s international teaching activities and its literature, by the
testimonials of royalty to its Divine origin, and by the completion of the
exterior ornamentation of its first House of Worship in the western world.

The tribulations attending the progressive unfoldment of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah have indeed been such as to exceed in gravity those from which
the religions of the past have suffered. Unlike those religions, however,
these tribulations have failed utterly to impair its unity, or to create,
even temporarily, a breach in the ranks of its adherents. It has not only
survived these ordeals, but has emerged, purified and inviolate, endowed
with greater capacity to face and surmount any crisis which its resistless
march may engender in the future.

Mighty indeed have been the tasks accomplished and the victories achieved
by this sorely-tried yet undefeatable Faith within the space of a century!
Its unfinished tasks, its future victories, as it stands on the threshold
of the second Baha'i century, are greater still. In the brief space of the
first hundred years of its existence it has succeeded in diffusing its
light over five continents, in erecting its outposts in the furthermost
corners of the earth, in establishing, on an impregnable basis its
Covenant with all mankind, in rearing the fabric of its world-encompassing
Administrative Order, in casting off many of the shackles hindering its
total emancipation and world-wide recognition, in registering its initial
victories over royal, political and ecclesiastical adversaries, and in
launching the first of its systematic crusades for the spiritual conquest
of the whole planet.

The institution, however, which is to constitute the last stage in the
erection of the framework of its world Administrative Order, functioning
in close proximity to its world spiritual center, is as yet unestablished.
The full emancipation of the Faith itself from the fetters of religious
orthodoxy, the essential prerequisite of its universal recognition and of
the emergence of its World Order, is still unachieved. The successive
campaigns, designed to extend the beneficent influence of its System,
according to 'Abdu'l-Baha's Plan, to every country and island where the
structural basis of its Administrative Order has not been erected, still
remain to be launched. The banner of Ya Baha'u'l-Abha which, as foretold
by Him, must float from the pinnacles of the foremost seat of learning in
the I