of His own mysterious power, which, as He
Himself prophesied, was destined to unfold its potentialities in the
course of a later age. On the morrow of His passing, the earliest
evidences of the unfailing promise He had made revealed themselves through
the first stirrings of an Administrative Order--the Child of the Covenant,
the Shield of that community and the divinely appointed Agency for the
execution of the mandate with which that community was to be invested in
the second epoch of the Formative Age of the Baha'i Dispensation. A little
over two decades later, that community, armed and equipped with the
mighty, divinely conceived agencies of a laboriously erected, unassailably
established Administrative Order, embarked upon a six-year enterprise that
culminated in the erection of the institutions of that Order in the very
heart and capital cities of its island home--the essential prerequisite for
the inauguration of yet another stage in its unfoldment. On the morrow of
the triumphant termination of the first collective enterprise launched by
that community in British Baha'i history, its jubilant members braced
themselves, during a one-year interval, for the initial onslaught, which
they were preparing to launch, unitedly and determinedly, far beyond the
shores of their homeland amid alien, widely diversified, politically
restless, economically backward, spiritually famished tribes and peoples,
and in the course of one of the most critical periods in human history. On
the morrow of the centenary of the martyrdom of the Prophet Herald of its
Faith, this same community had already formulated its plans, initiated its
programme of publications in various African languages, despatched its
first pioneer to the heart of that continent, forged the necessary links
with its allied sister communities participating in various enterprises in
that same continent, and established its first essential contact with
divers government agencies capable of giving their advice and assistance
in the prosecution of its historic and arduous task.

This community, so young in experience, so richly endowed by the love and
care of a departed all-powerful Master, so firmly entrenched in the
stronghold of its Administrative Order, already so rich in prizes won in
the course of the first collective enterprise undertaken in its history,
so promising in the vigour, the zeal and devotion which it is now
displaying, is faced, at the present hour, with a g