days of that tragic conflict, had, in the concluding years of
'Abdu'l-Baha's ministry, invested the members of the leading Baha'i
community in the West--the champions of a future Administrative Order--with
a world mission which, in the concluding years of the first Baha'i
century, was to shed deathless glory upon the Faith and its administrative
institutions. The conclusion of that long and distressing conflict had
frustrated the hopes of that military despot and inflicted an ignominious
defeat on him, had removed, once and for all, the danger that had
overshadowed for sixty-five years the Founder of the Faith and the Center
of His Covenant, fulfilled the prophecies recorded by Him in His writings,
enhanced still further the prestige of His Faith and its Leader, and been
signalized by the spread of His Message to the continent of Australia.

The sudden passing of 'Abdu'l-Baha, marking the close of the Primitive Age
of the Faith, had, as had been the case with the ascension of His Father,
submerged in sorrow and consternation His faithful disciples, imparted
fresh hopes to the dwindling followers of both Mirza Yahya and Mirza
Muhammad-'Ali, and stirred to feverish activity political as well as
ecclesiastical adversaries, all of whom anticipated the impending
dismemberment of the communities which the Center of the Covenant had so
greatly inspired and ably led. The promulgation of His Will and Testament,
inaugurating the Formative Age of the Baha'i era, the Charter delineating
the features of an Order which the Bab had announced, which Baha'u'llah
had envisioned, and whose laws and principles He had enunciated, had
galvanized these communities in Europe, Asia, Africa and America into
concerted action, enabling them to erect and consolidate the framework of
this Order, by establishing its local and national Assemblies, by framing
the constitutions of these Assemblies, by securing the recognition on the
part of the civil authorities in various countries of these institutions,
by founding administrative headquarters, by raising the superstructure of
the first House of Worship in the West, by establishing and extending the
scope of the endowments of the Faith and by obtaining the full recognition
by the civil authorities of the religious character of these endowments at
its world center as well as in the North American continent.

A severe, a historic censure pronounced by a Muslim ecclesiastical court
in Egypt had, whilst th