piritual, its humanitarian and administrative activities will cluster are
the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar and its Dependencies. The pillars that sustain
its authority and buttress its structure are the twin institutions of the
Guardianship and of the Universal House of Justice. The central, the
underlying aim which animates it is the establishment of the New World
Order as adumbrated by Baha'u'llah. The methods it employs, the standard
it inculcates, incline it to neither East nor West, neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither rich nor poor, neither white nor colored. Its watchword
is the unification of the human race; its standard the "Most Great Peace";
its consummation the advent of that golden millennium--the Day when the
kingdoms of this world shall have become the Kingdom of God Himself, the
Kingdom of Baha'u'llah.

SHOGHI.

Haifa, Palestine,
February 8, 1934.

THE UNFOLDMENT OF WORLD CIVILIZATION

The Unfoldment of World Civilization

To the beloved of God and the handmaids of the Merciful throughout the
West.

Friends and fellow-heirs of the grace of Baha'u'llah:

As your co-sharer in the building up of the New World Order which the mind
of Baha'u'llah has visioned, and whose features the pen of 'Abdu'l-Baha,
its perfect Architect, has delineated, I pause to contemplate with you the
scene which the revolution of well-nigh fifteen years after His passing
unfolds before us.

The contrast between the accumulating evidences of steady consolidation
that accompany the rise of the Administrative Order of the Faith of God,
and the forces of disintegration which batter at the fabric of a
travailing society, is as clear as it is arresting. Both within and
outside the Baha'i world the signs and tokens which, in a mysterious
manner, are heralding the birth of that World Order, the establishment of
which must signalize the Golden Age of the Cause of God, are growing and
multiplying day by day. No fair-minded observer can any longer fail to
discern them. He cannot be misled by the painful slowness characterizing
the unfoldment of the civilization which the followers of Baha'u'llah are
laboring to establish. Nor can he be deluded by the ephemeral
manifestations of returning prosperity which at times appear to be capable
of checking the disruptive influence of the chronic ills afflicting the
institutions of a decaying age. The signs of the times are too numerous
and compelling to allow him to mistake their character