oclaimed to
mankind, and its challenge voiced to the rulers of the earth in both the
East and the West. Behind the walls of the prison-fortress of Akka the
Bearer of God's newborn Revelation had ordained the laws and formulated
the principles that were to constitute the warp and woof of His World
Order. He had, moreover, prior to His ascension, instituted the Covenant
that was to guide and assist in the laying of its foundations and to
safeguard the unity of its builders. Armed with that peerless and potent
Instrument, 'Abdu'l-Baha, His eldest Son and Center of His Covenant, had
erected the standard of His Father's Faith in the North American
continent, and established an impregnable basis for its institutions in
Western Europe, in the Far East and in Australia. He had, in His works,
Tablets and addresses, elucidated its principles, interpreted its laws,
amplified its doctrine, and erected the rudimentary institutions of its
future Administrative Order. In Russia He had raised its first House of
Worship, whilst on the slopes of Mt. Carmel He had reared a befitting
mausoleum for its Herald, and deposited His remains therein with His Own
hands. Through His visits to several cities in Europe and the North
American continent He had broadcast Baha'u'llah's Message to the peoples
of the West, and heightened the prestige of the Cause of God to a degree
it had never previously experienced. And lastly, in the evening of His
life, He had through the revelation of the Tablets of the Divine Plan
issued His mandate to the community which He Himself had raised up,
trained and nurtured, a Plan that must in the years to come enable its
members to diffuse the light, and erect the administrative fabric, of the
Faith throughout the five continents of the globe.

The moment had now arrived for that undying, that world-vitalizing Spirit
that was born in _Sh_iraz, that had been rekindled in Tihran, that had
been fanned into flame in Ba_gh_dad and Adrianople, that had been carried
to the West, and was now illuminating the fringes of five continents, to
incarnate itself in institutions designed to canalize its outspreading
energies and stimulate its growth. The Age that had witnessed the birth
and rise of the Faith had now closed. The Heroic, the Apostolic Age of the
Dispensation of Baha'u'llah, that primitive period in which its Founders
had lived, in which its life had been generated, in which its greatest
heroes had struggled and quaffed the