h_kar of the western world; in the erection of no less
than four pillars destined with others to sustain the weight of the final
and crowning unit of the administrative structure of the Faith; in the
establishment of over ninety centers in the Dominion of Canada, of over an
hundred centers in Latin America, and of over twelve hundred centers in
the great republic of the West, covering a range that stretches from the
Arctic Circle in the North to the extremity of Chile in the South; in the
founding of local and national endowments estimated at over three million
dollars; in the incorporation of no less than four national, and of more
than fifty local Baha'i spiritual assemblies; in the recognition by
eighteen states of the American Union of the Baha'i marriage certificate;
in the establishment of two national administrative headquarters, one in
the Dominion of Canada and the other in the heart of the North American
continent; in the framing of national Baha'i constitutions; in the
inauguration of summer schools; and in a notable progress in the
translation, the printing and the dissemination of Baha'i literature.

The hour has now struck for the national Baha'i communities dwelling
within the confines of the Western Hemisphere--the first region in the
western world to be warmed and illuminated by the rays of God's infant
Faith shining from its World Center in the Holy Land--to arise and, in
thanksgiving for the manifold blessings continually showered upon them
from on high during the past six decades and for the inestimable bounties
of God's unfailing protection and sustaining grace vouchsafed His Cause
ever since its inception more than a century ago, and in anticipation of
the Most Great Jubilee which will commemorate the hundredth anniversary of
Baha'u'llah's formal assumption of His prophetic office, launch,
determinedly and unitedly, the third and last stage of an enterprise
inaugurated sixteen years ago, the termination of which will mark the
closing of the initial epoch in the evolution of 'Abdu'l-Baha's Divine
Plan. Standing on the threshold of a ten-year-long, world-embracing
Spiritual Crusade these communities are now called upon, by virtue of the
weighty pronouncement recorded in the Most Holy Book, and in direct
consequence of the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, to play a
preponderating role in the systematic propagation of the Faith, in the
course of the coming decade, which will, God willing, cu