th the nascent Faith of Baha'u'llah, and is the
harbinger of the New World Order that Faith must erelong establish. The
destructive forces that characterize the other should be identified with a
civilization that has refused to answer to the expectation of a new age,
and is consequently falling into chaos and decline.

A titanic, a spiritual struggle, unparalleled in its magnitude yet
unspeakably glorious in its ultimate consequences, is being waged as a
result of these opposing tendencies, in this age of transition through
which the organized community of the followers of Baha'u'llah and mankind
as a whole are passing.

The Spirit that has incarnated itself in the institutions of a rising
Faith has, in the course of its onward march for the redemption of the
world, encountered and is now battling with such forces as are, in most
instances, the very negation of that Spirit, and whose continued existence
must inevitably hinder it from achieving its purpose. The hollow and
outworn institutions, the obsolescent doctrines and beliefs, the effete
and discredited traditions which these forces represent, it should be
observed, have, in certain instances, been undermined by virtue of their
senility, the loss of their cohesive power, and their own inherent
corruption. A few have been swept away by the onrushing forces which the
Baha'i Faith has, at the hour of its birth, so mysteriously released.
Others, as a direct result of a vain and feeble resistance to its rise in
the initial stages of its development, have died out and been utterly
discredited. Still others, fearful of the pervasive influence of the
institutions in which that same Spirit had, at a later stage, been
embodied, had mobilized their forces and launched their attack, destined
to sustain, in their turn, after a brief and illusory success, an
ignominious defeat.

This Age of Transition

It is not my purpose to call to mind, much less to attempt a detailed
analysis of, the spiritual struggles that have ensued, or to note the
victories that have redounded to the glory of the Faith of Baha'u'llah
since the day of its foundation. My chief concern is not with the
happenings that have distinguished the First, the Apostolic Age of the
Baha'i Dispensation, but rather with the outstanding events that are
transpiring in, and the tendencies which characterize, the formative
period of its development, this Age of Transition, whose tribulations are
the precursors o