ing an increasing number of them into
firmly founded groups, and of accelerating the formation of local
assemblies, while safeguarding those already in existence.

THE INDIVIDUAL BAHA'I MUST ARISE

There can be no doubt whatever that to achieve this fourfold purpose is
the most strenuous, the least spectacular, and the most challenging of the
tasks now confronting the American Baha'i Community. It is primarily a
task that concerns the individual believer, wherever he may be, and
whatever his calling, his resources, his race, or his age. Neither the
local nor national representatives of the community, no matter how
elaborate their plans, or persistent their appeals, or sagacious their
counsels, nor even the Guardian himself, however much he may yearn for
this consummation, can decide where the duty of the individual lies, or
supplant him in the discharge of that task. The individual alone must
assess its character, consult his conscience, prayerfully consider all its
aspects, manfully struggle against the natural inertia that weighs him
down in his effort to arise, shed, heroically and irrevocably, the trivial
and superfluous attachments which hold him back, empty himself of every
thought that may tend to obstruct his path, mix, in obedience to the
counsels of the Author of His Faith, and in imitation of the One Who is
its true Exemplar, with men and women, in all walks of life, seek to touch
their hearts, through the distinction which characterizes his thoughts,
his words and his acts, and win them over tactfully, lovingly, prayerfully
and persistently, to the Faith he himself has espoused.

The gross materialism that engulfs the entire nation at the present hour;
the attachment to worldly things that enshrouds the souls of men; the
fears and anxieties that distract their minds; the pleasure and
dissipations that fill their time, the prejudices and animosities that
darken their outlook, the apathy and lethargy that paralyze their
spiritual faculties--these are among the formidable obstacles that stand in
the path of every would-be warrior in the service of Baha'u'llah,
obstacles which he must battle against and surmount in his crusade for the
redemption of his own countrymen.

To the degree that the home front crusader is himself cleansed of these
impurities, liberated from these petty preoccupations and gnawing
anxieties, delivered from these prejudices and antagonisms, emptied of
self, and filled by the h