at the present
time to draw your attention to what I regard certain misleading statements
that have found currency in various quarters, and which may lead gradually
to a grave misapprehension of the true purpose and essential character of
the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar.

It should be borne in mind that the central Edifice of the
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, round which in the fulness of time shall cluster
such institutions of social service as shall afford relief to the
suffering, sustenance to the poor, shelter to the wayfarer, solace to the
bereaved, and education to the ignorant, should be regarded apart from
these Dependencies, as a House solely designed and entirely dedicated to
the worship of God in accordance with the few yet definitely prescribed
principles established by Baha'u'llah in the Kitab-i-Aqdas. It should not
be inferred, however, from this general statement that the interior of the
central Edifice itself will be converted into a conglomeration of
religious services conducted along lines associated with the traditional
procedure obtaining in churches, mosques, synagogues, and other temples of
worship. Its various avenues of approach, all converging towards the
central Hall beneath its dome, will not serve as admittance to those
sectarian adherents of rigid formulae and man-made creeds, each bent,
according to his way, to observe his rites, recite his prayers, perform
his ablutions, and display the particular symbols of his faith, within
separately defined sections of Baha'u'llah's Universal House of Worship.
Far from the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar offering such a spectacle of incoherent
and confused sectarian observances and rites, a condition wholly
incompatible with the provisions of the Aqdas and irreconcilable with the
spirit it inculcates, the central House of Baha'i worship, enshrined
within the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, will gather within its chastened walls,
in a serenely spiritual atmosphere, only those who, discarding forever the
trappings of elaborate and ostentatious ceremony, are willing worshipers
of the one true God, as manifested in this age in the Person of
Baha'u'llah. To them will the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar symbolize the
fundamental verity underlying the Baha'i Faith, that religious truth is
not absolute but relative, that Divine Revelation is not final but
progressive. Theirs will be the conviction that an all-loving and
ever-watchful Father Who, in the past, and at various stages in the
evolution of