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Chapter XXV:  International Expansion of Teaching Activities
 
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	| 1 | 
	
     While the fabric of the Administrative Order of the Faith of 
Bahá'u'lláh gradually arose, and while through the influence of unforeseen 
forces the independence of the Faith was more and more definitely 
acknowledged by its enemies and demonstrated by its friends, another 
development, no less pregnant with consequences, was at the same time 
being set in motion.  The purpose of this was to extend the borders of 
the Faith, increasing the number of its declared supporters and of its 
administrative centers, and to give a new and ever growing impetus to 
the enriching, the expanding, the diversifying of its literature, and to 
the task of disseminating it farther and farther afield.  Experience 
indeed proved that the very pattern of the Administrative Order, apart 
from other distinctive features, definitely encouraged efficiency and 
expedition in this work of teaching, and its builders found their zeal 
continually quickened and their missionary ardor heightened as the 
Faith moved forward to an ever fuller emancipation.  
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	| 2 | 
	
     Nor were they unmindful of the exhortations, the appeals and the 
promises of the Founders of their Faith, Who, for three quarters of a 
century, had, each in His own way and within the limits circumscribing 
His activities, labored so heroically to noise abroad the fame 
of the Cause Whose destiny an almighty Providence had commissioned 
them to shape.  
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	| 3 | 
	
     The Herald of their Faith had commanded the sovereigns of the 
earth themselves to arise and teach His Cause, writing in the 
Qayyúmu'l-Asmá:  "O concourse of kings!  Deliver with truth and in 
all haste the verses sent down by Us to the peoples of Turkey and of 
India, and beyond them ... to lands in both the East and the West."  
"Issue forth from your cities, O peoples of the West," He, in that same 
Book, had moreover written, "to aid God."  "We behold you from Our 
Most Glorious Horizon," Bahá'u'lláh had thus addressed His followers 
in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, "and will assist whosoever will arise to aid My 
Cause with the hosts of the Concourse on high, and a cohort of the 
angels, who are nigh unto Me."  "...Teach ye the Cause of God, O 
people of Bahá!"  He, furthermore, had written, "for God hath prescribed 
unto every one the duty of proclaiming His message, and 
 
regardeth it as the most meritorious of all deeds."  "Should a man all 
alone," He had clearly affirmed, "arise in the name of Bahá and put on the 
armor of His love, him will the Almighty cause to be victorious, 
though the forces of earth and heaven be arrayed against him."  
"Should any one arise for the triumph of Our Cause," He moreover 
had declared, "him will God render victorious though tens of thousands 
of enemies be leagued against him."  And again:  "Center your energies 
in the propagation of the Faith of God.  Whoso is worthy of so high a 
calling, let him arise and promote it.  Whoso is unable, it is his duty to 
appoint him who will, in his stead, proclaim this Revelation..."  
"They that have forsaken their country," is His own promise, "for the 
purpose of teaching Our Cause--these shall the Faithful Spirit 
strengthen through its power...  Such a service is indeed the prince 
of all goodly deeds, and the ornament of every goodly act."  "In these 
days," `Abdu'l-Bahá had written in His Will, "the most important of 
all things is the guidance of the nations and peoples of the world.  
Teaching the Cause is of the utmost importance, for it is the head 
corner-stone of the foundation itself."  "The disciples of Christ," He 
had declared in that same Document, "forgot themselves and all earthly 
things, forsook all their cares and belongings, purged themselves of self 
and passion, and, with absolute detachment, scattered far and wide, and 
engaged in guiding aright the peoples of the world, till at last they 
made the world another world, illumined the earth, and to their last 
hour proved self-sacrificing in the path of that Beloved One of God.  
Finally, in various lands they suffered martyrdom.  Let men of action 
follow in their footsteps."  "When the hour cometh," He had solemnly 
stated in that same Will, "that this wronged and broken-winged bird 
will have taken its flight unto the celestial concourse ... it is incumbent 
upon ... the friends and loved ones, one and all, to bestir themselves 
and arise, with heart and soul, and in one accord ... to teach 
His Cause and promote His Faith.  It behoveth them not to rest for a 
moment...  They must disperse themselves in every land ... and 
travel throughout all regions.  Bestirred, without rest, and steadfast to 
the end, they must raise in every land the cry of Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá 
(O Thou the Glory of Glories) ... that throughout the East and the 
West a vast concourse may gather under the shadow of the Word of 
God, that the sweet savors of holiness may be wafted, that men's faces 
may be illumined, that their hearts may be filled with the Divine Spirit 
and their souls become heavenly."  
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	| 4 | 
	
     Obedient to these repeated injunctions, mindful of these glowing 
promises, conscious of the sublimity of their calling, spurred on by the 
 
example which `Abdu'l-Bahá Himself had set, undismayed by His sudden 
removal from their midst, undaunted by the attacks launched by 
their adversaries from within and from without, His followers in both 
the East and in the West arose, in the full strength of their solidarity, 
to promote, more vigorously than ever before, the international expansion 
of their Faith, an expansion which was now to assume such proportions 
as to deserve to be recognized as one of the most significant 
developments in the history of the first Bahá'í century.  
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	| 5 | 
	
     Launched in every continent of the globe, at first intermittent, 
haphazard, and unorganized, and later, as a result of the emergence of 
a slowly developing Administrative Order, systematically conducted, 
centrally directed and efficiently prosecuted, the teaching enterprises 
which were undertaken by the followers of Bahá'u'lláh in many lands, 
but conspicuously in America, and which were pursued by members 
of all ages and of both sexes, by neophytes and by veterans, by itinerant 
teachers and by settlers, constitute, by virtue of their range and the 
blessings which have flowed from them, a shining episode that yields 
place to none except those associated with the exploits which have immortalized 
the early years of the primitive age of the Bahá'í Dispensation.  
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	| 6 | 
	
     The light of the Faith which during the nine years of the Bábí 
Dispensation had irradiated Persia, and been reflected on the adjoining 
territory of `Iráq; which in the course of Bahá'u'lláh's thirty-nine-year 
ministry had shed its splendor upon India, Egypt, Turkey, the 
Caucasus, Turkistán, the Súdán, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Burma, 
and which had subsequently, through the impulse of a divinely-instituted 
Covenant, traveled to the United States of America, Canada, 
France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, Holland, 
Hungary, Switzerland, Arabia, Tunisia, China, Japan, the Hawaiian 
Islands, South Africa, Brazil and Australia, was now to be carried to, 
and illuminate, ere the termination of the first Bahá'í century, no less 
than thirty-four independent nations, as well as several dependencies 
situated in the American, the Asiatic and African continents, in the 
Persian Gulf, and in the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.  In Norway, 
in Sweden, in Denmark, in Belgium, in Finland, in Ireland, in Poland, 
in Czechoslovakia, in Rumania, in Yugoslavia, in Bulgaria, in Albania, 
in Afghanistan, in Abyssinia, in New Zealand and in nineteen Latin 
American Republics ensigns of the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh have been 
raised since `Abdu'l-Bahá's passing, and the structural basis of the 
Administrative Order of His Faith, in many of them, already established.  
In several dependencies, moreover, in both the East and the 
 
West, including Alaska, Iceland, Jamaica, Porto Rico, the island of 
Solano in the Philippines, Java, Tasmania, the islands of Bahrayn and 
of Tahiti, Baluchistan, South Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo, 
the bearers of the new born Gospel have established their residence, 
and are bending every effort to lay an impregnable basis for its 
institutions.  
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	| 7 | 
	
     Through lectures and conferences, through the press and radio, 
through the organization of study classes and fire-side gatherings, 
through participation in the activities of societies, institutes and clubs 
animated by ideals akin to the principles of the Faith, through the 
dissemination of Bahá'í literature, through various exhibits, through 
the establishment of teacher training classes, through contact with 
statesmen, scholars, publicists, philanthropists and other leaders of public 
thought--most of which have been carried out through the resourcefulness 
of the members of the American Bahá'í community, 
who have assumed direct responsibility for the spiritual conquest of 
the vast majority of these countries and dependencies--above all 
through the inflexible resolution and unswerving fidelity of pioneers 
who, whether as visiting teachers or as residents, have participated in 
these crusades, have these signal victories been achieved during the 
closing decades of the first Bahá'í century.  
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	| 8 | 
	
     Nor should reference be omitted to the international teaching 
activities of the western followers of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, and 
particularly the members of the stalwart American Bahá'í community, 
who, seizing every opportunity that presented itself to them, have 
either through example, precept or the circulation of literature carried 
the Faith to virgin fields, scattering the seeds which must eventually 
germinate and yield a harvest as notable as those already garnered in 
the aforementioned countries.  Through such efforts as these the 
breezes of God's vitalizing Revelation have been blown upon the uttermost 
corners of the earth, bearing the germ of a new spiritual life to 
such distant climes and inhospitable regions as Lapland; the Island of 
Spitzbergen, the northernmost settlement in the world; Hammerfest, 
in Norway, and Magellanes, in the extremity of Chile--the most 
northerly and southerly cities of the globe respectively; Pago Pago 
and Fiji, in the Pacific Ocean; Chichen Itza, in the province of Yucatan; 
the Bahama Islands, Trinidad and Barbados in the West Indies; 
the Island of Bali and British North Borneo in the East Indies; Patagonia; 
British Guiana; Seychelles Islands; New Guinea and Ceylon.  
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	| 9 | 
	
     Nor can we fail to notice the special endeavors that have been 
exerted by individuals as well as Assemblies for the purpose of establishing 
 
contact with minority groups and races in various parts of the 
world, such as the Jews and Negroes in the United States of America, 
the Eskimos in Alaska, the Patagonian Indians in Argentina, the Mexican 
Indians in Mexico, the Inca Indians in Peru, the Cherokee Indians 
in North Carolina, the Oneida Indians in Wisconsin, the Mayans in 
Yucatan, the Lapps in Northern Scandinavia, and the Maoris in Rotorua, 
New Zealand.  
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	| 10 | 
	
     Of special and valuable assistance has been the institution of an 
international Bahá'í Bureau in Geneva, a center designed primarily to 
facilitate the expansion of the teaching activities of the Faith in the 
European continent, which, as an auxiliary to the world administrative 
center in the Holy Land, has maintained contact with Bahá'í communities 
in the East and in the West.  Serving as a bureau of information 
on the Faith, as well as a distributing center for its literature, it 
has, through its free reading room and lending library, through the 
hospitality extended to itinerant teachers and visiting believers, and 
through its contact with various societies, contributed, in no small 
measure, to the consolidation of the teaching enterprises undertaken by 
individuals as well as Bahá'í National Assemblies.  
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	| 11 | 
	
     Through these teaching activities, some initiated by individual 
believers, others conducted through plans launched by organized 
Assemblies, the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh which, in His lifetime, had included 
within its ranks Persians, Arabs, Turks, Russians, Kurds, 
Indians, Burmese and Negroes, and was later, in the days of `Abdu'l-Bahá, 
reinforced by the inclusion of American, British, German, 
French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, and Armenian converts, could now 
boast of having enrolled amongst its avowed supporters representatives 
of such widely dispersed ethnic groups and nationalities as Hungarians, 
Netherlanders, Irishmen, Scandinavians, Sudanese, Czechs, Bulgarians, 
Finns, Ethiopians, Albanians, Poles, Eskimos, American Indians, Yugoslavians, 
Latin Americans and Maoris.  
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	| 12 | 
	
     So notable an enlargement of the limits of the Faith, so striking 
an increase in the diversity of the elements included within its pale, 
was accompanied by an enormous extension in the volume and the 
circulation of its literature, an extension that sharply contrasted with 
those initial measures undertaken for the publication of the few editions 
of Bahá'u'lláh's writing issued during the concluding years of His 
ministry.  The range of Bahá'í literature, confined during half a 
century, in the days of the Báb and of Bahá'u'lláh, to the two languages 
in which their teachings were originally revealed, and subsequently 
extended, in the lifetime of `Abdu'l-Bahá, to include editions 
 
published in the English, the French, the German, the Turkish, the 
Russian and Burmese languages, was steadily enlarged after His passing, 
through a vast multiplication in the number of books, treatises, 
pamphlets and leaflets, printed and circulated in no less than twenty-nine 
additional languages.  In Spanish and in Portuguese; in the three 
Scandinavian languages, in Finnish and in Icelandic; in Dutch, Italian, 
Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Rumanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek and 
Albanian; in Hebrew and in Esperanto, in Armenian, in Kurdish and 
in Amharic; in Chinese and in Japanese; as well as in five Indian languages, 
namely Urdu, Gujrati, Bengali, Hindi, and Sindhi, books, 
mostly through the initiative of individual Bahá'ís, and partly through 
the intermediary of Bahá'í assemblies, were published, widely distributed, 
and placed in private as well as public libraries in both the East 
and the West.  The literature of the Faith, moreover, is being translated 
at present into Latvian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Tamil, Mahratti, 
Pushtoo, Telegu, Kinarese, Singhalese, Malyalan, Oriya, Punjabi and 
Rajasthani.  
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	| 13 | 
	
     No less remarkable has been the range of the literature produced 
and placed at the disposal of the general public in every continent of 
the globe, and carried by resolute and indefatigable pioneers to the 
furthermost ends of the earth, an enterprise in which the members of 
the American Bahá'í community have again distinguished themselves.  
The publication of an English edition comprising selected passages 
from the more important and hitherto untranslated writings of 
Bahá'u'lláh, as well as of an English version of His "Epistle to the Son 
of the Wolf," and of a compilation, in the same language, of Prayers 
and Meditations revealed by His pen; the translation and publication 
of His "Hidden Words" in eight, of His "Kitáb-i-Íqán" in seven, and 
of `Abdu'l-Bahá's "Some Answered Questions" in six, languages; the 
compilation of the third volume of `Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets translated 
into English; the publication of books and treatises related to the principles 
of Bahá'í belief and to the origin and development of the Administrative 
Order of the Faith; of an English translation of the 
Narrative of the early days of the Bahá'í Revelation, written by the 
chronicler and poet, Nabíl-i-Zarandí, subsequently published in Arabic 
and translated into German and Esperanto; of commentaries and of 
expositions of the Bahá'í teachings, of administrative institutions and 
of kindred subjects, such as world federation, race unity and comparative 
religion by western authors and by former ministers of the Church
--all these attest the diversified character of Bahá'í publications, so 
closely paralleled by their extensive dissemination over the surface of 
 
the globe.  Moreover, the printing of documents related to the laws of 
the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, of books and pamphlets dealing with Biblical 
prophecies, of revised editions of some of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh, of 
`Abdu'l-Bahá and of several Bahá'í authors, of guides and study outlines 
for a wide variety of Bahá'í books and subjects, of lessons in 
Bahá'í Administration, of indexes to Bahá'í books and periodicals, of 
anniversary cards and of calendars, of poems, songs, plays and pageants, 
of study outlines and a prayer-book for the training of Bahá'í children, 
and of news letters, bulletins and periodicals issued in English, Persian, 
German, Esperanto, Arabic, French, Urdu, Burmese and Portuguese 
has contributed to swell the output and increase the diversity of Bahá'í 
publications.  
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	| 14 | 
	
     Of particular value and significance has been the production, over 
a period of many years, of successive volumes of biennial international 
record of Bahá'í activity, profusely illustrated, fully documented, and 
comprising among other things a statement on the aims and purposes 
of the Faith and its Administrative Order, selections from its scriptures, 
a survey of its activities, a list of its centers in five continents, a 
bibliography of its literature, tributes paid to its ideals and achievements 
by prominent men and women in East and West, and articles 
dealing with its relation to present-day problems.  
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	| 15 | 
	
     Nor would any survey of the Bahá'í literature produced during the 
concluding decades of the first Bahá'í century be complete without 
special reference being made to the publication of, and the far-reaching 
influence exerted by, that splendid, authoritative and comprehensive 
introduction to Bahá'í history and teachings, penned by that pure-hearted 
and immortal promoter of the Faith, J. E. Esslemont, which 
has already been printed in no less than thirty-seven languages, and is 
being translated into thirteen additional languages, whose English 
version has already run into tens of thousands, which has been reprinted 
no less than nine times in the United States of America, whose 
Esperanto, Japanese and English versions have been transcribed into 
Braille, and to which royalty has paid its tribute, characterizing it as 
"a glorious book of love and goodness, strength and beauty," commending 
it to all, and affirming that "no man could fail to be better 
because of this Book."  
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	| 16 | 
	
     Deserving special mention, moreover, is the establishment by the 
British National Spiritual Assembly of a Publishing Trust, registered 
as "The Bahá'í Publishing Co." and acting as a publisher and wholesale 
distributor of Bahá'í literature throughout the British Isles; the compilation 
by various Bahá'í Assemblies throughout the East of no less 
 
than forty volumes in manuscript of the authenticated and unpublished 
writings of the Báb, of Bahá'u'lláh and of `Abdu'l-Bahá; the 
translation into English of the Appendix to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, entitled 
"Questions and Answers," as well as the publication in Arabic and 
Persian by the Egyptian and Indian Bahá'í National Spiritual Assemblies 
respectively of the Outline of Bahá'í Laws on Matters of Personal 
Status, and of a brief outline by the latter Assembly of the laws 
relating to the burial of the dead; and the translation of a pamphlet 
into Maori undertaken by a Maori Bahá'í in New Zealand.  Reference 
should also be made to the collection and publication by the Spiritual 
Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Tihrán of a considerable number of the 
addresses delivered by `Abdu'l-Bahá in the course of His Western tours; 
to the preparation of a detailed history of the Faith in Persian; to the 
printing of Bahá'í certificates of marriage and divorce, in both Persian 
and Arabic, by a number of National Spiritual Assemblies in the East; 
to the issuance of birth and death certificates by the Persian Bahá'í 
National Spiritual Assembly; to the preparation of forms of bequest 
available to believers wishing to make a legacy to the Faith; to the 
compilation of a considerable number of the unpublished Tablets of 
`Abdu'l-Bahá by the American Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly; to 
the translation into Esperanto, undertaken by the daughter of the 
famous Zamenhof, herself a convert to the Faith, of several Bahá'í 
books, including some of the more important writings of Bahá'u'lláh 
and of `Abdu'l-Bahá; to the translation of a Bahá'í booklet into Serbian 
by Prof. Bogdan Popovitch, one of the most eminent scholars attached 
to the University of Belgrade, and to the offer spontaneously made by 
Princess Ileana of Rumania (now Arch-Duchess Anton of Austria) to 
render into her own native language a Bahá'í pamphlet written in English, 
and subsequently distributed in her native country.  
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	| 17 | 
	
     The progress made in connection with the transcription of the 
Bahá'í writings into Braille, should also be noted--a transcription 
which already includes such works as the English versions of the 
"Kitáb-i-Íqán," of the "Hidden Words," of the "Seven Valleys," of the 
"Ishráqát," of the "Súriy-i-Haykal," of the "Words of Wisdom," of the 
"Prayers and Meditations of Bahá'u'lláh," of `Abdu'l-Bahá's "Some 
Answered Questions," of the "Promulgation of Universal Peace," of 
the "Wisdom of `Abdu'l-Bahá," of "The Goal of a New World Order," 
as well as of the English (two editions), the Esperanto and the Japanese 
versions of "Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era" and of pamphlets 
written in English, in French and in Esperanto.  
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	| 18 | 
	
     Nor have those who have been primarily responsible for the enrichment 
 
of the literature of the Faith and its translation into so many 
languages, been slow to disseminate it, by every means in their power, 
in their daily intercourse with individuals as well as in their official 
contacts with organizations whom they have been seeking to acquaint 
with the aims and principles of their Faith.  The energy, the vigilance, 
the steadfastness displayed by these heralds of the Faith of 
Bahá'u'lláh and their elected representatives, under whose auspices the 
circulation of Bahá'í literature has, of late years, assumed tremendous 
dimensions, merit the highest praise.  From the reports prepared and 
circulated by the chief agencies entrusted with the task of the publication 
and distribution of this literature in the United States and Canada 
the remarkable facts emerge that, within the space of the eleven 
months ending February 28, 1943, over 19,000 books, 100,000 pamphlets, 
3,000 study outlines, 4,000 sets of selected writings, and 1800 
anniversary and Temple cards and folders had been either sold or distributed; 
that, in the course of two years, 376,000 pamphlets, outlining 
the character and purpose of the House of Worship, erected in the 
United States of America, had been printed; that over 300,000 pieces 
of literature had been distributed at the two World Fairs held in San 
Francisco and New York; that, in a period of twelve months, 1089 
books had been donated to various libraries, and that, through the 
National Contacts Committee, during one year, more than 2,300 letters, 
with over 4,500 pamphlets, had reached authors, radio speakers, 
and representatives of the Jewish and Negro minorities, as well as various 
organizations interested in international affairs.  
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	| 19 | 
	
     In the presentation of this vast literature to men of eminence and 
rank the elected representatives, as well as the traveling teachers, of the 
American Bahá'í community, aided by Assemblies in other lands, have, 
likewise, exhibited an energy and determination as laudable as the 
efforts exerted for its production.  To the King of England, to Queen 
Marie of Rumania, to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the Emperor 
of Japan, to the late President von Hindenburg, to the King of Denmark, 
to the Queen of Sweden, to King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, to the 
Emperor of Abyssinia, to the King of Egypt, to the late King Feisal of 
`Iráq, to King Zog of Albania, to the late President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, 
to the Presidents of Mexico, of Honduras, of Panama, of El-Salvador, 
of Guatemala, and of Porto Rico, to General Chiang Kaishek, 
to the Ex-Khedive of Egypt, to the Crown Prince of Sweden, to 
the Duke of Windsor, to the Duchess of Kent, to the Arch-Duchess 
Anton of Austria, to Princess Olga of Yugoslavia, to Princess Kadria of 
Egypt, to Princess Estelle Bernadotte of Wisborg, to Mahatma Gandhi, 
 
to several ruling princes of India and to the Prime Ministers of all 
the states of the Australian Commonwealth--to these, as well as to 
other personages of lesser rank, Bahá'í literature, touching various 
aspects of the Faith, has been presented, to some personally, to others 
through suitable intermediaries, either by individual believers or by the 
elected representatives of Bahá'í communities.  
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	| 20 | 
	
     Nor have these individual teachers and Assemblies been neglectful 
of their duty to place this literature at the disposal of the public in 
state, university and public libraries, thereby extending the opportunity 
to the great mass of the reading public of familiarizing itself 
with the history and precepts of the Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh.  A mere 
enumeration of a number of the more important of these libraries 
would suffice to reveal the scope of these activities extending over five 
continents:  the British Museum in London, the Bodleian Library at 
Oxford, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Peace Palace 
Library at the Hague, the Nobel Peace Foundation and Nansen Foundation 
Libraries at Oslo, the Royal Library in Copenhagen, the League 
of Nations Library in Geneva, the Hoover Peace Library, the Amsterdam 
University Library, the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, the 
Allahabad University Library, the Aligarh University Library, the 
University of Madras Library, the Shantineketan International University 
Library in Bolepur, the Uthmáníyyih University Library in 
Hyderabad, the Imperial Library in Calcutta, the Jamia Milli Library 
in Delhi, the Mysore University Library, the Bernard Library in Rangoon, 
the Jerabia Wadia Library in Poona, the Lahore Public Library, 
the Lucknow and Delhi University Libraries, the Johannesburg Public 
Library, the Rio de Janeiro Circulating libraries, the Manila National 
Library, the Hong Kong University Library, the Reykjavik public 
libraries, the Carnegie Library in the Seychelles Islands, the Cuban National 
Library, the San Juan Public Library, the Ciudad Trujillo University 
Library, the University and Carnegie Public libraries in Porto 
Rico, the Library of Parliament in Canberra, the Wellington Parliamentary 
Library.  In all these, as well as in all the chief libraries of 
Australia and New Zealand, nine libraries in Mexico, several libraries 
in Mukden, Manchukuo, and more than a thousand public libraries, a 
hundred service libraries and two hundred university and college 
libraries, including Indian colleges, in the United States and Canada, 
authoritative books on the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh have been placed.  
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	| 21 | 
	
     State prisons and, since the outbreak of the war, army libraries have 
been included in the comprehensive scheme which the American 
Bahá'í community has, through a special committee, devised for the 
 
diffusion of the literature of the Faith.  The interests of the blind, too, 
have not been neglected by that alert and enterprising community, 
as is shown by the placing of Bahá'í books, transcribed by its members 
in Braille, in thirty libraries and institutes, in eighteen states of 
the United States of America, in Honolulu (Hawaii), in Regina 
(Saskatchewan), and in the Tokyo and Geneva Libraries for the Blind, 
as well as in a large number of circulating libraries connected with 
public libraries in various large cities of the North American 
continent.  
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	| 22 | 
	
     Nor can I dismiss this subject without singling out for special 
reference her who, not only through her preponderating share in 
initiating measures for the translation and dissemination of Bahá'í 
literature, but above all through her prodigious and indeed unique exertions 
in the international teaching field, has covered herself with a 
glory that has not only eclipsed the achievements of the teachers of 
the Faith among her contemporaries the globe around, but has outshone 
the feats accomplished by any of its propagators in the course of 
an entire century.  To Martha Root, that archetype of Bahá'í itinerant 
teachers and the foremost Hand raised by Bahá'u'lláh since `Abdu'l-Bahá's 
passing, must be awarded, if her manifold services and the 
supreme act of her life are to be correctly appraised, the title of Leading 
Ambassadress of His Faith and Pride of Bahá'í teachers, whether 
men or women, in both the East and the West.  
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	| 23 | 
	
     The first to arise, in the very year the Tablets of the Divine Plan 
were unveiled in the United States of America, in response to the epoch-making 
summons voiced in them by `Abdu'l-Bahá; embarking, with 
unswerving resolve and a spirit of sublime detachment, on her world 
journeys, covering an almost uninterrupted period of twenty years 
and carrying her four times round the globe, in the course of which 
she traveled four times to China and Japan and three times to India, 
visited every important city in South America, transmitted the message 
of the New Day to kings, queens, princes and princesses, presidents 
of republics, ministers and statesmen, publicists, professors, 
clergymen and poets, as well as a vast number of people in various 
walks of life, and contacted, both officially and informally, religious 
congresses, peace societies, Esperanto associations, socialist congresses, 
Theosophical societies, women's clubs and other kindred organizations, 
this indomitable soul has, by virtue of the character of her exertions 
and the quality of the victories she has won, established a record that 
constitutes the nearest approach to the example set by `Abdu'l-Bahá 
 
Himself to His disciples in the course of His journeys throughout the 
West.  
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	| 24 | 
	
     Her eight successive audiences with Queen Marie of Rumania, the 
first of which took place in January, 1926 in Controceni Palace in 
Bucharest, the second in 1927 in Pelisor Palace in Sinaia, followed by 
a visit in January of the ensuing year to her Majesty and her daughter 
Princess Ileana, at the royal palace in Belgrade, where they were staying 
as guests of the King and Queen of Yugoslavia, and later, in 
October, 1929, at the Queen's summer palace "Tehna Yuva," at Balcic, 
on the Black Sea, and again, in August, 1932 and February, 1933, at 
the home of Princess Ileana (now Arch-Duchess Anton of Austria) at 
Mödling, near Vienna, followed a year later, in February, by another 
audience at Controceni Palace, and lastly, in February, 1936, in that 
same palace--these audiences stand out, by reason of the profound 
influence exerted by the visitor on her royal hostess, as witnessed by 
the successive encomiums from the Queen's own pen, as the most outstanding 
feature of those memorable journeys.  The three invitations 
which that indefatigable champion of the Faith received to call on 
Prince Paul and Princess Olga of Yugoslavia at the Royal Palace in 
Belgrade; the lectures which she delivered in over four hundred universities 
and colleges in both the East and the West; her twice repeated 
visits to all German universities with the exception of two, as well as 
to nearly a hundred universities, colleges and schools in China; the 
innumerable articles which she published in newspapers and magazines 
in practically every country she visited; the numerous broadcasts 
which she delivered and the unnumbered books she placed in private 
and state libraries; her personal meetings with the statesmen of more 
than fifty countries, during her three-months stay in Geneva, in 1932, 
at the time of the Disarmament Conference; the painstaking efforts she 
exerted, while on her arduous journeys, in supervising the translation 
and production of a large number of versions of Dr. Esslemont's 
"Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era"; the correspondence exchanged with, 
and the presentation of Bahá'í books to, men of eminence and learning; 
her pilgrimage to Persia, and the touching homage paid by her to 
the memory of the heroes of the Faith when visiting the Bahá'í historic 
sites in that country; her visit to Adrianople, where, in her overflowing 
love for Bahá'u'lláh, she searched out the houses where He had 
dwelt and the people whom He had met during His exile to that city, 
and where she was entertained by its governor and mayor; the ready 
and unfailing assistance extended by her to the administrators of the 
Faith in all countries where its institutions had been erected or were being 
 
established--these may be regarded as the highlights of a service 
which, in many of its aspects, is without parallel in the entire history of 
the first Bahá'í century.  
	 | 
	| 25 | 
	
     No less impressive is the list of the names of those whom she interviewed 
in the course of the execution of her mission, including, in 
addition to those already mentioned, such royal personages and distinguished 
figures as King Haakon of Norway; King Feisal of `Iráq; 
King Zog of Albania and members of his family; Princess Marina of 
Greece (now the Duchess of Kent); Princess Elizabeth of Greece; 
President Thomas G. Masaryk and President Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia; 
the President of Austria; Dr. Sun Yat Sen; Dr. Nicholas Murray 
Butler, President of Columbia University; Prof. Bogdan Popovitch 
of Belgrade University; the Foreign Minister of Turkey, Tawfíq 
Rushdí Bey; the Chinese Foreign Minister and Minister of Education; 
the Lithuanian Foreign Minister; Prince Muhammad-`Alí of Egypt; 
Stephen Raditch; the Maharajas of Patiala, of Benares, and of Travancore; 
the Governor and the Grand Muftí of Jerusalem; Dr. Erling 
Eidem, Archbishop of Sweden; Sarojini Naidu; Sir Rabindranath 
Tagore; Madame Huda Sha'raví, the Egyptian feminist leader; Dr. K. 
Ichiki, minister of the Japanese Imperial Household; Prof. Tetrujiro 
Inouye, Prof. Emeritus of the Imperial University of Tokyo; Baron 
Yoshiro Sakatani, member of the House of Peers of Japan and Mehmed 
Fuad, Doyen of the Faculty of Letters and President of the Institute 
of Turkish history.  
	 | 
	| 26 | 
	
     Neither age nor ill-health, neither the paucity of literature which 
hampered her early efforts, nor the meager resources which imposed 
an added burden on her labors, neither the extremities of the climates 
to which she was exposed, nor the political disturbances which she 
encountered in the course of her journeys, could damp the zeal or 
deflect the purpose of this spiritually dynamic and saintly woman.  
Single-handed and, on more than one occasion, in extremely perilous 
circumstances, she continued to call, in clarion tones, men of diverse 
creeds, color and classes to the Message of Bahá'u'lláh, until, while in 
spite of a deadly and painful disease, the onslaught of which she endured 
with heroic fortitude, she hastened homeward to help in the 
recently launched Seven Year Plan, she was stricken down on her way, 
in far off Honolulu.  There in that symbolic spot between the Eastern 
and Western Hemispheres, in both of which she had labored so mightily, 
she died, on September 28, 1939, and brought to its close a life which 
may well be regarded as the fairest fruit as yet yielded by the Formative 
Age of the Dispensation of Bahá'u'lláh.  
 
	 | 
	| 27 | 
	
     To the injunction of `Abdu'l-Bahá bequeathed in His Will to follow 
in the footsteps of the disciples of Jesus Christ, "not to rest for a 
moment," to "travel throughout all regions" and to raise, "without rest 
and steadfast to the end," "in every land, the cry of `Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá,'" 
this immortal heroine yielded an obedience of which the present 
as well as future generations may well be proud, and which they 
may emulate.  
	 | 
	| 28 | 
	
     "Unrestrained as the wind," putting her "whole trust" in God, as 
"the best provision" for her journey, she fulfilled almost to the letter 
the wish so poignantly expressed by `Abdu'l-Bahá in the Tablets, whose 
summons she had instantly arisen to carry out:  "O that I could travel, 
even though on foot and in the utmost poverty, to these regions, and, 
raising the call of `Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá in cities, villages, mountains, 
deserts and oceans, promote the Divine teachings!  This, alas, I cannot 
do.  How intensely I deplore it!  Please God, ye may achieve it."  
	 | 
	| 29 | 
	
     "I am deeply distressed to hear of the death of good Miss Martha 
Root," is the royal tribute paid to her memory by Princess Olga of 
Yugoslavia, on being informed of her death, "as I had no idea of it.  We 
always enjoyed her visits in the past.  She was so kind and gentle, and 
a real worker for peace.  I am sure she will be sadly missed in her work."  
	 | 
	| 30 | 
	
     "Thou art, in truth, a herald of the Kingdom and a harbinger of 
the Covenant," is the testimony from the unerring pen of the Center 
of Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant Himself, "Thou art truly self-sacrificing.  
Thou showest kindness unto all nations.  Thou art sowing a seed that 
shall, in due time, give rise to thousands of harvests.  Thou art planting 
a tree that shall eternally put forth leaves and blossoms and yield fruits, 
and whose shadow shall day by day grow in magnitude."  
	 | 
	| 31 | 
	
     Of all the services rendered the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh by this star 
servant of His Faith, the most superb and by far the most momentous 
has been the almost instantaneous response evoked in Queen Marie of 
Rumania to the Message which that ardent and audacious pioneer had 
carried to her during one of the darkest moments of her life, an hour 
of bitter need, perplexity and sorrow.  "It came," she herself in a letter 
had testified, "as all great messages come, at an hour of dire grief and 
inner conflict and distress, so the seed sank deeply."  
	 | 
	| 32 | 
	
     Eldest daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh, who was the second 
son of that Queen to whom Bahá'u'lláh had, in a significant Tablet, 
addressed words of commendation; granddaughter of Czar Alexander 
II to whom an Epistle had been revealed by that same Pen; related by 
both birth and marriage to Europe's most prominent families; born in 
the Anglican Faith; closely associated through her marriage with the 
 
Greek Orthodox Church, the state religion of her adopted country; 
herself an accomplished authoress; possessed of a charming and radiant 
personality; highly talented, clear-visioned, daring and ardent by 
nature; keenly devoted to all enterprises of a humanitarian character, 
she, alone among her sister-queens, alone among all those of royal birth 
or station, was moved to spontaneously acclaim the greatness of the 
Message of Bahá'u'lláh, to proclaim His Fatherhood, as well as the 
Prophethood of Muhammad, to commend the Bahá'í teachings to all 
men and women, and to extol their potency, sublimity and beauty.  
	 | 
	| 33 | 
	
     Through the fearless acknowledgment of her belief to her own kith 
and kin, and particularly to her youngest daughter; through three 
successive encomiums that constitute her greatest and abiding legacy 
to posterity; through three additional appreciations penned by her as 
her contribution to Bahá'í publications; through several letters written 
to friends and associates, as well as those addressed to her guide and 
spiritual mother; through various tokens expressive of faith and gratitude 
for the glad-tidings that had been brought to her through the 
orders for Bahá'í books placed by her and her youngest daughter; and 
lastly through her frustrated pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the express 
purpose of paying homage at the graves of the Founders of the 
Faith--through such acts as these this illustrious queen may well deserve 
to rank as the first of those royal supporters of the Cause of God 
who are to arise in the future, and each of whom, in the words of 
Bahá'u'lláh Himself, is to be acclaimed as "the very eye of mankind, 
the luminous ornament on the brow of creation, the fountainhead 
of blessings unto the whole world."  
	 | 
	| 34 | 
	
     "Some of those of my caste," she, in a personal letter, has significantly 
testified, "wonder at and disapprove my courage to step forward 
pronouncing words not habitual for crowned heads to pronounce, but 
I advance by an inner urge I cannot resist.  With bowed head I recognize 
that I too am but an instrument in greater Hands, and I rejoice 
in the knowledge."  
	 | 
	| 35 | 
	
     A note which Martha Root, upon her arrival in Bucharest, sent to 
her Majesty and a copy of "Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era," which 
accompanied the note, and which so absorbed the Queen's attention 
that she continued reading it into the small hours of the morning, led, 
two days later, to the Queen's granting Martha Root an audience, on 
January 30, 1926, in Controceni Palace in Bucharest, in the course of 
which her Majesty avowed her belief that "these teachings are the solution 
for the world's problems"; and from these followed her publication, 
that same year on her own initiative, of those three epoch-making 
 
testimonies which appeared in nearly two hundred newspapers of the 
United States and Canada, and which were subsequently translated 
and published in Europe, China, Japan, Australia, the Near East and 
the Islands of the seas.  
	 | 
	| 36 | 
	
     In the first of these testimonies she affirmed that the writings of 
Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá are "a great cry toward peace, reaching 
beyond all limits of frontiers, above all dissensions about rites and 
dogmas...  It is a wondrous message that Bahá'u'lláh and His Son 
`Abdu'l-Bahá have given us!  They have not set it up aggressively, 
knowing that the germ of eternal truth which lies at its core cannot 
but take root and spread...  It is Christ's message taken up anew, 
in the same words almost, but adapted to the thousand years and more 
difference that lies between the year one and today."  She added a remarkable 
admonition, reminiscent of the telling words of Dr. Benjamin 
Jowett, who had hailed the Faith, in his conversation with his 
pupil, Prof. Lewis Campbell, as "the greatest light that has come into 
the world since the time of Jesus Christ," and cautioned him to 
"watch it" and never let it out of his sight.  "If ever," wrote the Queen, 
"the name of Bahá'u'lláh or `Abdu'l-Bahá comes to your attention, do 
not put their writings from you.  Search out their books, and let their 
glorious, peace-bringing, love-creating words and lessons sink into your 
hearts as they have into mine...  Seek them and be the happier."  
	 | 
	| 37 | 
	
     In another of these testimonies, wherein she makes a significant 
comment on the station of the Arabian Prophet, she declared:  "God is 
all.  Everything.  He is the power behind all beings...  His is the 
voice within us that shows us good and evil.  But mostly we ignore or 
misunderstand this voice.  Therefore, did He choose His Elect to come 
down amongst us upon earth to make clear His Word, His real meaning.  
Therefore the Prophets; therefore Christ, Muhammad, Bahá'u'lláh, 
for man needs from time to time a voice upon earth to bring God 
to him, to sharpen the realization of the existence of the true God.  
Those voices sent to us had to become flesh, so that with our earthly 
ears we should be able to hear and understand."  
	 | 
	| 38 | 
	
     In appreciation of these testimonies a communication was addressed 
to her, in the name of the followers of Bahá'u'lláh in East and 
West, and in the course of the deeply touching letter which she sent 
in reply she wrote:  "Indeed a great light came to me with the Message of 
Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá...  My youngest daughter finds also 
great strength and comfort in the teachings of the beloved Masters.  
We pass on the Message from mouth to mouth, and all those we give 
it to see a light suddenly lighting before them, and much that was 
 
obscure and perplexing becomes simple, luminous and full of hope as 
never before.  That my open letter was a balm to those suffering for 
the Cause, is indeed a great happiness to me, and I take it as a sign 
that God accepted my humble tribute.  The occasion given me to be 
able to express myself publicly was also His work, for indeed it was a 
chain of circumstances of which each link led me unwittingly one step 
further, till suddenly all was clear before my eyes and I understood 
why it had been.  Thus does He lead us finally to our ultimate destiny 
...Little by little the veil is lifting, grief tore it in two.  And grief 
was also a step leading me ever nearer truth; therefore do I not cry 
out against grief!"  
	 | 
	| 39 | 
	
     In a significant and moving letter to an intimate American friend 
of hers, residing in Paris, she wrote:  "Lately a great hope has come to 
me from one `Abdu'l-Bahá.  I have found in His and His Father, 
Bahá'u'lláh's Message of faith, all my yearning for real religion satisfied 
...What I mean:  these Books have strengthened me beyond 
belief, and I am now ready to die any day full of hope.  But I pray 
God not to take me away yet, for I still have a lot of work to do."  
	 | 
	| 40 | 
	
     And again in one of her later appreciations of the Faith:  "The Bahá'í 
teaching brings peace and understanding.  It is like a wide embrace 
gathering all those who have long searched for words of hope...  
Saddened by the continual strife amongst believers of many confessions 
and wearied of their intolerance towards each other, I discovered in 
the Bahá'í teaching the real spirit of Christ so often denied and 
misunderstood."  And again, this wonderful confession:  "The Bahá'í 
teaching brings peace to the soul and hope to the heart.  To those in 
search of assurance the words of the Father are as a fountain in the 
desert after long wandering."  
	 | 
	| 41 | 
	
     "The beautiful truth of Bahá'u'lláh," she wrote to Martha Root, 
"is with me always, a help and an inspiration.  What I wrote was because 
my heart overflowed with gratitude for the reflection you 
brought me.  I am happy if you think I helped.  I thought it might 
bring truth nearer because my words are read by so many."  
	 | 
	| 42 | 
	
     In the course of a visit to the Near East she expressed her intention 
of visiting the Bahá'í Shrines, and, accompanied by her youngest 
daughter, actually passed through Haifa, and was within sight of her 
goal, when she was denied the right to make the pilgrimage she had 
planned--to the keen disappointment of the aged Greatest Holy Leaf 
who had eagerly expected her arrival.  A few months later, in June, 
1931, she wrote in the course of a letter to Martha Root:  "Both Ileana 
and I were cruelly disappointed at having been prevented going to the 
 
holy Shrines ... but at that time we were going through a cruel 
crisis, and every movement I made was being turned against me and 
being politically exploited in an unkind way.  It caused me a good 
deal of suffering and curtailed my liberty most unkindly...  But 
the beauty of truth remains, and I cling to it through all the vicissitudes 
of a life become rather sad...  I am glad to hear that your 
traveling has been so fruitful, and I wish you continual success 
knowing what a beautiful Message you are carrying from land 
to land."  
	 | 
	| 43 | 
	
     After this sad disappointment she wrote to a friend of her childhood 
who dwelt near Akká, in a house formerly occupied by Bahá'u'lláh:  
"It was indeed nice to hear from you, and to think that you are 
of all things living near Haifa and are, as I am, a follower of the Bahá'í 
teachings.  It interests me that you are living in that special house...  
I was so intensely interested and studied each photo intently.  It must 
be a lovely place ... and the house you live in, so incredibly attractive 
and made precious by its associations with the Man we all 
venerate..."  
	 | 
	| 44 | 
	
     Her last public tribute to the Faith she had dearly loved was made 
two years before her death.  "More than ever today," she wrote, "when 
the world is facing such a crisis of bewilderment and unrest, must we 
stand firm in Faith seeking that which binds together instead of tearing 
asunder.  To those searching for light, the Bahá'í teachings offer a 
star which will lead them to deeper understanding, to assurance, peace 
and goodwill with all men."  
	 | 
	| 45 | 
	
     Martha Root's own illuminating record is given in one of her 
articles as follows:  "For ten years Her Majesty and her daughter, 
H.R.H. Princess Ileana (now Arch-Duchess Anton) have read with 
interest each new book about the Bahá'í Movement, as soon as it came 
from the press...  Received in audience by Her Majesty in Pelisor 
Palace, Sinaia, in 1927, after the passing of His Majesty King Ferdinand, 
her husband, she graciously gave me an interview, speaking of 
the Bahá'í teachings about immortality.  She had on her table and on 
the divan a number of Bahá'í books, for she had just been reading in 
each of them the Teachings about life after death.  She asked the writer 
to give her greeting to ... the friends in Írán and to the many 
American Bahá'ís, who she said had been so remarkably kind to her 
during her trip through the United States the year before...  Meeting 
the Queen again on January 19, 1928, in the Royal Palace in Belgrade, 
where she and H.R.H. Princess Ileana were guests of the Queen 
of Yugoslavia--and they had brought some of their Bahá'í books with 
 
them--the words that I shall remember longest of all that her dear 
Majesty said were these:  `The ultimate dream which we shall realize is 
that the Bahá'í channel of thought has such strength, it will serve 
little by little to become a light to all those searching for the real 
expression of Truth'...  Then in the audience in Controceni Palace, on 
February 16, 1934, when her Majesty was told that the Rumanian 
translation of `Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era' had just been published 
in Bucharest, she said she was so happy that her people were to have 
the blessing of reading this precious teaching...  And now today, 
February 4, 1936, I have just had another audience with Her Majesty 
in Controceni Palace, in Bucharest...  Again Queen Marie of Rumania 
received me cordially in her softly lighted library, for the hour 
was six o'clock...  What a memorable visit it was!...  She also 
told me that when she was in London she had met a Bahá'í, Lady 
Blomfield, who had shown her the original Message that Bahá'u'lláh 
had sent to her grand-mother, Queen Victoria, in London.  She asked 
the writer about the progress of the Bahá'í Movement, especially in the 
Balkan countries...  She spoke too of several Bahá'í books, the 
depths of "Íqán," and especially of "Gleanings from the Writings of 
Bahá'u'lláh," which she said was a wonderful book!  To quote her own 
words:  `Even doubters would find a powerful strength in it, if they 
would read it alone, and would give their souls time to expand.'  
...I asked her if I could perhaps speak of the brooch which historically 
is precious to Bahá'ís, and she replied, `Yes, you may.'  Once, 
and it was in 1928, Her dear Majesty had given the writer a gift, a 
lovely and rare brooch which had been a gift to the Queen from her 
royal relatives in Russia some years ago.  It was two little wings of 
wrought gold and silver, set with tiny diamond chips, and joined 
together with one large pearl.  `Always you are giving gifts to others, 
and I am going to give you a gift from me,' said the Queen smiling, and 
she herself clasped it onto my dress.  The wings and the pearl made it 
seem `Light-bearing' Bahá'í!  It was sent the same week to Chicago as 
a gift to the Bahá'í Temple ... and at the National Bahá'í Convention 
which was in session that spring, a demur was made--should a 
gift from the Queen be sold?  Should it not be kept as a souvenir of the 
first Queen who arose to promote the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh?  However, 
it was sold immediately and the money given to the Temple, for all 
Bahá'ís were giving to the utmost to forward this mighty structure, 
the first of its kind in the United States of America.  Mr. Willard 
Hatch, a Bahá'í of Los Angeles, Calif., who bought the exquisite 
brooch, took it to Haifa, Palestine, in 1931, and placed it in the 
 
Archives on Mt. Carmel, where down the ages it will rest with the 
Bahá'í treasures..."  
	 | 
	| 46 | 
	
     In July, 1938, Queen Marie of Rumania passed away.  A message 
of condolence was communicated, in the name of all Bahá'í communities 
in East and West, to her daughter, the Queen of Yugoslavia, to 
which she replied expressing "sincere thanks to all of Bahá'u'lláh's 
followers."  The National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of Persia 
addressed, on behalf of the followers of the Faith in Bahá'u'lláh's native 
land, a letter expressive of grief and sympathy to her son, the King of 
Rumania and the Rumanian Royal Family, the text of which was in 
both Persian and English.  An expression of profound and loving 
sympathy was sent by Martha Root to Princess Ileana, and was gratefully 
acknowledged by her.  Memorial gatherings were held in the 
Queen's memory, at which a meed of honor was paid to her bold and 
epochal confession of faith in the Fatherhood of Bahá'u'lláh, to her 
recognition of the station of the Prophet of Islám and to the several 
encomiums from her pen.  On the first anniversary of her death the 
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the United States and 
Canada demonstrated its grateful admiration and affection for the 
deceased Queen by associating itself, through an imposing floral offering, 
with the impressive memorial service, held in her honor, and 
arranged by the Rumanian Minister, in Bethlehem Chapel, at the 
Cathedral of Washington, D.C., at which the American delegation, 
headed by the Secretary of State and including government officials 
and representatives of the Army and Navy, the British, French and 
Italian Ambassadors, and representatives of other European embassies 
and legations joined in a common tribute to one who, apart from the 
imperishable renown achieved by her in the Kingdom of Bahá'u'lláh, 
had earned, in this earthly life, the esteem and love of many a soul 
living beyond the confines of her own country.  
	 | 
	| 47 | 
	
     Queen Marie's acknowledgment of the Divine Message stands as 
the first fruits of the vision which Bahá'u'lláh had seen long before in 
His captivity, and had announced in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas.  "How great," 
He wrote, "the blessedness that awaits the King who will arise to aid 
My Cause in My Kingdom, who will detach himself from all else but 
Me!...  All must glorify his name, must reverence his station, and 
aid him to unlock the cities with the keys of My Name, the Omnipotent 
Protector of all that inhabit the visible and invisible kingdoms.  
Such a king is the very eye of mankind, the luminous ornament on the 
brow of creation, the fountain-head of blessings unto the whole world.  
 
Offer up, O people of Bahá, your substance, nay your very lives for 
his assistance."  
	 | 
	| 48 | 
	
     The American Bahá'í community, crowned with imperishable 
glory by these signal international services of Martha Root, was destined, 
as the first Bahá'í century drew to a close, to distinguish itself, 
through the concerted efforts of its members, both at home and abroad, 
by further achievements of such scope and quality that no survey of 
the teaching activities of the Faith in the course of that century can 
afford to ignore them.  It would be no exaggeration to say that these 
colossal achievements, with the amazing results which flowed from 
them, could only have been effected through the harnessing of all the 
agencies of a newly established Administrative Order, operating in 
conformity with a carefully conceived Plan, and that they constitute 
a befitting conclusion to the record of a hundred years of sublime 
endeavor in the service of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh.  
	 | 
	| 49 | 
	
     That the community of His followers in the United States and 
Canada should have carried off the palm of victory in the concluding 
years of such a glorious century is not a matter for surprise.  Its 
accomplishments during the last two decades of the Heroic, and throughout 
the first fifteen years of the Formative Age of the Bahá'í Dispensation, 
had already augured well for its future, and had paved the way for 
its final victory ere the expiration of the first century of the Bahá'í 
Era.  
	 | 
	| 50 | 
	
     The Báb had in His Qayyúmu'l-Asmá, almost a hundred years 
previously, sounded His specific summons to the "peoples of the West" 
to "issue forth" from their "cities" and aid His Cause.  Bahá'u'lláh, in 
His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, had collectively addressed the Presidents of the 
Republics of the entire Americas, bidding them arise and "bind with 
the hands of justice the broken," and "crush the oppressor" with the 
"rod of the commandments" of their Lord, and had, moreover, anticipated 
in His writings the appearance "in the West" of the "signs of His 
Dominion."  `Abdu'l-Bahá had, on His part, declared that the "illumination" 
shed by His Father's Revelation upon the West would acquire 
an "extraordinary brilliancy," and that the "light of the Kingdom" 
would "shed a still greater illumination upon the West" than upon the 
East.  He had extolled the American continent in particular as "the 
land wherein the splendors of His Light shall be revealed, where the 
mysteries of His Faith shall be unveiled," and affirmed that "it will lead 
all nations spiritually."  More specifically still, He had singled out the 
Great Republic of the West, the leading nation of that continent, 
declaring that its people were "indeed worthy of being the first to 
 
build the Tabernacle of the Most Great Peace and proclaim the oneness 
of mankind," that it was "equipped and empowered to accomplish 
that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the 
world, and be blest in both the East and the West."  
	 | 
	| 51 | 
	
     The first act of His ministry had been to unfurl the standard of 
Bahá'u'lláh in the very heart of that Republic.  This was followed by 
His own prolonged visit to its shores, by His dedication of the first 
House of Worship to be built by the community of His disciples in 
that land, and finally by the revelation, in the evening of His life, 
of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, investing His disciples with a mandate 
to plant the banner of His Father's Faith, as He had planted it in 
their own land, in all the continents, the countries and islands of the 
globe.  He had, furthermore, acclaimed one of their most celebrated 
presidents as one who, through the ideals he had expounded and the 
institutions he had inaugurated, had caused the "dawn" of the Peace 
anticipated by Bahá'u'lláh to break; had voiced the hope that from 
their country "heavenly illumination" may "stream to all the peoples 
of the world"; had designated them in those Tablets as "Apostles of 
Bahá'u'lláh"; had assured them that, "should success crown" their 
"enterprise," "the throne of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude 
of its majesty and glory, be firmly established"; and had made the 
stirring announcement that "the moment this Divine Message is propagated" 
by them "through the continents of Europe, of Asia, of Africa 
and of Australasia, and as far as the islands of the Pacific, this community 
will find itself securely established upon the throne of an everlasting 
dominion," and that "the whole earth" would "resound with the 
praises of its majesty and greatness."  
	 | 
	| 52 | 
	
     That Community had already, in the lifetime of Him Who had 
created it, tenderly nursed and repeatedly blessed it, and had at last 
conferred upon it so distinctive a mission, arisen to launch the enterprise 
of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár through the purchase of its land and 
the laying of its foundations.  It had despatched its teachers to the 
East and to the West to propagate the Cause it had espoused, had established 
the basis of its community life, and had, since His passing, 
erected the superstructure and commenced the external ornamentation 
of its Temple.  It had, moreover, assumed a preponderating share 
in the task of erecting the framework of the Administrative Order of 
the Faith, of championing its cause, of demonstrating its independent 
character, of enriching and disseminating its literature, of lending 
moral and material assistance to its persecuted followers, of repelling 
the assaults of its adversaries and of winning the allegiance of royalty 
 
to its Founder.  Such a splendid record was to culminate, as the century 
approached its end, in the initiation of a Plan--the first stage in the 
execution of the Mission entrusted to it by `Abdu'l-Bahá--which, 
within the space of seven brief years, was to bring to a successful completion 
the exterior ornamentation of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár, to 
almost double the number of Spiritual Assemblies functioning in the 
North American continent, to bring the total number of localities in 
which Bahá'ís reside to no less than thirteen hundred and twenty-two 
in that same continent, to establish the structural basis of the Administrative 
Order in every state of the United States and every province 
of Canada, and by laying a firm anchorage in each of the twenty 
Republics of Central and South America, to swell to sixty the number 
of the sovereign states included within its orbit.  
	 | 
	| 53 | 
	
     Many and diverse forces combined now to urge the American 
Bahá'í community to strong action:  the glowing exhortations and 
promises of Bahá'u'lláh and His behest to erect in His name Houses of 
Worship; the directions issued by `Abdu'l-Bahá in fourteen Tablets 
addressed to the believers residing in the Western, the Central, the 
North Eastern and Southern States of the North American Republic 
and in the Dominion of Canada; His prophetic utterances regarding 
the future of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár in America; the influence of the 
new Administrative Order in fostering and rendering effective an eager 
spirit of cooperation; the example of Martha Root who, though 
equipped with no more than a handful of inadequately translated 
leaflets, had traveled to South America and visited every important city 
in that continent; the tenacity and self-sacrifice of the fearless and 
brilliant Keith Ransom-Kehler, the first American martyr, who, journeying 
to Persia had pleaded in numerous interviews with ministers, 
ecclesiastics and government officials the cause of her down-trodden 
brethren in that land, had addressed no less than seven petitions to the 
Sháh, and, heedless of the warnings of age and ill-health, had at last 
succumbed in Isfahán.  Other factors which spurred the members of 
that community to fresh sacrifices and adventure were their eagerness 
to reinforce the work intermittently undertaken through the settlement 
and travels of a number of pioneers, who had established the 
first center of the Faith in Brazil, circumnavigated the South American 
continent and visited the West Indies and distributed literature 
in various countries of Central and South America; the consciousness 
of their pressing responsibilities in the face of a rapidly deteriorating 
international situation; the realization that the first Bahá'í century was 
fast speeding to a close and their anxiety to bring to a befitting conclusion 
 
an enterprise that had been launched thirty years previously.  
Undeterred by the immensity of the field, the power wielded by firmly 
entrenched ecclesiastical organizations, the political instability of some 
of the countries in which they were to settle, the climatic conditions 
they were to encounter, and the difference in language and custom of 
the people amongst whom they were to reside, and keenly aware of the 
crying needs of the Faith in the North American continent, the members 
of the American Bahá'í community arose, as one man, to inaugurate 
a threefold campaign, carefully planned and systematically conducted, 
designed to establish a Spiritual Assembly in every virgin state 
and province in North America, to form a nucleus of resident believers 
in each of the Republics of Central and South America, and to consummate 
the exterior ornamentation of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár.  
	 | 
	| 54 | 
	
     A hundred activities, administrative and educational, were devised 
and pursued for the prosecution of this noble Plan.  Through the 
liberal contribution of funds; through the establishment of an Inter-America 
Committee and the formation of auxiliary Regional Teaching 
Committees; through the founding of an International School to 
provide training for Bahá'í teachers; through the settlement of 
pioneers in virgin areas and the visits of itinerant teachers; through 
the dissemination of literature in Spanish and Portuguese; through the 
initiation of teacher training courses and extension work by groups and 
local Assemblies; through newspaper and radio publicity; through the 
exhibition of Temple slides and models; through inter-community 
conferences and lectures delivered in universities and colleges; through 
the intensification of teaching courses and Latin American studies at 
summer schools--through these and other activities the prosecutors of 
this Seven-Year Plan have succeeded in sealing the triumph of what 
must be regarded as the greatest collective enterprise ever launched by 
the followers of Bahá'u'lláh in the entire history of the first Bahá'í 
century.  
	 | 
	| 55 | 
	
     Indeed, ere the expiry of that century not only had the work on 
the Temple been completed sixteen months before the appointed time, 
but instead of one tiny nucleus in every Latin Republic, Spiritual Assemblies 
had already been established in Mexico City and Puebla 
(Mexico), in Buenos Aires (Argentina), in Guatemala City (Guatemala), 
in Santiago (Chile), in Montevideo (Uruguay), in Quito 
(Ecuador), in Bogotà (Colombia), in Lima (Peru), in Asuncion 
(Paraguay), in Tegucigalpa (Honduras), in San Salvador (El-Salvador), 
in San José and Puntarenas (Costa Rica), in Havana (Cuba) 
and in Port-au-Prince (Haiti).  Extension work, in which newly 
 
fledged Latin American believers were participating, had, moreover, 
been initiated, and was being vigorously carried out, in the Republics 
of Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Panama and Costa Rica; 
believers had established their residence not only in the capital 
cities of all the Latin American Republics, but also in such centers as 
Veracruz, Cananea and Tacubaya (Mexico), in Balboa and Christobal 
(Panama), in Recife (Brazil), in Guayaquil and Ambato (Ecuador), 
and in Temuco and Magellanes (Chile); the Spiritual Assemblies of the 
Bahá'ís of Mexico City and of San José had been incorporated; in the 
former city a Bahá'í center, comprising a library, a reading room and a 
lecture room, had been founded; Bahá'í Youth Symposiums had been 
observed in Havana, Buenos Aires and Santiago, whilst a distributing 
center of Bahá'í literature for Latin America had been established in 
Buenos Aires.  
	 | 
	| 56 | 
	
     Nor was this gigantic enterprise destined to be deprived, in its 
initial stage, of a blessing that was to cement the spiritual union of the 
Americas--a blessing flowing from the sacrifice of one who, at the 
very dawn of the Day of the Covenant, had been responsible for the 
establishment of the first Bahá'í centers in both Europe and the 
Dominion of Canada, and who, though seventy years of age and suffering 
from ill-health, undertook a six thousand mile voyage to the 
capital of Argentina, where, while still on the threshold of her pioneer 
service, she suddenly passed away, imparting through such a death to 
the work initiated in that Republic an impetus which has already 
enabled it, through the establishment of a distributing center of 
Bahá'í literature for Latin America and through other activities, to 
assume the foremost position among its sister Republics.  
	 | 
	| 57 | 
	
     To May Maxwell, laid to rest in the soil of Argentina; to Hyde 
Dunn, whose dust reposes in the Antipodes, in the city of Sydney; to 
Keith Ransom-Kehler, entombed in distant Isfahán; to Susan Moody 
and Lillian Kappes and their valiant associates who lie buried in Tihrán; 
to Lua Getsinger, reposing forever in the capital of Egypt, and last 
but not least to Martha Root, interred in an island in the bosom of the 
Pacific, belong the matchless honor of having conferred, through their 
services and sacrifice, a lustre upon the American Bahá'í community 
for which its representatives, while celebrating at their historic, their 
first All-American Convention, their hard-won victories, may well feel 
eternally grateful.  
	 | 
	| 58 | 
	
     Gathered within the walls of its national Shrine--the most sacred 
Temple ever to be reared to the glory of Bahá'u'lláh; commemorating 
at once the centenary of the birth of the Bábí Dispensation, of the 
 
inauguration of the Bahá'í era, of the inception of the Bahá'í Cycle 
and of the birth of `Abdu'l-Bahá, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of 
the establishment of the Faith in the Western Hemisphere; associated 
in its celebration with the representatives of American Republics, foregathered 
in the close vicinity of a city that may well pride itself on 
being the first Bahá'í center established in the Western world, this 
community may indeed feel, on this solemn occasion, that it has, in its 
turn, through the triumphal conclusion of the first stage of the Plan 
traced for it by `Abdu'l-Bahá, shed a lasting glory upon its sister communities 
in East and West, and written, in golden letters, the concluding 
pages in the annals of the first Bahá'í century.  
 
	 | 
	| 59 | 
	
                           Retrospect and Prospect 
 
	 | 
	| 60 | 
	
     Thus drew to a close the first century of the Bahá'í era--an 
epoch which, in its sublimity and fecundity, is without parallel in the 
entire field of religious history, and indeed in the annals of mankind.  
A process, God-impelled, endowed with measureless potentialities, 
mysterious in its workings, awful in the retribution meted out to 
every one seeking to resist its operation, infinitely rich in its promise 
for the regeneration and redemption of human kind, had been set in 
motion in Shíráz, had gained momentum successively in Tihrán, 
Baghdád, Adrianople and Akká, had projected itself across the seas, 
poured its generative influences into the West, and manifested the 
initial evidences of its marvelous, world-energizing force in the midst 
of the North American continent.  
	 | 
	| 61 | 
	
     It had sprung from the heart of Asia, and pressing westward had 
gathered speed in its resistless course, until it had encircled the earth 
with a girdle of glory.  It had been generated by the son of a mercer 
in the province of Fárs, had been reshaped by a nobleman of Núr, 
had been reinforced through the exertions of One Who had spent the 
fairest years of His youth and manhood in exile and imprisonment, 
and had achieved its most conspicuous triumphs in a country and 
amidst a people living half the circumference of the globe distant from 
the land of its origin.  It had repulsed every onslaught directed against 
it, torn down every barrier opposing its advance, abased every proud 
antagonist who had sought to sap its strength, and had exalted to 
heights of incredible courage the weakest and humblest among those 
who had arisen and become willing instruments of its revolutionizing 
power.  Heroic struggles and matchless victories, interwoven with 
appalling tragedies and condign punishments, have formed the pattern 
of its hundred year old history.  
	 | 
	| 62 | 
	
     A handful of students, belonging to the Shaykhí school, sprung 
from the Ithná-`Ash'áríyyih sect of Shí'ah Islám, had, in consequence 
of the operation of this process, been expanded and transformed into 
a world community, closely knit, clear of vision, alive, consecrated 
by the sacrifice of no less than twenty thousand martyrs; supranational; 
non-sectarian; non-political; claiming the status, and assuming 
the functions, of a world religion; spread over five continents and 
the islands of the seas; with ramifications extending over sixty sovereign 
 
states and seventeen dependencies; equipped with a literature 
translated and broadcast in forty languages; exercising control over 
endowments representing several million dollars; recognized by a 
number of governments in both the East and the West; integral in 
aim and outlook; possessing no professional clergy; professing a 
single belief; following a single law; animated by a single purpose; 
organically united through an Administrative Order, divinely ordained 
and unique in its features; including within its orbit representatives 
of all the leading religions of the world, of various classes and 
races; faithful to its civil obligations; conscious of its civic 
responsibilities, as well as of the perils confronting the society of which it 
forms a part; sharing the sufferings of that society and confident of 
its own high destiny.  
	 | 
	| 63 | 
	
     The nucleus of this community had been formed by the Báb, soon 
after the night of the Declaration of His Mission to Mullá Husayn in 
Shíráz.  A clamor in which the Sháh, his government, his people and 
the entire ecclesiastical hierarchy of his country unanimously joined 
had greeted its birth.  Captivity, swift and cruel, in the mountains 
of Ádhirbayján, had been the lot of its youthful Founder, almost immediately 
after His return from His pilgrimage to Mecca.  Amidst the 
solitude of Máh-Kú and Chihríq, He had instituted His Covenant, 
formulated His laws, and transmitted to posterity the overwhelming 
majority of His writings.  A conference of His disciples, headed by 
Bahá'u'lláh, had, in the hamlet of Badasht, abrogated in dramatic 
circumstances the laws of the Islamic, and ushered in the new, Dispensation.  
In Tabríz He had, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne 
and the leading ecclesiastical dignitaries of Ádhirbayján, publicly and 
unreservedly voiced His claim to be none other than the promised, 
the long-awaited Qá'im.  Tempests of devastating violence in Mazindarán, 
Nayríz, Zanján and Tihrán had decimated the ranks of His 
followers and robbed Him of the noblest and most valuable of His 
supporters.  He Himself had to witness the virtual annihilation of 
His Faith and the loss of most of the Letters of the Living, and, after 
experiencing, in His own person, a series of bitter humiliations, He 
had been executed by a firing squad in the barrack-square of Tabríz.  
A blood bath of unusual ferocity had engulfed the greatest heroine 
of His Faith, had further denuded it of its adherents, had extinguished 
the life of His trusted amanuensis and repository of His last wishes, and 
swept Bahá'u'lláh into the depths of the foulest dungeon of Tihrán.  
	 | 
	| 64 | 
	
     In the pestilential atmosphere of the Síyáh-Chál, nine years after 
that historic Declaration, the Message proclaimed by the Báb had 
 
yielded its fruit, His promise had been redeemed, and the most glorious, 
the most momentous period of the Heroic Age of the Bahá'í era had 
dawned.  A momentary eclipse of the newly risen Sun of Truth, the 
world's greatest Luminary, had ensued, as a result of Bahá'u'lláh's 
precipitate banishment to `Iráq by order of Násiri'd-Dín Sháh, of His 
sudden withdrawal to the mountains of Kurdistán, and of the degradation 
and confusion that afflicted the remnant of the persecuted 
community of His fellow-disciples in Baghdád.  A reversal in the 
fortunes of a fast declining community, following His return from 
His two-year retirement, had set in, bringing in its wake the recreation 
of that community, the reformation of its morals, the enhancement 
of its prestige, the enrichment of its doctrine, and culminating 
in the Declaration of His Mission in the garden of Najíbíyyih to His 
immediate companions on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople.  
Another crisis--the severest a struggling Faith was destined 
to experience in the course of its history--precipitated by the rebellion 
of the Báb's nominee and the iniquities perpetrated by him and by 
the evil genius that had seduced him, had, in Adrianople, well nigh 
disrupted the newly consolidated forces of the Faith and all but 
destroyed in a baptism of fire the community of the Most Great Name 
which Bahá'u'lláh had called into being.  Cleansed of the pollution of 
this "Most Great Idol," undeterred by the convulsion that had seized 
it, an indestructible Faith had, in the strength of the Covenant instituted 
by the Báb, now surmounted the most formidable obstacles it 
was ever to meet; and in this very hour it reached its meridian glory 
through the proclamation of the Mission of Bahá'u'lláh to the kings, 
the rulers and ecclesiastical leaders of the world in both the East and 
the West.  Close on the heels of this unprecedented victory had followed 
the climax of His sufferings, a banishment to the penal colony 
of Akká, decreed by Sultán `Abdu'l-`Azíz.  This had been hailed by 
vigilant enemies as the signal for the final extermination of a much 
feared and hated adversary, and it had heaped upon that Faith in this 
fortress-town, designated by Bahá'u'lláh as His "Most Great Prison," 
calamities from both within and without, such as it had never before 
experienced.  The formulation of the laws and ordinances of a new-born 
Dispensation and the enunciation and reaffirmation of its fundamental 
principles--the warp and woof of a future Administrative 
Order--had, however, enabled a slowly maturing Revelation, in spite 
of this tide of tribulations, to advance a stage further and yield its 
fairest fruit.  
	 | 
	| 65 | 
	
     The ascension of Bahá'u'lláh had plunged into grief and bewilderment 
 
His loyal supporters, quickened the hopes of the betrayers of 
His Cause, who had rebelled against His God-given authority, and 
rejoiced and encouraged His political as well as ecclesiastical adversaries.  
The Instrument He had forged, the Covenant He had 
Himself instituted, had canalized, after His passing, the forces released 
by Him in the course of a forty-year ministry, had preserved the unity 
of His Faith and provided the impulse required to propel it forward 
to achieve its destiny.  The proclamation of this new Covenant had 
been followed by yet another crisis, precipitated by one of His own 
sons on whom, according to the provisions of that Instrument, had 
been conferred a rank second to none except the Center of that 
Covenant Himself.  Impelled by the forces engendered by the revelation 
of that immortal and unique Document, an unbreachable Faith 
(having registered its initial victory over the Covenant-breakers), 
had, under the leadership of `Abdu'l-Bahá, irradiated the West, illuminated 
the Western fringes of Europe, hoisted its banner in the 
heart of the North American continent, and set in motion the processes 
that were to culminate in the transfer of the mortal remains of its 
Herald to the Holy Land and their entombment in a mausoleum on 
Mt. Carmel, as well as in the erection of its first House of Worship in 
Russian Turkistán.  A major crisis, following swiftly upon the signal 
victories achieved in East and West, attributable to the monstrous 
intrigues of the Arch-breaker of Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant and to the 
orders issued by the tyrannical `Abdu'l-Hamíd, had exposed, during 
more than seven years, the Heart and Center of the Faith to imminent 
peril, filled with anxiety and anguish its followers and postponed the 
execution of the enterprises conceived for its spread and consolidation.  
`Abdu'l-Bahá's historic journeys in Europe and America, soon after 
the fall of that tyrant and the collapse of his régime, had dealt a staggering 
blow to the Covenant-breakers, had consolidated the colossal 
enterprise He had undertaken in the opening years of His ministry, 
had raised the prestige of His Father's Faith to heights it had never 
before attained, had been instrumental in proclaiming its verities far 
and wide, and had paved the way for the diffusion of its light over 
the Far East and as far as the Antipodes.  Another major crisis--the 
last the Faith was to undergo at its world center--provoked by the 
cruel Jamál Páshá, and accentuated by the anxieties of a devastating 
world war, by the privations it entailed and the rupture of communications 
it brought about, had threatened with still graver peril the 
Head of the Faith Himself, as well as the holiest sanctuaries enshrining 
the remains of its twin Founders.  The revelation of the Tablets of the 
 
Divine Plan, during the somber days of that tragic conflict, had, in 
the concluding years of `Abdu'l-Bahá's ministry, invested the members 
of the leading Bahá'í community in the West--the champions of 
a future Administrative Order--with a world mission which, in the 
concluding years of the first Bahá'í century, was to shed deathless 
glory upon the Faith and its administrative institutions.  The conclusion 
of that long and distressing conflict had frustrated the hopes 
of that military despot and inflicted an ignominious defeat on him, 
had removed, once and for all, the danger that had overshadowed for 
sixty-five years the Founder of the Faith and the Center of His Covenant, 
fulfilled the prophecies recorded by Him in His writings, enhanced 
still further the prestige of His Faith and its Leader, and been 
signalized by the spread of His Message to the continent of Australia.  
	 | 
	| 66 | 
	
     The sudden passing of `Abdu'l-Bahá, marking the close of the 
Primitive Age of the Faith, had, as had been the case with the ascension 
of His Father, submerged in sorrow and consternation His faithful 
disciples, imparted fresh hopes to the dwindling followers of both 
Mírzá Yahyá and Mírzá Muhammad-`Alí, and stirred to feverish 
activity political as well as ecclesiastical adversaries, all of whom 
anticipated the impending dismemberment of the communities which 
the Center of the Covenant had so greatly inspired and ably led.  The 
promulgation of His Will and Testament, inaugurating the Formative 
Age of the Bahá'í era, the Charter delineating the features of an 
Order which the Báb had announced, which Bahá'u'lláh had envisioned, 
and whose laws and principles He had enunciated, had 
galvanized these communities in Europe, Asia, Africa and America 
into concerted action, enabling them to erect and consolidate the 
framework of this Order, by establishing its local and national Assemblies, 
by framing the constitutions of these Assemblies, by securing 
the recognition on the part of the civil authorities in various countries 
of these institutions, by founding administrative headquarters, 
by raising the superstructure of the first House of Worship in the 
West, by establishing and extending the scope of the endowments of 
the Faith and by obtaining the full recognition by the civil authorities 
of the religious character of these endowments at its world center as 
well as in the North American continent.  
	 | 
	| 67 | 
	
     A severe, a historic censure pronounced by a Muslim ecclesiastical 
court in Egypt had, whilst this mighty process--the laying of the 
structural basis of the Bahá'í world Administrative Order--was being 
initiated, officially expelled all adherents of the Faith of Muslim extraction 
from Islám, had condemned them as heretics and brought 
 
the members of a proscribed community face to face with tests and 
perils of a character they had never known before.  The unjust decision 
of a civil court in Baghdád, instigated by Shí'ah enemies, in `Iráq, 
and the decree issued by a still more redoubtable adversary in Russia 
had, moreover, robbed the Faith, on the one hand, of one of its holiest 
centers of pilgrimage, and denied it, on the other, the use of its first 
House of Worship, initiated by `Abdu'l-Bahá and erected in the 
course of His ministry.  And finally, inspired by this unexpected 
declaration made by an age-long enemy--marking the first step in 
the march of their Faith towards total emancipation--and undaunted 
by this double blow struck at its institutions, the followers of Bahá'u'lláh, 
already united and fully equipped through the agencies of a 
firmly established Administrative Order, had arisen to crown the 
immortal records of the first Bahá'í century by vindicating the independent 
character of their Faith, by enforcing the fundamental laws 
ordained in their Most Holy Book, by demanding and in some cases 
obtaining, the recognition by the ruling authorities of their right to be 
classified as followers of an independent religion, by securing from 
the world's highest Tribunal its condemnation of the injustice they 
had suffered at the hands of their persecutors, by establishing their 
residence in no less than thirty-four additional countries, as well as in 
thirteen dependencies, by disseminating their literature in twenty-nine 
additional languages, by enrolling a Queen in the ranks of the supporters 
of their Cause, and lastly by launching an enterprise which, 
as that century approached its end, enabled them to complete the 
exterior ornamentation of their second House of Worship, and to 
bring to a successful conclusion the first stage of the Plan which 
`Abdu'l-Bahá had conceived for the world-wide and systematic 
propagation of their Faith.  
	 | 
	| 68 | 
	
     Kings, emperors, princes, whether of the East or of the West, 
had, as we look back upon the tumultuous record of an entire century, 
either ignored the summons of its Founders, or derided their Message, 
or decreed their exile and banishment, or barbarously persecuted their 
followers, or sedulously striven to discredit their teachings.  They 
were visited by the wrath of the Almighty, many losing their thrones, 
some witnessing the extinction of their dynasties, a few being assassinated 
or covered with shame, others finding themselves powerless to 
avert the cataclysmic dissolution of their kingdoms, still others being 
degraded to positions of subservience in their own realms.  The 
Caliphate, its arch-enemy, had unsheathed the sword against its 
Author and thrice pronounced His banishment.  It was humbled to 
 
dust, and, in its ignominious collapse, suffered the same fate as the 
Jewish hierarchy, the chief persecutor of Jesus Christ, had suffered at 
the hands of its Roman masters, in the first century of the Christian 
Era, almost two thousand years before.  Members of various sacerdotal 
orders, Shí'ah, Sunní, Zoroastrian and Christian, had fiercely assailed 
the Faith, branded as heretic its supporters, and labored unremittingly 
to disrupt its fabric and subvert its foundations.  The most redoubtable 
and hostile amongst these orders were either overthrown or virtually 
dismembered, others rapidly declined in prestige and influence, all 
were made to sustain the impact of a secular power, aggressive and 
determined to curtail their privileges and assert its own authority.  
Apostates, rebels, betrayers, heretics, had exerted their utmost endeavors, 
privily or openly, to sap the loyalty of the followers of 
that Faith, to split their ranks or assault their institutions.  These 
enemies were, one by one, some gradually, others with dramatic swiftness, 
confounded, dispersed, swept away and forgotten.  Not a few 
among its leading figures, its earliest disciples, its foremost champions, 
the companions and fellow-exiles of its Founders, trusted amanuenses 
and secretaries of its Author and of the Center of His Covenant, even 
some of those who were numbered among the kindred of the Manifestation 
Himself, not excluding the nominee of the Báb and the 
son of Bahá'u'lláh, named by Him in the Book of His Covenant, had 
allowed themselves to pass out from under its shadow, to bring shame 
upon it, through acts of indelible infamy, and to provoke crises of 
such dimensions as have never been experienced by any previous religion.  
All were precipitated, without exception, from the enviable 
positions they occupied, many of them lived to behold the frustration 
of their designs, others were plunged into degradation and misery, 
utterly impotent to impair the unity, or stay the march, of the Faith 
they had so shamelessly forsaken.  Ministers, ambassadors and other 
state dignitaries had plotted assiduously to pervert its purpose, had 
instigated the successive banishments of its Founders, and maliciously 
striven to undermine its foundations.  They had, through such plottings, 
unwittingly brought about their own downfall, forfeited the 
confidence of their sovereigns, drunk the cup of disgrace to its dregs, 
and irrevocably sealed their own doom.  Humanity itself, perverse 
and utterly heedless, had refused to lend a hearing ear to the insistent 
appeals and warnings sounded by the twin Founders of the 
Faith, and later voiced by the Center of the Covenant in His public 
discourses in the West.  It had plunged into two desolating wars of 
unprecedented magnitude, which have deranged its equilibrium, mown 
 
down its youth, and shaken it to its roots.  The weak, the obscure, the 
down-trodden had, on the other hand, through their allegiance to so 
mighty a Cause and their response to its summons, been enabled to 
accomplish such feats of valor and heroism as to equal, and in some 
cases to dwarf, the exploits of those men and women of undying fame 
whose names and deeds adorn the spiritual annals of mankind.  
	 | 
	| 69 | 
	
     Despite the blows leveled at its nascent strength, whether by the 
wielders of temporal and spiritual authority from without, or by 
black-hearted foes from within, the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh had, far from 
breaking or bending, gone from strength to strength, from victory 
to victory.  Indeed its history, if read aright, may be said to resolve 
itself into a series of pulsations, of alternating crises and triumphs, 
leading it ever nearer to its divinely appointed destiny.  The outburst 
of savage fanaticism that greeted the birth of the Revelation proclaimed 
by the Báb, His subsequent arrest and captivity, had been followed 
by the formulation of the laws of His Dispensation, by the 
institution of His Covenant, by the inauguration of that Dispensation 
in Badasht, and by the public assertion of His station in Tabríz.  
Widespread and still more violent uprisings in the provinces, His own 
execution, the blood bath which followed it and Bahá'u'lláh's imprisonment 
in the Síyáh-Chál had been succeeded by the breaking of the 
dawn of the Bahá'í Revelation in that dungeon.  Bahá'u'lláh's banishment 
to `Iráq, His withdrawal to Kurdistán and the confusion and 
distress that afflicted His fellow-disciples in Baghdád had, in turn, 
been followed by the resurgence of the Bábí community, culminating 
in the Declaration of His Mission in the Najíbíyyih Garden.  Sultán 
`Abdu'l-`Azíz's decree summoning Him to Constantinople and the 
crisis precipitated by Mírzá Yahyá had been succeeded by the 
proclamation of that Mission to the crowned heads of the world and 
its ecclesiastical leaders.  Bahá'u'lláh's banishment to the penal colony 
of Akká, with all its attendant troubles and miseries, had, in its turn, 
led to the promulgation of the laws and ordinances of His Revelation 
and to the institution of His Covenant, the last act of His life.  The 
fiery tests engendered by the rebellion of Mírzá Muhammad-`Alí and 
his associates had been succeeded by the introduction of the Faith of 
Bahá'u'lláh in the West and the transfer of the Báb's remains to the 
Holy Land.  The renewal of `Abdu'l-Bahá's incarceration and the 
perils and anxieties consequent upon it had resulted in the downfall 
of `Abdu'l-Hamíd, in `Abdu'l-Bahá's release from His confinement, in 
the entombment of the Báb's remains on Mt. Carmel, and in the 
triumphal journeys undertaken by the Center of the Covenant Himself 
 
in Europe and America.  The outbreak of a devastating world war 
and the deepening of the dangers to which Jamál Páshá and the 
Covenant-breakers had exposed Him had led to the revelation of the 
Tablets of the Divine Plan, to the flight of that overbearing Commander, 
to the liberation of the Holy Land, to the enhancement of 
the prestige of the Faith at its world center, and to a marked expansion 
of its activities in East and West.  `Abdu'l-Bahá's passing and the 
agitation which His removal had provoked had been followed by the 
promulgation of His Will and Testament, by the inauguration of the 
Formative Age of the Bahá'í era and by the laying of the foundations 
of a world-embracing Administrative Order.  And finally, the seizure 
of the keys of the Tomb of Bahá'u'lláh by the Covenant-breakers, 
the forcible occupation of His House in Baghdád by the Shí'ah community, 
the outbreak of persecution in Russia and the expulsion of the 
Bahá'í community from Islám in Egypt had been succeeded by the 
public assertion of the independent religious status of the Faith by its 
followers in East and West, by the recognition of that status at its 
world center, by the pronouncement of the Council of the League of 
Nations testifying to the justice of its claims, by a remarkable expansion 
of its international teaching activities and its literature, by the 
testimonials of royalty to its Divine origin, and by the completion of 
the exterior ornamentation of its first House of Worship in the 
western world.  
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	| 70 | 
	
     The tribulations attending the progressive unfoldment of the 
Faith of Bahá'u'lláh have indeed been such as to exceed in gravity 
those from which the religions of the past have suffered.  Unlike 
those religions, however, these tribulations have failed utterly to 
impair its unity, or to create, even temporarily, a breach in the ranks 
of its adherents.  It has not only survived these ordeals, but has 
emerged, purified and inviolate, endowed with greater capacity to face 
and surmount any crisis which its resistless march may engender in 
the future.  
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	| 71 | 
	
     Mighty indeed have been the tasks accomplished and the victories 
achieved by this sorely-tried yet undefeatable Faith within the space 
of a century!  Its unfinished tasks, its future victories, as it stands on 
the threshold of the second Bahá'í century, are greater still.  In the 
brief space of the first hundred years of its existence it has succeeded 
in diffusing its light over five continents, in erecting its outposts in 
the furthermost corners of the earth, in establishing, on an impregnable 
basis its Covenant with all mankind, in rearing the fabric of its 
world-encompassing Administrative Order, in casting off many of the 
 
shackles hindering its total emancipation and world-wide recognition, 
in registering its initial victories over royal, political and ecclesiastical 
adversaries, and in launching the first of its systematic crusades for 
the spiritual conquest of the whole planet.  
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	| 72 | 
	
     The institution, however, which is to constitute the last stage in 
the erection of the framework of its world Administrative Order, 
functioning in close proximity to its world spiritual center, is as yet 
unestablished.  The full emancipation of the Faith itself from the 
fetters of religious orthodoxy, the essential prerequisite of its universal 
recognition and of the emergence of its World Order, is still unachieved.  
The successive campaigns, designed to extend the beneficent 
influence of its System, according to `Abdu'l-Bahá's Plan, to every 
country and island where the structural basis of its Administrative 
Order has not been erected, still remain to be launched.  The banner 
of Yá Bahá'u'l-Abhá which, as foretold by Him, must float from 
the pinnacles of the foremost seat of learning in the Islamic world is 
still unhoisted.  The Most Great House, ordained as a center of pilgrimage 
by Bahá'u'lláh in His Kitáb-i-Aqdas, is as yet unliberated.  
The third Mashriqu'l-Adhkár to be raised to His glory, the site of 
which has recently been acquired, as well as the Dependencies of the 
two Houses of Worship already erected in East and West, are as yet 
unbuilt.  The dome, the final unit which, as anticipated by `Abdu'l-Bahá, 
is to crown the Sepulcher of the Báb is as yet unreared.  The 
codification of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Mother-Book of the Bahá'í 
Revelation, and the systematic promulgation of its laws and ordinances, 
are as yet unbegun.  The preliminary measures for the institution 
of Bahá'í courts, invested with the legal right to apply and 
execute those laws and ordinances, still remain to be undertaken.  
The restitution of the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of the Bahá'í world 
and the recreation of the community that so devotedly reared it, have 
yet to be accomplished.  The sovereign who, as foreshadowed in 
Bahá'u'lláh's Most Holy Book, must adorn the throne of His native 
land, and cast the shadow of royal protection over His long-persecuted 
followers, is as yet undiscovered.  The contest that must ensue as a 
result of the concerted onslaughts which, as prophesied by `Abdu'l-Bahá, 
are to be delivered by the leaders of religions as yet indifferent 
to the advance of the Faith, is as yet unfought.  The Golden Age of the 
Faith itself that must witness the unification of all the peoples and 
nations of the world, the establishment of the Most Great Peace, the 
inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth, the coming 
of age of the entire human race and the birth of a world civilization, 
 
inspired and directed by the creative energies released by Bahá'u'lláh's 
World Order, shining in its meridian splendor, is still unborn and 
its glories unsuspected.  
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	| 73 | 
	
     Whatever may befall this infant Faith of God in future decades 
or in succeeding centuries, whatever the sorrows, dangers and tribulations 
which the next stage in its world-wide development may engender, 
from whatever quarter the assaults to be launched by its 
present or future adversaries may be unleashed against it, however 
great the reverses and setbacks it may suffer, we, who have been 
privileged to apprehend, to the degree our finite minds can fathom, 
the significance of these marvelous phenomena associated with its rise 
and establishment, can harbor no doubt that what it has already 
achieved in the first hundred years of its life provides sufficient guarantee 
that it will continue to forge ahead, capturing loftier heights, 
tearing down every obstacle, opening up new horizons and winning 
still mightier victories until its glorious mission, stretching into the 
dim ranges of time that lie ahead, is totally fulfilled.  
 
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	| 74 | 
	
                                    [END] 
 
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