e National Spiritual
Assemblies, designed to participate in time in the international elections
that must precede the constitution of the First Universal House of
Justice. The erection of these three pillars, raising to eleven the number
of existing National Spiritual Assemblies, which are to be designated in
future as Secondary Houses of Justice, and are designed to support the
highest legislative body in the administrative hierarchy of the Faith,
will, as the Divine Plan continues to unfold, be supplemented by the
formation of similar bodies which, as they multiply, will, of necessity,
broaden the basis and reinforce the representative character, of the
supreme elective institution which, in conjunction with the institution of
Guardianship, must direct and coordinate the activities of a
world-encircling Faith. Through the formation of these National Spiritual
Assemblies, as the implications of the Divine Plan gradually unfold in the
coming years, the American Baha'i Community will, in addition to its
missionary activities throughout five continents and the islands of the
seven seas, be contributing directly to the laying of the foundation, and
hastening the formation, of an institution which, when constituted, will
have consummated the threefold process involved in the erection of the
total structure of the Administrative Order of the Faith of Baha'u'llah.

In conjunction with these afore-mentioned objectives, and in a sense, more
far-reaching in its repercussions and of greater urgency, is the task of
extending the ramifications of the Divine Plan to a continent which not
only stands in dire need of the ennobling, the reinvigorating, and
spiritualizing influence of a world-redeeming Faith, but must serve as a
stepping-stone to the spiritual conquest of the vast and numerous
territories, lying as yet beyond the scope of the plan, in both the
Asiatic and African continents, and which must, in the course of
successive epochs, be warmed and illuminated by the rays of Baha'u'llah's
Revelation as prescribed in the Tablets revealed by the Center of His
Covenant and the Authorized Interpreter of His teachings.

In the western extremity of that continent, in the Iberian Peninsula, the
parent land and fountain-head of the culture of those Republics which have
already been quickened by the first stirrings of the Plan conceived by
'Abdu'l-Baha; in the extreme North, among the Scandinavian peoples, and
further south, amidst their