acefulness, of joy and of hope is gradually extinguished.

Such, we might well admit, is the state which individuals and institutions
alike are approaching. "No two men," Baha'u'llah, lamenting the plight of
an erring humanity, has written, "can be found who may be said to be
outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are
apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union." "How
long," He, in the same Tablet, exclaims, "will humanity persist in its
waywardness? How long will injustice continue? How long is chaos and
confusion to reign amongst men? How long will discord agitate the face of
society? The winds of despair are, alas, blowing from every direction, and
the strife that divideth and afflicteth the human race is daily
increasing."

The recrudescence of religious intolerance, of racial animosity, and of
patriotic arrogance; the increasing evidences of selfishness, of
suspicion, of fear and of fraud; the spread of terrorism, of lawlessness,
of drunkenness and of crime; the unquenchable thirst for, and the feverish
pursuit after, earthly vanities, riches and pleasures; the weakening of
family solidarity; the laxity in parental control; the lapse into
luxurious indulgence; the irresponsible attitude towards marriage and the
consequent rising tide of divorce; the degeneracy of art and music, the
infection of literature, and the corruption of the press; the extension of
the influence and activities of those "prophets of decadence" who advocate
companionate marriage, who preach the philosophy of nudism, who call
modesty an intellectual fiction, who refuse to regard the procreation of
children as the sacred and primary purpose of marriage, who denounce
religion as an opiate of the people, who would, if given free rein, lead
back the human race to barbarism, chaos, and ultimate extinction--these
appear as the outstanding characteristics of a decadent society, a society
that must either be reborn or perish.

Breakdown of Political and Economic Structure

Politically a similar decline, a no less noticeable evidence of
disintegration and confusion, can be discovered in the age we live in--the
age which a future historian might well recognize to have been the
preamble to the Great Age, whose golden days we can as yet but dimly
visualize.

The passionate and violent happenings that have, in recent years, strained
to almost the point of complete breakdown the political and econom