While the energy of this community is being expended on the conduct of
this fateful undertaking, marking the baptism of this community, a
collateral effort must, owing to unforeseen circumstances, be exerted for
the establishment of an institution which, though not an integral part of
the Plan formulated for that community, is none the less regarded as
indispensable owing to its emergence into an independent existence, and
the necessity of its following the lead of its sister communities in East
and West, which have, at various stages in their development, adopted this
vital measure for the consolidation of their national institutions and the
raising of the prestige of the Faith in their respective countries. The
selection of the city to serve as the seat of the national Haziratu'l-Quds
in the Dominion of Canada; the purchase of either a plot to serve as a
site for the construction of this Edifice, or, preferably, of a building
to serve as a provisional national administrative headquarters for a
rising, steadily expanding community; the association of all other
National Assemblies throughout the Baha'i World in contributing towards
this highly meritorious enterprise; my own association with the Baha'is
the world over in providing for the early emergence of such a Centre
towards which the manifold activities initiated throughout the length and
breadth of a vast Dominion must converge, and from which the impulses
generated by a rapidly evolving, divinely appointed Administrative Order
must radiate--these constitute the imperative needs of the present hour.
The consummation of this added undertaking, the prompt discharge of this
additional responsibility will, no doubt, constitute a befitting
contribution by one of the youngest national communities in the Baha'i
World to the world-wide celebrations that are to commemorate the centenary
of the Birth of Baha'u'llah's Mission, and which will parallel the
termination of the fifty-year old enterprise of the first
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the West, and its official opening for public
Baha'i worship.
In conjunction with the various National Administrative Headquarters
purchased or constructed, in the course of the last three decades, in five
continents of the globe, and for the most part in the capital cities of
several countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, this latest Edifice in the
chain of Baha'i national institutions linking five continents will, no
doubt, serve to enhance the growing prestige of a world-wide Faith and
consolidate the foundations of its administrative structure. From far-off
Sydney, on the shores of the South Pacific Ocean, and successively through
New Delhi in the heart of the Indian sub-continent, Tihran, the capital of
Baha'u'llah's native land, Ba_gh_dad, the Iraqi capital enshrining His
most holy House, Cairo, the Egyptian capital the admitted centre of both
the Arab and Muslim worlds, the city of Frankfurt in the heart of both
Germany and of the European continent, and as far as the heart of the
North American continent and in the neighbourhood of the first Baha'i
Centre established in the Western Hemisphere, this chain of Baha'i
bastions of a world-encircling Order, must be further extended through an
additional link to be forged in the northern part of the Western
Hemisphere, and its subsequent prolongation into Latin America as far as
the Republics of South America.