the body of the Bab, an offering of love
from the Baha'is of Rangoon, had, at 'Abdu'l-Baha's suggestion, been
completed and shipped to Haifa.

No need to dwell on the manifold problems and preoccupations which, for
almost a decade, continued to beset 'Abdu'l-Baha until the victorious hour
when He was able to bring to a final consummation the historic task
entrusted to Him by His Father. The risks and perils with which
Baha'u'llah and later His Son had been confronted in their efforts to
insure, during half a century, the protection of those remains were but a
prelude to the grave dangers which, at a later period, the Center of the
Covenant Himself had to face in the course of the construction of the
edifice designed to receive them, and indeed until the hour of His final
release from His incarceration.

The long-drawn out negotiations with the shrewd and calculating owner of
the building-site of the holy Edifice, who, under the influence of the
Covenant-breakers, refused for a long time to sell; the exorbitant price
at first demanded for the opening of a road leading to that site and
indispensable to the work of construction; the interminable objections
raised by officials, high and low, whose easily aroused suspicions had to
be allayed by repeated explanations and assurances given by 'Abdu'l-Baha
Himself; the dangerous situation created by the monstrous accusations
brought by Mirza Muhammad-'Ali and his associates regarding the character
and purpose of that building; the delays and complications caused by
'Abdu'l-Baha's prolonged and enforced absence from Haifa, and His
consequent inability to supervise in person the vast undertaking He had
initiated--all these were among the principal obstacles which He, at so
critical a period in His ministry, had to face and surmount ere He could
execute in its entirety the Plan, the outline of which Baha'u'llah had
communicated to Him on the occasion of one of His visits to Mt. Carmel.

"Every stone of that building, every stone of the road leading to it," He,
many a time was heard to remark, "I have with infinite tears and at
tremendous cost, raised and placed in position." "One night," He,
according to an eye-witness, once observed, "I was so hemmed in by My
anxieties that I had no other recourse than to recite and repeat over and
over again a prayer of the Bab which I had in My possession, the recital
of which greatly calmed Me. The next morning the owner of the plot himself
c