its people... The American continent
gives signs and evidences of very great advancement. Its future is even
more promising, for its influence and illumination are far-reaching. It
will lead all nations spiritually."

Would it seem extravagant, in the light of so sublime an utterance, to
expect that in the midst of so enviable a region of the earth and out of
the agony and wreckage of an unprecedented crisis there should burst forth
a spiritual renaissance which, as it propagates itself through the
instrumentality of the American believers, will rehabilitate the fortunes
of a decadent age? It was 'Abdu'l-Baha Himself, His most intimate
associates testify, Who, on more than one occasion, intimated that the
establishment of His Father's Faith in the North American continent ranked
as the most outstanding among the threefold aims which, as He conceived
it, constituted the principal objective of His ministry. It was He Who, in
the heyday of His life and almost immediately after His Father's
ascension, conceived the idea of inaugurating His mission by enlisting the
inhabitants of so promising a country under the banner of Baha'u'llah. He
it was Who in His unerring wisdom and out of the abundance of His heart
chose to bestow on His favored disciples, to the very last day of His
life, the tokens of His unfailing solicitude and to overwhelm them with
the marks of His special favor. It was He Who, in His declining years, as
soon as delivered from the shackles of a long and cruel incarceration,
decided to visit the land which had remained for so many years the object
of His infinite care and love. It was He Who, through the power of His
presence and the charm of His utterance, infused into the entire body of
His followers those sentiments and principles which could alone sustain
them amidst the trials which the very prosecution of their task would
inevitably engender. Was He not, through the several functions which He
exercised whilst He dwelt amongst them, whether in the laying of the
corner-stone of their House of Worship, or in the Feast which He offered
them and at which He chose to serve them in person, or in the emphasis
which He on a more solemn occasion placed on the implications of His
spiritual station--was He not, thereby, deliberately bequeathing to them
all the essentials of that spiritual heritage which He knew they would
ably safeguard and by their deeds continually enrich? And finally who can
doubt that in the Divi