courage, the undaunted resolution of its administrators have already
surmounted; the fire of an unquenchable enthusiasm that glows with
undiminished fervor in the hearts of its itinerant teachers; the heights
of self-sacrifice which its champion-builders are now attaining; the
breadth of vision, the confident hope, the creative joy, the inward peace,
the uncompromising integrity, the exemplary discipline, the unyielding
unity and solidarity which its stalwart defenders manifest; the degree to
which its moving Spirit has shown itself capable of assimilating the
diversified elements within its pale, of cleansing them of all forms of
prejudice and of fusing them with its own structure--these are evidences of
a power which a disillusioned and sadly shaken society can ill afford to
ignore.

Compare these splendid manifestations of the spirit animating this vibrant
body of the Faith of Baha'u'llah with the cries and agony, the follies and
vanities, the bitterness and prejudices, the wickedness and divisions of
an ailing and chaotic world. Witness the fear that torments its leaders
and paralyzes the action of its blind and bewildered statesmen. How fierce
the hatreds, how false the ambitions, how petty the pursuits, how
deep-rooted the suspicions of its peoples! How disquieting the
lawlessness, the corruption, the unbelief that are eating into the vitals
of a tottering civilization!

Might not this process of steady deterioration which is insidiously
invading so many departments of human activity and thought be regarded as
a necessary accompaniment to the rise of this almighty Arm of Baha'u'llah?
Might we not look upon the momentous happenings which, in the course of
the past twenty years, have so deeply agitated every continent of the
earth, as ominous signs simultaneously proclaiming the agonies of a
disintegrating civilization and the birthpangs of that World Order--that
Ark of human salvation--that must needs arise upon its ruins?

The catastrophic fall of mighty monarchies and empires in the European
continent, allusions to some of which may be found in the prophecies of
Baha'u'llah; the decline that has set in, and is still continuing, in the
fortunes of the _Sh_i'ih hierarchy in His own native land; the fall of the
Qajar dynasty, the traditional enemy of His Faith; the overthrow of the
Sultanate and the Caliphate, the sustaining pillars of Sunni Islam, to
which the destruction of Jerusalem in the latter part of the fir