the protection of the Faith, the other of the two chief
functions of the Hands of the Cause.

A message of 3 June 1957 celebrated the action of the Israeli government
in executing the final decision of the court of appeals of that country,
by which the surviving band of Covenant-breakers were at last evicted from
the Haram-i-Aqdas surrounding the focal Centre of the Baha'i world at
Bahji.(100) Only a day later, however, a second cablegram warned ominously
of the urgent need of the Faith's senior institutions to act in concert to
protect it from new dangers that the Guardian perceived to be gathering on
the horizon. This was followed in October by a message announcing that the
number of Hands of the Cause of God had been raised from nineteen to
twenty-seven, designating these senior officers "Chief Stewards of
Baha'u'llah's embryonic World Commonwealth", and charging them with
responsibility to consult with National Spiritual Assemblies on urgently
needed measures to protect the Faith.

Less than a month thereafter, the Baha'i world was devastated by the news
of Shoghi Effendi's death on 4 November 1957 from complications following
an attack of Asiatic influenza contracted during the course of a visit to
London. The Centre of the Cause who, for thirty-six years, had day by day
guided its evolution, whose vision encompassed both the flow of events and
the actions the Baha'i community must take, and whose messages of
encouragement had been the spiritual lifeline of countless Baha'is around
the planet, was suddenly gone, leaving the great Crusade half finished and
the future of the Administrative Order in crisis.

* * * * *

The grief and overwhelming sense of desolation produced by the loss of the
Guardian lends all the greater significance to the triumph of the Plan he
had conceived and inspired. On 21 April 1963, the ballots of delegates
from fifty-six National Spiritual Assemblies, including the forty-four new
bodies called for and successfully formed during the Ten Year Crusade,
brought into existence the Universal House of Justice, the governing body
of the Cause conceived by Baha'u'llah and assured by Him unequivocally of
Divine guidance in the exercise of its functions:

It is incumbent upon the Trustees of the House of Justice to take counsel
together regarding those things which have not outwardly been revealed in
the Book, and to enforce that which is agreeable to them. God wil