e
the trustees of a firmly established, steadily evolving Administrative
Order to complete the initial stage in the prosecution of the world
mission confidently entrusted by the Center of the Covenant to His chosen
disciples. The Divine Plan, thus set in operation, may be said to have
derived its inspiration from, and been dimly foreshadowed in, the
injunction so significantly addressed by Baha'u'llah to the Chief
Magistrates of the American continent. It was prompted by the contact
established by 'Abdu'l-Baha Himself, in the course of His historic
journey, with the entire body of His followers throughout the United
States and Canada. It was conceived, soon after that contact was
established, in the midst of what was then held to be one of the most
devastating crises in human history. It underwent a period of incubation,
after His ascension, while the machinery of a divinely appointed
Administrative Order was being laboriously devised and its processes set
in motion. Its initial operations were providentially made to synchronize
with the final years of a century that witnessed the birth and rise of a
Faith of which it is the direct consequence. The opening stage in its
execution has been faced by, and will survive, the severe challenge of a
crisis of still greater magnitude than that which baptized its birth. The
conclusion of the first phase of its tremendous and irresistible
unfoldment is now approaching. The hopes and aspirations of a multitude of
believers, in both the East and the West, young and old, whether free or
suppressed, hang on its triumphant consummation. The Temple itself, that
fair incarnation of the soul of an unconquerable Faith, and the first
fruit of the Plan now set in motion, stands in its silent beauty, ready to
reinforce the strenuous endeavors of its prosecutors. Towering in grandeur
and resplendent in its majesty it calls aloud incessantly for a greater, a
far greater number of pioneers who, both at home and in foreign fields,
will scatter to sow the Divine seeds and gather the harvest into its
gates. The Author of the Plan Himself, looking down from His retreats
above, and surveying the prodigious labors of His defeatless disciples,
voices, with even greater insistence, the same call. The time in which to
respond to it is relentlessly shortening. Let men of action seize their
chance ere the swiftly passing days place it irretrievably beyond their
reach.

May 26, 1942

CONSECRATED TO