ich the security of all teaching plans, Temple projects, and
financial schemes, must ultimately rest, the following stand out as
preeminent and vital, which the members of the American Baha'i community
will do well to ponder. Upon the extent to which these basic requirements
are met, and the manner in which the American believers fulfill them in
their individual lives, administrative activities, and social
relationships, must depend the measure of the manifold blessings which the
All-Bountiful Possessor can vouchsafe to them all. These requirements are
none other than a high sense of moral rectitude in their social and
administrative activities, absolute chastity in their individual lives,
and complete freedom from prejudice in their dealings with peoples of a
different race, class, creed, or color.

The first is specially, though not exclusively, directed to their elected
representatives, whether local, regional, or national, who, in their
capacity as the custodians and members of the nascent institutions of the
Faith of Baha'u'llah, are shouldering the chief responsibility in laying
an unassailable foundation for that Universal House of Justice which, as
its title implies, is to be the exponent and guardian of that Divine
Justice which can alone insure the security of, and establish the reign of
law and order in, a strangely disordered world. The second is mainly and
directly concerned with the Baha'i youth, who can contribute so decisively
to the virility, the purity, and the driving force of the life of the
Baha'i community, and upon whom must depend the future orientation of its
destiny, and the complete unfoldment of the potentialities with which God
has endowed it. The third should be the immediate, the universal, and the
chief concern of all and sundry members of the Baha'i community, of
whatever age, rank, experience, class, or color, as all, with no
exception, must face its challenging implications, and none can claim,
however much he may have progressed along this line, to have completely
discharged the stern responsibilities which it inculcates.

A rectitude of conduct, an abiding sense of undeviating justice,
unobscured by the demoralizing influences which a corruption-ridden
political life so strikingly manifests; a chaste, pure, and holy life,
unsullied and unclouded by the indecencies, the vices, the false
standards, which an inherently deficient moral code tolerates,
perpetuates, and fosters; a fraterni