edless generation His almighty power to raise up from the very midst of
a people, immersed in a sea of materialism, a prey to one of the most
virulent and long-standing forms of racial prejudice, and notorious for
its political corruption, lawlessness and laxity in moral standards, men
and women who, as time goes by, will increasingly exemplify those
essential virtues of self-renunciation, of moral rectitude, of chastity,
of indiscriminating fellowship, of holy discipline, and of spiritual
insight that will fit them for the preponderating share they will have in
calling into being that World Order and that World Civilization of which
their country, no less than the entire human race, stands in desperate
need. Theirs will be the duty and privilege, in their capacity first as
the establishers of one of the most powerful pillars sustaining the
edifice of the Universal House of Justice, and then as the
champion-builders of that New World Order of which that House is to be the
nucleus and forerunner, to inculcate, demonstrate, and apply those twin
and sorely needed principles of Divine justice and order--principles to
which the political corruption and the moral license, increasingly
staining the society to which they belong, offer so sad and striking a
contrast.

Observations such as these, however distasteful and depressing they may
be, should not, in the least, blind us to those virtues and qualities of
high intelligence, of youthfulness, of unbounded initiative, and
enterprise which the nation as a whole so conspicuously displays, and
which are being increasingly reflected by the community of the believers
within it. Upon these virtues and qualities, no less than upon the
elimination of the evils referred to, must depend, to a very great extent,
the ability of that community to lay a firm foundation for the country's
future role in ushering in the Golden Age of the Cause of Baha'u'llah.

How great, therefore, how staggering the responsibility that must weigh
upon the present generation of the American believers, at this early stage
in their spiritual and administrative evolution, to weed out, by every
means in their power, those faults, habits, and tendencies which they have
inherited from their own nation, and to cultivate, patiently and
prayerfully, those distinctive qualities and characteristics that are so
indispensable to their effective participation in the great redemptive
work of their Faith. Incapable as yet, in