tion. The first stage of that enterprise, which had been
held in abeyance, for well nigh twenty years, while the administrative
institutions of the Faith were slowly taking shape and were being
perfected, was finally launched during the last decade of that same
century whose opening years will be associated with the earliest though
veiled intimation of the phenomenal destiny which the followers of the
Faith of Baha'u'llah in the New World are to fulfill. The successful
consummation of the first stage of that long-deferred Mission, made
possible through the brilliant execution of a Seven Year Plan, embracing
the entire Western Hemisphere, synchronized with, and was befittingly
commemorated through, the historic celebrations that marked the
termination of that century.

The opening decade of the second Baha'i century coincides with the
launching of the second Seven Year Plan, destined alike to consolidate the
exploits that have shed such lustre on the last years of the preceding
century, and to carry the Plan a stage further across the ocean to the
shores of the Old World, and to communicate, through the operation of its
regenerative power, its healing influence to the peoples of the most
afflicted, impoverished and agitated continent of the globe. We who stand
on the threshold of this gigantic and two-fold undertaking are unable to
discern the exact course which its immediate operation, both on the home
front and in fields far from the scene of its earliest victories, is
destined to take, the setbacks it may suffer, or the triumphs it must
ultimately achieve. The objectives, however, which must orientate its
prosecutors, and arouse them to a higher pitch of concerted endeavor, are
clearly defined, and by no means beyond their collective power to achieve.

The double task already undertaken to enlarge the basis of the
administrative structure of the Faith throughout the states and provinces
of the North American continent and throughout Latin America, and to
proclaim its truths and principles to the masses, should be relentlessly
pursued, whilst the range of the operation of the Plan is being steadily
enlarged. The administrative centers--foci at which the ever expanding
activities of a rising Order must converge--whose total number had not
exceeded forty at the time of 'Abdu'l-Baha's visit to America, which at
the inception of the first Seven Year Plan had risen to three hundred, and
had swelled to over a thousand ere th