n their efforts to fashion and perfect the necessary
instruments wherein the embryonic World Order of Baha'u'llah can mature
and develop. It is this building process, slow and unobtrusive, to which
the life of the world-wide Baha'i Community is wholly consecrated, that
constitutes the one hope of a stricken society. For this process is
actuated by the generating influence of God's changeless Purpose, and is
evolving within the framework of the Administrative Order of His Faith.

In a world the structure of whose political and social institutions is
impaired, whose vision is befogged, whose conscience is bewildered, whose
religious systems have become anemic and lost their virtue, this healing
Agency, this leavening Power, this cementing Force, intensely alive and
all-pervasive, has been taking shape, is crystallizing into institutions,
is mobilizing its forces, and is preparing for the spiritual conquest and
the complete redemption of mankind. Though the society which incarnates
its ideals be small, and its direct and tangible benefits as yet
inconsiderable, yet the potentialities with which it has been endowed, and
through which it is destined to regenerate the individual and rebuild a
broken world, are incalculable.

For well nigh a century it has, amid the noise and tumult of a distracted
age, and despite the incessant persecutions to which its leaders,
institutions, and followers have been subjected, succeeded in preserving
its identity, in reinforcing its stability and strength, in maintaining
its organic unity, in preserving the integrity of its laws and its
principles, in erecting its defenses, and in extending and consolidating
its institutions. Numerous and powerful have been the forces that have
schemed, both from within and from without, in lands both far and near, to
quench its light and abolish its holy name. Some have apostatized from its
principles, and betrayed ignominiously its cause. Others have hurled
against it the fiercest anathemas which the embittered leaders of any
ecclesiastical institution are able to pronounce. Still others have heaped
upon it the afflictions and humiliations which sovereign authority can
alone, in the plenitude of its power, inflict.

The utmost its avowed and secret enemies could hope to achieve was to
retard its growth and obscure momentarily its purpose. What they actually
accomplished was to purge and purify its life, to stir it to still greater
depths, to galvanize its