ng--the individual
members of the American Baha'i community must lend their unstinted,
continual, and enthusiastic support. Wise as may be the measures which
their elected representatives may devise, however practical and well
conceived the plans they formulate, such measures and plans can never
yield any satisfactory results unless a sufficient number of pioneers have
determined to make the necessary sacrifices, and to volunteer to carry
these projects into effect. To implant, once and for all, the banner of
Baha'u'llah in the heart of these virgin territories, to erect the
structural basis of His Administrative Order in their cities and villages,
and to establish a firm and permanent anchorage for its institutions in
the minds and hearts of their inhabitants, constitute, I firmly believe,
the first and most significant step in the successive stages through which
the teaching campaign, inaugurated under the Seven Year Plan, must pass.
Whereas the external ornamentation of the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar, under
this same Plan, has now entered the final phase in its development, the
teaching campaign is still in its initial stages, and is far from having
extended effectively its ramifications to either these virgin territories,
or to those Republics that are situated in the South American continent.
The effort required is prodigious, the conditions under which these
preliminary establishments are to be made are often unattractive and
unfavorable, the workers who are in a position to undertake such tasks
limited, and the resources they can command meager and inadequate. And
yet, how often has the pen of Baha'u'llah assured us that "should a man,
all alone, arise in the name of Baha, and put on the armor of His love,
him will the Almighty cause to be victorious, though the forces of earth
and heaven be arrayed against him." Has He not written: "By God, besides
Whom is none other God! Should anyone arise for the triumph of our Cause,
him will God render victorious though tens of thousands of enemies be
leagued against him. And if his love for me wax stronger, God will
establish his ascendancy over all the powers of earth and heaven."
"Consider the work of former generations," 'Abdu'l-Baha has written;
"During the lifetime of Jesus Christ the believing, firm souls were few
and numbered, but the heavenly blessings descended so plentifully that in
a number of years countless souls entered beneath the shadow of the
Gospel. God has said