at a few among them are already dimly aware of the pervasive
influence of the Cause of Baha'u'llah, that they will, as their inherent
strength deteriorates and their discipline relaxes, regard with deepening
dismay the rise of His New World Order, and will gradually determine to
assail it, that such an opposition will in turn accelerate their decline,
few, if any, among those who are attentively watching the progress of His
Faith would be inclined to question.

"The vitality of men's belief in God," Baha'u'llah has testified, "is
dying out in every land; nothing short of His wholesome medicine can ever
restore it. The corrosion of ungodliness is eating into the vitals of
human society; what else but the Elixir of His potent Revelation can
cleanse and revive it?" "The world is in travail," He has further written,
"and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards
waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight that to disclose it now
would not be meet and seemly."

This menace of secularism that has attacked Islam and is undermining its
remaining institutions, that has invaded Persia, has penetrated into
India, and raised its triumphant head in Turkey, has already manifested
itself in both Europe and America, and is, in varying degrees, and under
various forms and designations, challenging the basis of every established
religion, and in particular the institutions and communities identified
with the Faith of Jesus Christ. It would be no exaggeration to say that we
are moving into a period which the future historian will regard as one of
the most critical in the history of Christianity.

Already a few among the protagonists of the Christian Religion admit the
gravity of the situation that confronts them. "A wave of materialism is
sweeping round the world"; is the testimony of its missionaries, as
witnessed by the text of their official reports, "the drive and pressure
of modern industrialism, which are penetrating even the forests of Central
Africa and the plains of Central Asia, make men everywhere dependent on,
and preoccupied with, material things. At home the Church has talked,
perhaps too glibly, in pulpit or on platform of the menace of secularism;
though even in England we can catch more than a glimpse of its meaning.
But to the Church overseas these things are grim realities, enemies with
which it is at grips... The Church has a new danger to face in land after
land--determined and hostile attack