Consider, how great is the change today! Behold, how many are the
Sovereigns who bow the knee before His name! How numerous the nations and
kingdoms who have sought the shelter of His shadow, who bear allegiance to
His Faith, and pride themselves therein! From the pulpit-top there
ascendeth today the words of praise which, in utter lowliness, glorify His
blessed name; and from the heights of minarets there resoundeth the call
that summoneth the concourse of His people to adore Him. Even those Kings
of the earth who have refused to embrace His Faith and to put off the
garment of unbelief, none-the-less confess and acknowledge the greatness
and overpowering majesty of that Day Star of loving-kindness. Such is His
earthly sovereignty, the evidences of which thou dost on every side
behold. This sovereignty must needs be revealed and established either in
the lifetime of every Manifestation of God or after His ascension unto His
true habitation in the realms above....

It is evident that the changes brought about in every Dispensation
constitute the dark clouds that intervene between the eye of man’s
understanding and the Divine Luminary which shineth forth from the day
spring of the Divine Essence. Consider how men for generations have been
blindly imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such
ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith.
Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been
living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation hath
been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed
by their Faith—principles by which for centuries they have been
disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to
regard as infidel, profligate and wicked,—they would of a certainty be
veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth. Such things are as
“clouds” that veil the eyes of those whose inner being hath not tasted the