e and captivity, 'Abdu'l-Baha set
out on His memorable journey across the seas to the land where He might
bless by His presence, and sanctify through His deeds, the mighty acts His
spirit had led His disciples to perform. The circumstances that have
attended His triumphal progress through the chief cities of the United
States and Canada my pen is utterly incapable of describing. The joys
which the announcement of His arrival evoked, the publicity which His
activities created, the forces which His utterances released, the
opposition which the implications of His teachings excited, the
significant episodes to which His words and deeds continually gave
rise--these future generations will, no doubt, minutely and befittingly
register. They will carefully delineate their features, will cherish and
preserve their memory, and will transmit unimpaired the record of their
minutest details to their descendants. It would indeed be presumptuous on
our part to attempt, at the present time, to sketch even the bare outline
of so vast, so enthralling a theme. Contemplating after the lapse of above
twenty years this notable landmark in America's spiritual history we still
find ourselves compelled to confess our inability to grasp its import or
to fathom its mystery. I have alluded in the preceding pages to a few of
the more salient features of that never-to-be-forgotten visit. These
incidents, as we look back upon them, eloquently proclaim 'Abdu'l-Baha's
specific purpose to confer through these symbolic functions upon the
first-born of the communities of the West that spiritual primacy which was
to be the birthright of the American believers.

The seeds which 'Abdu'l-Baha's ceaseless activities so lavishly scattered
had endowed the United States and Canada, nay the entire continent, with
potentialities such as it had never known in its history. On the small
band of His trained and beloved disciples, and through them on their
descendants, He, through that visit, had bequeathed a priceless heritage--a
heritage which carried with it the sacred and primary obligation to arise
and carry on in that fertile field the work He had so gloriously
initiated. We can dimly picture to ourselves the wishes that must have
welled from His eager heart as He bade His last farewell to that promising
country. An inscrutable Wisdom, we can well imagine Him remark to His
disciples on the eve of His departure, has, in His infinite bounty singled
out your native l