Little wonder that on His return to Baghdád Bahá’u’lláh should have described the situation then existing in these words: “We found no more than a handful of souls, faint and dispirited, nay utterly lost and dead. The Cause of God had ceased to be on any one’s lips, nor was any heart receptive to its message.”
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)