the Ensign of His Most Great Peace, the
Focal Point of His unerring guidance--in a word, the occupant of an office
without peer or equal in the entire field of religious history--stood guard
over it, alert, fearless and determined to enlarge its limits, blazon
abroad its fame, champion its interests and consummate its purpose.

The stirring proclamation 'Abdu'l-Baha had penned, addressed to the rank
and file of the followers of His Father, on the morrow of His ascension,
as well as the prophecies He Himself had uttered in His Tablets, breathed
a resolve and a confidence which the fruits garnered and the triumphs
achieved in the course of a thirty-year ministry have abundantly
justified.

The cloud of despondency that had momentarily settled on the disconsolate
lovers of the Cause of Baha'u'llah was lifted. The continuity of that
unerring guidance vouchsafed to it since its birth was now assured. The
significance of the solemn affirmation that this is "the Day which shall
not be followed by night" was now clearly apprehended. An orphan community
had recognized in 'Abdu'l-Baha, in its hour of desperate need, its Solace,
its Guide, its Mainstay and Champion. The Light that had glowed with such
dazzling brightness in the heart of Asia, and had, in the lifetime of
Baha'u'llah, spread to the Near East, and illuminated the fringes of both
the European and African continents, was to travel, through the impelling
influence of the newly proclaimed Covenant, and almost immediately after
the death of its Author, as far West as the North American continent, and
from thence diffuse itself to the countries of Europe, and subsequently
shed its radiance over both the Far East and Australasia.

Before the Faith, however, could plant its banner in the midmost heart of
the North American continent, and from thence establish its outposts over
so vast a portion of the Western world, the newly born Covenant of
Baha'u'llah had, as had been the case with the Faith that had given it
birth, to be baptized with a fire which was to demonstrate its solidity
and proclaim its indestructibility to an unbelieving world. A crisis,
almost as severe as that which had assailed the Faith in its earliest
infancy in Ba_gh_dad, was to shake that Covenant to its foundations at the
very moment of its inception, and subject afresh the Cause of which it was
the noblest fruit to one of the most grievous ordeals experienced in the
course of an entire century.

Th