eforth share in the election of Convention delegates. The
multiplication of Baha'i Centers and the remarkable increase in the number
of groups and isolated believers, prompt my decision. The historic
occasion of next year's festivities, commemorating alike the Hundredth
Anniversary of the birth of the Faith of Baha'u'llah and the Fiftieth
Anniversary of its establishment in the Western Hemisphere, and
celebrating the completion of the exterior ornamentation of the first
House of Worship in the Western World, imperatively demand it. Details of
the project have already been mailed. I congratulate the best-loved
American believers, I share their joy and wish them God-speed, confident
of still greater victories as they forge ahead in the course of the second
Baha'i Century along the path leading them to their high destiny. I hope
to forward, in time for the solemn thanksgiving service to be held in the
auditorium of the Temple on the evening of May twenty-second, at the hour
of His epoch-making Declaration, a sacred portrait of the Bab, the only
copy ever sent out from the Holy Land, to be unveiled at the dedication
ceremony and to repose for all time, together with Baha'u'llah's blessed
hair, beneath the dome of the Holy Edifice within the heart of the North
American continent.

April 14, 1943

FOUNDATION STONE LAID BY THE CENTER OF THE COVENANT

The completion of the exterior ornamentation of the Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar
in Wilmette, the most hallowed Temple ever to be erected by the followers
of Baha'u'llah, and the crowning glory of the first Baha'i century, is an
event of unique and transcendental significance. Neither the first
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the Baha'i world, reared in the city of
I_sh_qabad, nor any House of Worship to be raised in succeeding centuries,
can claim to possess the vast, the immeasurable potentialities with which
this Mother Temple of the West, established in the very heart of so
enviable a continent, and whose foundation stone has been laid by the hand
of the Center of the Covenant Himself, has been endowed. Conceived forty
years ago by that little band of far-sighted and resolute disciples of
'Abdu'l-Baha, members of the first Baha'i community established in the
Western Hemisphere; blessed and fostered by a vigilant Master Who directed
its course from the hour of its inception to the last days of His life;
supported by the spontaneous contributions of Baha'is poured in from the
five