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Citadel of Faith
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Pages 38-41
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Effective Prosecution of Sacred Tasks
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The steadily deepening crisis which mankind is traversing, on the
morrow of the severest ordeal it has yet suffered, and the attendant
tribulations and commotions which a travailing age must necessarily
experience, as a prelude to the birth of the new World Order, destined
to rise upon the ruins of a tottering civilization, must, as they intensify,
increasingly influence the course, and, in some cases, retard the
progress, of the collective enterprises successively launched in the
opening years of the second Bahá'í century, and in almost every
continent of the globe, by the world-wide community of the organized
followers of the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh. In the land of its birth long-standing
political rivalries, combined with a steady decline in the
authority and influence exercised by the central government, are
contributing to the reemergence of reactionary forces, represented by
an as yet influential and fanatical priesthood, to a recrudescence of the
persecution, and a multiplication of the disabilities, to which a still
unemancipated Faith has been so cruelly subjected for more than a
century. In the heart of the continent of Europe, still fiercer political
rivalries, as well as the clash of conflicting ideologies, have prevented
the unification, indefinitely retarded the national revival, multiplied the
vicissitudes and rendered more desperate the plight, of a nation comprising
within its frontiers the largest community of the adherents of
the Faith on that continent--a community destined, as prophesied by
`Abdu'l-Bahá, to play a major role in the spiritual awakening and the
ultimate conversion of the European peoples and races to His Father's
Faith. In the subcontinent of India recent political developments of a
momentous character have plunged its divers castes, races and denominations
into grave turmoil, brought in their wake riots, bloodshed,
misery and confusion, fanned into flame religious animosities, and well-nigh
disrupted its economic life. In the Nile Valley the outbreak of a
widespread and virulent epidemic, following closely upon the political
unrest and the severe economic crisis already afflicting its inhabitants,
threatens to disorganize the life of the nation and to bring in its wake
afflictions of an even more serious character. In the Holy Land itself,
the heart and nerve-center of the far-flung and firmly knit community
of the followers of Bahá'u'lláh, and the repository of its holiest shrines,
already gravely disturbed by the chronic instability of its political life,
the religious dissensions of its inhabitants, and the ten-year-long strain
and danger to which its people have been subjected and exposed, fresh
perils are looming on its horizon, menacing it, on the one hand with the
ravages of an epidemic that has already taken so heavy a toll of the lives
of the people beyond its southern frontier, and threatening it, on the
other, with a civil war of extreme severity and unpredictable in its
consequences. Subject to the same fundamental causes which have
deranged the equilibrium of present-day society and corroded its life are
to be regarded the privations, the restrictions and crisis which, to a
lesser degree, are oppressing the peoples of Central and Southeastern
Europe, of the British Isles and of certain republics of Central and
South America.
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In all these territories, whether in the Eastern or Western Hemisphere,
the nascent institutions of a struggling Faith, though subjected
in varying degrees to the stress and strain associated with the decline
and dissolution of time-honored institutions, with fratricidal strife,
economic upheavals, financial crises, outbreaks of epidemics and political
revolutions, have thus far, through the interpositions of a merciful
Providence, been graciously enabled to follow their charted course,
undeflected by the cross-currents and the tempestuous winds which
must of necessity increasingly agitate human society ere the hour of its
ultimate redemption approaches.
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In contrast to these sorely tried countries on the European, the
Asiatic and the African continents, unlike her sister republics in either
Central or South America, the great republic of the West--the homeland
of that mother community which, fostered through the tender care
of an ever-solicitous Master, has already proved itself capable of rearing
in its turn such splendid progeny among the divers communities of
Latin America, which bids fair to multiply its daughter communities in
a continent of mightier potentialities--such a republic has been, to a
peculiar degree and over a long and uninterrupted period, relatively
free from the chronic disorders, the political disturbances, the economic
convulsions, the communal riots, the epidemics, the religious
persecutions, the privations and loss of life which, during successive
generations, have in one way or another afflicted so many peoples in
almost every part of the globe.
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Singled out by the Almighty for such a unique measure of favor,
suffered to evolve, untrammelled and unperturbed, within the shell of
its God-given Administrative Order, distinguished from its sister communities
through the revelation of a Plan emanating directly from the
mind and pen of its Founder, enriched already by so many trophies,
each an eloquent testimony to its missionary zeal and valor in distant
fields and amidst divers peoples, the Community of the Most Great
Name in the North American continent must, sensible of the abounding
grace vouchsafed to it by Bahá'u'lláh, resolve, as it has never
resolved before, to carry out, however much it may be buffeted by
future circumstances and the unforeseen ordeals which a heedless and
chaotic world may still further experience, the mission confidently
entrusted to its hands by an all-wise and loving Master.
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