The steadily deepening crisis which mankind is traversing, on the morrow
of the severest ordeal it has yet suffered, and the attendant tribulations
and commotions which a travailing age must necessarily experience, as a
prelude to the birth of the new World Order, destined to rise upon the
ruins of a tottering civilization, must, as they intensify, increasingly
influence the course, and, in some cases, retard the progress, of the
collective enterprises successively launched in the opening years of the
second Baha'i century, and in almost every continent of the globe, by the
world-wide community of the organized followers of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah. In the land of its birth long-standing political rivalries,
combined with a steady decline in the authority and influence exercised by
the central government, are contributing to the reemergence of reactionary
forces, represented by an as yet influential and fanatical priesthood, to
a recrudescence of the persecution, and a multiplication of the
disabilities, to which a still unemancipated Faith has been so cruelly
subjected for more than a century. In the heart of the continent of
Europe, still fiercer political rivalries, as well as the clash of
conflicting ideologies, have prevented the unification, indefinitely
retarded the national revival, multiplied the vicissitudes and rendered
more desperate the plight, of a nation comprising within its frontiers the
largest community of the adherents of the Faith on that continent--a
community destined, as prophesied by 'Abdu'l-Baha, to play a major role in
the spiritual awakening and the ultimate conversion of the European
peoples and races to His Father's Faith. In the subcontinent of India
recent political developments of a momentous character have plunged its
divers castes, races and denominations into grave turmoil, brought in
their wake riots, bloodshed, misery and confusion, fanned into flame
religious animosities, and well-nigh disrupted its economic life. In the
Nile Valley the outbreak of a widespread and virulent epidemic, following
closely upon the political unrest and the severe economic crisis already
afflicting its inhabitants, threatens to disorganize the life of the
nation and to bring in its wake afflictions of an even more serious
character. In the Holy Land itself, the heart and nerve-center of the
far-flung and firmly knit community of the followers of Baha'u'llah, and
the repository of its holiest shrines, already gravely disturbed by the
chronic instability of its political life, the religious dissensions of
its inhabitants, and the ten-year-long strain and danger to which its
people have been subjected and exposed, fresh perils are looming on its
horizon, menacing it, on the one hand with the ravages of an epidemic that
has already taken so heavy a toll of the lives of the people beyond its
southern frontier, and threatening it, on the other, with a civil war of
extreme severity and unpredictable in its consequences. Subject to the
same fundamental causes which have deranged the equilibrium of present-day
society and corroded its life are to be regarded the privations, the
restrictions and crisis which, to a lesser degree, are oppressing the
peoples of Central and Southeastern Europe, of the British Isles and of
certain republics of Central and South America.
In all these territories, whether in the Eastern or Western Hemisphere,
the nascent institutions of a struggling Faith, though subjected in
varying degrees to the stress and strain associated with the decline and
dissolution of time-honored institutions, with fratricidal strife,
economic upheavals, financial crises, outbreaks of epidemics and political
revolutions, have thus far, through the interpositions of a merciful
Providence, been graciously enabled to follow their charted course,
undeflected by the cross-currents and the tempestuous winds which must of
necessity increasingly agitate human society ere the hour of its ultimate
redemption approaches.
In contrast to these sorely tried countries on the European, the Asiatic
and the African continents, unlike her sister republics in either Central
or South America, the great republic of the West--the homeland of that
mother community which, fostered through the tender care of an
ever-solicitous Master, has already proved itself capable of rearing in
its turn such splendid progeny among the divers communities of Latin
America, which bids fair to multiply its daughter communities in a
continent of mightier potentialities--such a republic has been, to a
peculiar degree and over a long and uninterrupted period, relatively free
from the chronic disorders, the political disturbances, the economic
convulsions, the communal riots, the epidemics, the religious
persecutions, the privations and loss of life which, during successive
generations, have in one way or another afflicted so many peoples in
almost every part of the globe.
Singled out by the Almighty for such a unique measure of favor, suffered
to evolve, untrammelled and unperturbed, within the shell of its God-given
Administrative Order, distinguished from its sister communities through
the revelation of a Plan emanating directly from the mind and pen of its
Founder, enriched already by so many trophies, each an eloquent testimony
to its missionary zeal and valor in distant fields and amidst divers
peoples, the Community of the Most Great Name in the North American
continent must, sensible of the abounding grace vouchsafed to it by
Baha'u'llah, resolve, as it has never resolved before, to carry out,
however much it may be buffeted by future circumstances and the unforeseen
ordeals which a heedless and chaotic world may still further experience,
the mission confidently entrusted to its hands by an all-wise and loving
Master.