mission He had been prompted
to perform. The site of the Temple itself was honored by the presence of
Him Who, ever since this enterprise was initiated, had, through his
messages and Tablets, bestowed upon it His special attention and care, and
surrounded it with the marks of His unfailing solicitude. Its
foundation-stone was laid by His own loving hands, on an occasion so
moving that it has come to be regarded as one of the most stirring
episodes of His historic visit to the North American continent. Its
superstructure was raised as a direct consequence of the pent-up energies
which surged from the breasts of 'Abdu'l-Baha's lovers at a time when His
sudden removal from their midst had plunged them into consternation,
bewilderment and sorrow. Its external ornamentation was initiated and
accelerated through the energizing influences which the rising and
continually consolidating institutions of a divinely established
Administrative Order had released in the midst of a community that had
identified its vital interests with that Temple's destiny. The measures
devised to hasten its completion were incorporated in a Plan which derives
its inspiration from those destiny-shaping Tablets wherein, in bold
relief, stands outlined the world mission entrusted by their Author to the
American Baha'i community. And finally, the Fund, designed to receive and
dispose of the resources amassed for its prosecution, was linked with the
memory and bore the name of her whose ebbing life was brightened and
cheered by those tidings that unmistakably revealed to her the depth of
devotion and the tenacity of purpose which animate the American believers
in the cause of their beloved Temple. And now, while the Baha'i world
vibrates with emotion at the news of the transfer of the precious remains
of both the Purest Branch and of 'Abdu'l-Baha's mother to a spot which,
watched over by the Twin Holy Shrines and in the close neighborhood of the
resting-place of the Greatest Holy Leaf, is to become the focus of the
administrative institutions of the Faith at its world center, the mere act
of linking the destiny of so far-reaching an undertaking with so
significant an event in the Formative Period of our Faith will assuredly
set the seal of complete triumph upon, and enhance the spiritual
potentialities of, a work so significantly started and so magnificently
executed by the followers of Baha'u'llah in the North American continent.

The Plan which your As