gh the
ultimate blessings that must crown the consummation of your mission be
undoubted, and the Divine promises given you firm and irrevocable, yet the
measure of the goodly reward which every one of you is to reap must depend
on the extent to which your daily exertions will have contributed to the
expansion of that mission and the hastening of its triumph.

"DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS! GREAT AS IS MY LOVE AND ADMIRATION ..."

Dearly beloved friends! Great as is my love and admiration for you,
convinced as I am of the paramount share which you can, and will,
undoubtedly have in both the continental and international spheres of
future Baha'i activity and service, I feel it nevertheless incumbent upon
me to utter, at this juncture, a word of warning. The glowing tributes, so
repeatedly and deservedly paid to the capacity, the spirit, the conduct,
and the high rank, of the American believers, both individually and as an
organic community, must, under no circumstances, be confounded with the
characteristics and nature of the people from which God has raised them
up. A sharp distinction between that community and that people must be
made, and resolutely and fearlessly upheld, if we wish to give due
recognition to the transmuting power of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, in its
impact on the lives and standards of those who have chosen to enlist under
His banner. Otherwise, the supreme and distinguishing function of His
Revelation, which is none other than the calling into being of a new race
of men, will remain wholly unrecognized and completely obscured.

How often have the Prophets of God, not excepting Baha'u'llah Himself,
chosen to appear, and deliver their Message in countries and amidst
peoples and races, at a time when they were either fast declining, or had
already touched the lowest depths of moral and spiritual degradation. The
appalling misery and wretchedness to which the Israelites had sunk, under
the debasing and tyrannical rule of the Pharaohs, in the days preceding
their exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses; the decline that
had set in in the religious, the spiritual, the cultural, and the moral
life of the Jewish people, at the time of the appearance of Jesus Christ;
the barbarous cruelty, the gross idolatry and immorality, which had for so
long been the most distressing features of the tribes of Arabia and
brought such shame upon them when Muhammad arose to proclaim His Message
in their midst; t