force the impulse that impels its members forward to meet their
destiny. The Founders of their Faith survey from the Kingdom on high the
range of their achievements, acclaim their progress, and are ever ready to
speed their eventual triumph.

Far be it from me to underrate the gigantic proportions of their task, nor
do I for one moment overlook the urgency and gravity of the times in which
they are laboring. Nor do I wish to minimize the hazards and trials that
surround or lie ahead of them. The grandeur of their task is indeed
commensurate with the mortal perils by which their generation is hemmed
in. As the dusk creeps over a steadily sinking society the radiant
outlines of their redemptive mission become sharper every day. The present
world unrest, symptom of a world-wide malady, their world religion has
already affirmed must needs culminate in that world catastrophe out of
which the consciousness of world citizenship will be born, a consciousness
that can alone provide an adequate basis for the organization of world
unity, on which a lasting world peace must necessarily depend, the peace
itself inaugurating in turn that world civilization which will mark the
coming of age of the entire human race.

Fortified by such reflections, the American believers, in whichever
section of the Western Hemisphere they find themselves laboring, whether
at home or abroad, and however dire and distressing the processes involved
in the disintegration of the structure of present-day civilization, will,
I feel convinced, prove themselves, through their lives and deeds, worthy
of that priceless heritage which it is their undoubted privilege to
proclaim, preserve and perpetuate.

May 22, 1939

OFFICIAL INAUGURATION OF WORLD MISSION

Newly-launched Central American campaign marks official inauguration of
long-deferred World Mission constituting 'Abdu'l-Baha's distinctive legacy
to the Baha'i Community of North America. Chosen Community broadening its
basis, gaining in stature, deepening in consecration. Its vanguard now
entering arena monopolized by entrenched forces of Christendom's mightiest
ecclesiastical institutions. Laboring amidst race foreign in language,
custom, temperament embracing vast proportion of New World's ethnic
elements. American believers' isolated oversea teaching enterprises
hitherto tentative, intermittent, now at end. New epoch opening, demanding
exertions incomparably more strenuous, unflinchingly sus