render, in His stead, on so colossal a scale, at such
a challenging hour, and in the service of so sublime a Plan, so great and
enduring a service, is a bounty which we can never adequately appraise. We
stand too close to the noble edifice our hands are rearing, the din and
tumult into which a war-devastated world is now plunged are too
distracting, our own share in the furtherance of those global aims, task
and problems that are increasingly absorbing the attention of mankind and
its leaders is as yet too circumscribed, for us to be in a position to
evaluate the contribution which we, as the executors of 'Abdu'l-Baha's
Mandate, as the champion-builders of Baha'u'llah's Order, as the
torch-bearers of a civilization of which that Order is the mainspring and
precursor, are now being led, through the inscrutable dispensations of an
almighty Providence, to make to the world triumph of our Faith, as well as
to the ultimate redemption of all mankind.

Great have been the blessings, and divers the bestowals, vouchsafed to
this Community ever since the compelling will of a loving Master called it
into being, and raised it up for the glory and honor of His Father's
Faith. Unnumbered have been the marks of solicitude which, down the years,
He showered upon it, as He nursed it in its infancy, as He fostered its
growth, as He sent forth His messengers and communicated His written
instructions to initiate it into the mysteries of His Cause, as He
vitalized it through personal contact with His own dynamic and vibrant
personality, as He consecrated, through a series of significant acts, the
initial activities which He Himself had enabled it to inaugurate, as He
invested it, at a later stage, in the evening of His life, with that
primacy that was to empower it to launch the Plan which He had conceived
for its future development, as He, through the sustaining power of His
spirit from on high, assisted it to erect the framework of those
institutions that were to safeguard its unfoldment and canalize its
energies, as He led it forward to embark upon the first stage of His own
revealed Plan which was to enable it to achieve such exploits and garner
such a harvest in the virgin territories of the New World, and as He, with
that same watchful and loving care, is now marshalling its forces and
sounding the signal for a still greater and more brilliant deployment of
those forces, at a time of great commotion and distress, in one of the
most agi