come,
the day when tormenting trials will have surged above your heads, and
beneath your feet, saying: 'Taste ye, what your hands have wrought.'" Not
ours to question the almighty wisdom or fathom the inscrutable ways of Him
in whose hands the ultimate destiny of an unregenerate yet potentially
glorious race must lie. Ours rather is the duty to believe that the
world-wide community of the Most Great Name, and in particular, at the
present time its vanguard in North America, however buffeted by the
powerful currents of these troublous times, and however keen their
awareness of the inevitability of the final eruption, can, if they will,
rise to the level of their calling and discharge their functions, both in
the period which is witnessing the confusion and breakdown of human
institutions, and in the ensuing epoch during which the shattered basis of
a dismembered society is to be recast, and its forces reshaped,
re-directed and unified. With the age that is still unborn, with its
herculean tasks and unsuspected glories, we need not concern ourselves at
present. It is to the fierce struggle, the imperious duties, the
distinctive contributions which the present generation of Baha'is are
summoned to undertake and render that I feel we should, at this hour,
direct our immediate and anxious attention. Though powerless to avert the
impending contest the followers of Baha'u'llah can, by the spirit they
evince and the efforts they exert help to circumscribe its range, shorten
its duration, allay its hardships, proclaim its salutary consequences, and
demonstrate its necessary and vital role in the shaping of human destiny.
Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine
guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the
entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and
agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that
re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose
generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Baha'u'llah Himself,
whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose
animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the
reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete,
the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind. By
the sublimity and serenity of their faith, by the steadiness and clarity
of their vision, the incorrupti