small wonder that They
should have stressed the preciousness of the opportunities which it was
in the power of these rulers and leaders to seize, and should have warned
them in ominous tones of the grave responsibilities which the rejection
of God’s Message would entail, and should have predicted, when
rebuffed and refused, the dire consequences which such a rejection
involved. Small wonder that He Who is the King of kings and Vicegerent
of God Himself should, when abandoned, contemned and persecuted,
have uttered this epigrammatic and momentous prophecy:
“From two ranks amongst men power hath been seized: kings and
ecclesiastics.”
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As to the kings and emperors who not only symbolized in their
persons the majesty of earthly dominion but who, for the most part,
actually held unchallengeable sway over the multitudes of their subjects,
their relation to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh constitutes one of the
most illuminating episodes in the history of the Heroic and Formative
Ages of that Faith. The Divine summons which embraced within its
scope so large a number of the crowned heads of both Europe and Asia;
the theme and language of the Messages that brought them into direct
contact with the Source of God’s Revelation; the nature of their reaction
to so stupendous an impact; and the consequences which ensued and
can still be witnessed today are the salient features of a subject upon
which I can but inadequately touch, and which will be fully and
befittingly treated by future Bahá’í historians.
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The Emperor of the French, the most powerful ruler of his day on the
European continent, Napoleon III; Pope Pius IX, the supreme head of
the highest church in Christendom, and wielder of the scepter of both
temporal and spiritual authority; the omnipotent Czar of the vast Russian
Empire, Alexander II; the renowned Queen Victoria, whose
sovereignty extended over the greatest political combination the world
has witnessed; William I, the conqueror of Napoleon III, King of
Prussia and the newly acclaimed monarch of a unified Germany;
Francis Joseph, the autocratic king-emperor of the Austro-Hungarian
monarchy, the heir of the far-famed Holy Roman Empire; the tyrannical
Abdu’l-’Aziz, the embodiment of the concentrated power vested in
the Sultanate and the Caliphate; the notorious Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, the
despotic ruler of Persia and the mightiest potentate of Shí’ih Islám—in a
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word, most of the preeminent embodiments of power and of sovereignty
in His day became, one by one, the object of Bahá’u’lláh’s special
attention, and were made to sustain, in varying degrees, the weight of
the force communicated by His appeals and warnings.
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It should be borne in mind, however, that Bahá’u’lláh has not restricted
the delivery of His Message to a few individual sovereigns, however
potent the scepters they severally wielded, and however vast the
dominions which they ruled. All the kings of the earth have been
collectively addressed by His Pen, appealed to, and warned, at a time
when the star of His Revelation was mounting its zenith, and whilst He
lay a prisoner in the hands, and in the vicinity of the court, of His royal
enemy. In a memorable Tablet, designated as the Súriy-i-Mulúk (Súrih
of Kings) in which the Sultán himself and his ministers, and the kings of
Christendom, and the French and Persian Ambassadors accredited to
the Sublime Porte, and the Muslim ecclesiastical leaders in Constantinople,
and its wise men and its inhabitants, and the people of Persia,
and the philosophers of the world have been specifically addressed and
admonished, He thus directs His words to the entire company of the
monarchs of East and West:
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