engrossing Baha'i community life. It was now
possible to systematically translate and publish literature, news of
general interest was regularly shared, and the bonds that linked believers
with the World Centre of the Faith grew steadily stronger.

The two chief instruments by which Shoghi Effendi set about cultivating a
heightened devotion to teaching in both East and West were the same as
those on which the Master had relied. A steady stream of letters to
communities and individuals alike opened up for the recipients new
dimensions in the beliefs they had embraced. The most important of these
communications, however, now became those addressed to National and Local
Spiritual Assemblies. Their effect was intensified by the stream of
returning pilgrims who shared insights gained by direct contact with the
Centre of the Cause. Through these connections every individual believer
was encouraged to see himself or herself as an instrument of the power
flowing through the Covenant. The invaluable compilation that eventually
appeared under the title _Messages to America, 1932-1946_ provides a
review of the steps by which Shoghi Effendi drew the North American
believers ever deeper into the implications of the Master's Divine Plan
for "the spiritual conquest of the planet":

By the sublimity and serenity of their faith, by the steadiness and
clarity of their vision, the incorruptibility of their character, the
rigor of their discipline, the sanctity of their morals, and the unique
example of their community life, they can and indeed must in a world
polluted with its incurable corruptions, paralyzed by its haunting fears,
torn by its devastating hatreds, and languishing under the weight of its
appalling miseries demonstrate the validity of their claim to be regarded
as the sole repository of that grace upon whose operation must depend the
complete deliverance, the fundamental reorganization and the supreme
felicity of all mankind.(84)

The Guardian held up before the eyes of the North American Baha'i
community a vision of their spiritual destiny. Its members were, he said,
"the spiritual descendants of the heroes of God's Cause", their rising
institutions were "the visible symbols of its [the Faith's] undoubted
sovereignty", the teachers and pioneers it sent out were "torch-bearers of
an as yet unborn civilization", it was their collective challenge to
assume "a preponderating share" in laying the foundations of the World
Ord