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                  |  | Citadel of Faith | Page 45 |  |  | No Sacrifice Too Great
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	| 1 | The gravity of the emergency facing the North American believers 
is unprecedented since the initiation of the Divine Plan and unparalleled 
in the history of the American Bahá'í Community since `Abdu'l-Bahá's 
passing.  No obstacle is insuperable, no sacrifice too great for 
attainment of supremely important objective.  The eyes of her sister 
communities in every continent of the globe and of her daughter 
communities of Latin America, handicapped by a variety of adverse 
circumstances, are fixed upon the community of followers of 
Bahá'u'lláh in North American continent who are enjoying the blessings 
of internal peace, adequate resources, administrative experience 
and organizing ability for their divinely appointed mission, expecting 
them to arise and avert the reverse which would mar the splendor of 
their record of unexampled stewardship.  I am moved to plead, at this 
eleventh hour, that the rank and file of the community, particularly the 
members resident in long-established leading strongholds of the 
Faith--New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington
--issue forth unhesitatingly, determinedly, sacrifice every interest, 
assume positions in the forefront of the struggle and emulate in 
the course of the first decade of second Bahá'í century, opening years 
of the second epoch of Formative Age of the Faith, exploits of their 
spiritual progenitors, the dawn-breakers of the Heroic Age, which 
immortalized the dawn of the first Bahá'í century.  The immediate 
fortunes of the Plan are precariously hanging in the balance.  The three 
months' interval is swiftly running out.  My heart aches at contemplation 
of the possibility of failure of the stalwart community to rise to the 
heights of the occasion.  I refuse to believe that its members, invested 
with unique apostolic mission of `Abdu'l-Bahá, will shrink from meeting 
the most challenging requirement of the present hour. [February 1, 1948] 
 
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