rchbearer of that light, the repository
of those mysteries, the exponent of that righteousness and the sanctuary
of that freedom. To what other light can these above-quoted words possibly
allude, if not to the light of the glory of the Golden Age of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah? What mysteries could 'Abdu'l-Baha have contemplated except
the mysteries of that embryonic World Order now evolving within the matrix
of His Administration? What righteousness if not the righteousness whose
reign that Age and that Order can alone establish? What freedom but the
freedom which the proclamation of His sovereignty in the fullness of time
must bestow?

The community of the organized promoters of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in
the American continent--the spiritual descendants of the dawn-breakers of
an heroic Age, who by their death proclaimed the birth of that Faith--must,
in turn, usher in, not by their death but through living sacrifice, that
promised World Order, the shell ordained to enshrine that priceless jewel,
the world civilization, of which the Faith itself is the sole begetter.
While its sister communities are bending beneath the tempestuous winds
that beat upon them from every side, this community, preserved by the
immutable decrees of the omnipotent Ordainer and deriving continual
sustenance from the mandate with which the Tablets of the Divine Plan have
invested it, is now busily engaged in laying the foundations and in
fostering the growth of those institutions which are to herald the
approach of the Age destined to witness the birth and rise of the World
Order of Baha'u'llah.

A community, relatively negligible in its numerical strength; separated by
vast distances from both the focal-center of its Faith and the land
wherein the preponderating mass of its fellow-believers reside; bereft in
the main of material resources and lacking in experience and in
prominence; ignorant of the beliefs, concepts and habits of those peoples
and races from which its spiritual Founders have sprung; wholly unfamiliar
with the languages in which its sacred Books were originally revealed;
constrained to place its sole reliance upon an inadequate rendering of
only a fragmentary portion of the literature embodying its laws, its
tenets, and its history; subjected from its infancy to tests of extreme
severity, involving, at times, the defection of some of its most prominent
members; having to contend, ever since its inception, and in an
ever-increa