tly the revelation of
'Abdu'l-Baha's hopes, expectations and purpose for an awakened continent,
electrified the minds and hearts of those who were privileged to hear Him,
who were made the recipients of His inestimable blessings and the chosen
repositories of His confidence and trust. I can never hope to interpret
adequately the feelings that surged within those heroic hearts as they sat
at their Master's feet, beneath the shelter of His prison-house, eager to
absorb and intent to preserve the effusions of His divine Wisdom. I can
never pay sufficient tribute to that spirit of unyielding determination
which the impact of a magnetic personality and the spell of a mighty
utterance kindled in the entire company of these returning pilgrims, these
consecrated heralds of the Covenant of God, at so decisive an epoch of
their history. The memory of such names as Lua, Chase, MacNutt, Dealy,
Goodall, Dodge, Farmer and Brittingham--to mention only a few of that
immortal galaxy now gathered to the glory of Baha'u'llah--will for ever
remain associated with the rise and establishment of His Faith in the
American continent, and will continue to shed on its annals a lustre that
time can never dim.

It was through these pilgrimages, as they succeeded one another in the
years immediately following the ascension of Baha'u'llah, that the
splendor of the Covenant, beclouded for a time by the apparent ascendancy
of its Arch-Breaker, emerged triumphant amidst the vicissitudes which had
afflicted it. It was through the arrival of these pilgrims, and these
alone, that the gloom which had enveloped the disconsolate members of
'Abdu'l-Baha's family was finally dispelled. Through the agency of these
successive visitors the Greatest Holy Leaf, who alone with her Brother
among the members of her Father's household had to confront the rebellion
of almost the entire company of her relatives and associates, found that
consolation which so powerfully sustained her till the very close of her
life. By the forces which this little band of returning pilgrims was able
to release in the heart of that continent the death-knell of every scheme
initiated by the would-be wrecker of the Cause of God was sounded.

The Tablets which were subsequently revealed by the untiring pen of
'Abdu'l-Baha, embodying in passionate and unequivocal language His
instructions and counsels, His appeals and comments, His hopes and wishes,
His fears and warnings, soon began to be tran