Moved to share with assembled representatives of American Baha'i Community
gathered beneath the dome of the Most Holy House of Worship in the Baha'i
world, feelings of profound emotion evoked by this historic occasion of
the world-wide commemoration of the First Centenary of the Martyrdom of
the Blessed Bab, Prophet and Herald of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, Founder
of the Dispensation marking the culmination of the six thousand year old
Adamic Cycle, Inaugurator of the five thousand century Baha'i Cycle.
Poignantly call to mind the circumstances attending the last act
consummating the tragic ministry of the Master-Hero of the most sublime
drama in the religious annals of mankind, signalizing the most dramatic
event of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i
Dispensation, destined to be recognized by posterity as the most precious,
momentous sacrifice in the world's spiritual history. Recall the peerless
tributes paid to His memory by the Founder of the Faith, acclaiming Him
Monarch of God's Messengers, the Primal Point round Whom the realities of
all the Prophets circle in adoration. Profoundly stirred by the memory of
the agonies He suffered, the glad-tidings He announced, the warnings He
uttered, the forces He set in motion, the adversaries He converted, the
disciples He raised up, the conflagrations He precipitated, the legacy He
left of faith and courage, the love He inspired. Acknowledge with bowed
head, joyous, thankful heart the successive, marvelous evidence of His
triumphant power in the course of the hundred years elapsed since the last
crowning act of His meteoric ministry.
The creative energies released at the hour of the birth of His Revelation,
endowing mankind with the potentialities of the attainment of maturity are
deranging, during the present transitional age, the equilibrium of the
entire planet as the inevitable prelude to the consummation in world unity
of the coming of age of the human race. The portentous but unheeded
warnings addressed to kings, princes, ecclesiastics are responsible for
the successive overthrow of fourteen monarchies of East and West, the
collapse of the institution of the Caliphate, the virtual extinction of
the Pope's temporal sovereignty, the progressive decline in the fortunes
of the ecclesiastical hierarchies of the Islamic, Christian, Jewish,
Zoroastrian, and Hindu Faiths.
The Order eulogized and announced in His writings, whose laws Baha'u'llah
subsequently revealed in the Most Holy Book, whose features 'Abdu'l-Baha
delineated in His Testament, is now passing through its embryonic stage
through the emergence of the initial institutions of the world
Administrative Order in the five continents of the globe. The clarion call
sounded in the Qayyumu'l-Asma, summoning the peoples of the West to
forsake their homes and proclaim His message, was nobly answered by the
communities of the Western Hemisphere headed by the valorous, stalwart
American believers, the chosen vanguard of the all-conquering,
irresistibly marching army of the Faith in the western world.
The embryonic Faith, maturing three years after His martyrdom, traversing
the period of infancy in the course of the Heroic Age of the Faith is now
steadily progressing towards maturity in the present Formative Age,
destined to attain full stature in the Golden Age of the Baha'i
Dispensation.
Lastly the Holy Seed of infinite preciousness, holding within itself
incalculable potentialities representing the culmination of the
centuries-old process of the evolution of humanity through the energies
released by the series of progressive Revelations starting with Adam and
concluded by the Revelation of the Seal of the Prophets, marked by the
successive appearance of the branches, leaves, buds, blossoms and plucked,
after six brief years by the hand of destiny, ground in the mill of
martyrdom and oppression but yielding the oil whose first flickering light
cast upon the somber, subterranean walls of the Siyah-_Ch_al of Tihran,
whose fire gathered brilliance in Ba_gh_dad and shone in full resplendency
in its crystal globe in Adrianople, whose rays warmed and illuminated the
fringes of the American, European, Australian continents through the
tender ministerings of the Center of the Covenant, whose radiance is now
overspreading the surface of the globe during the present Formative Age,
whose full splendor is destined in the course of future milleniums to
suffuse the entire planet.
Already the crushing of this God-imbued kernel upon the anvil of adversity
has ignited the first sparks of the Holy Fire latent within it through the
emergence of the firmly knit world-encompassing community constituting no
less than twenty-five hundred centers established throughout a hundred
countries representing over thirty races and extending as far north as the
Arctic Circle and as far south as the Straits of Magallanes, equipped with
literature translated into sixty languages and possessing endowments
nearing ten million dollars, enriched through the erection of two Houses
of Worship in the heart of the Asiatic and North American continents and
the stately mausoleum reared in its World Center, consolidated through the
incorporation of over a hundred of its national and local assemblies and
reinforced through the proclamation of its independence in the East, its
recognition in the West, eulogized by royalty, buttressed by nine pillars
sustaining the future structure of its supreme administrative council,
energized through the simultaneous prosecution of specific plans conducted
under the aegis of its national councils designed to enlarge the limits
and extend the ramifications and consolidate the foundations of its
divinely appointed Administrative Order over the surface of the entire
planet.
I appeal on this solemn occasion, rendered doubly sacred through the
approaching hundredth anniversary of the most devastating holocaust in the
annals of the Faith, at this anxious hour in the fortunes of this
travailing age, to the entire body of the American believers, the
privileged occupants and stout-hearted defenders of the foremost citadel
of the Faith, to rededicate themselves and resolve, no matter how great
the perils confronting their sister communities on the European, Asiatic,
African and Australian continents, however somber the situation facing
both the cradle of the Faith and its World Center, however grievous the
vicissitudes they themselves may eventually suffer, to hold aloft
unflinchingly the torch of the Faith impregnated with the blood of
innumerable martyrs and transmit it unimpaired so that it may add luster
to future generations destined to labor after them.
[July 4, 1950]