The virtual termination of the interior ornamentation of the first
Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar of the West; the forthcoming formation of the twin
national spiritual assemblies of Latin America, following upon the
establishment of a corresponding institution in the Dominion of Canada;
the full attainment of the prescribed goals on the European continent in
accordance with the provisions of the Second Seven Year Plan and the
consolidation already achieved in the North American continent, do not,
under any circumstances, imply that the vast responsibilities shouldered
by a valiant, an alert and resolute community, have been fully and totally
discharged, or that its members can afford, as the plan draws to its
conclusion, to sink into complacency or relax for one moment in their high
endeavors.
The hour destined to mark the triumphant conclusion of the second stage in
their historic, divinely conferred, world-encircling mission has not yet
struck. Rumblings, loud and persistent, presaging a crisis of extreme
severity in world affairs, confront them with a challenge which, in spite
of what they have already accomplished, they cannot and must not either
ignore or underrate. The rise of the World Administrative Center of their
Faith, within the precincts and under the shadow of its World Spiritual
Center, a process that has been kept in abeyance for well nigh thirty
years, whilst the machinery of the national and local institutions of a
nascent Order was being erected and perfected, presents them with an
opportunity which, as the champion-builders of that Order and the
torchbearers of an as yet unborn civilization, they must seize with
alacrity, resolution and utter consecration. The initiation of momentous
projects in other continents of the globe, and particularly in Africa, as
a result of the growing initiative and the spirit of enterprise exhibited
by their fellow-workers in East and West, cannot leave unmoved the
vanguard of a host summoned by 'Abdu'l-Baha, its Divine Commander, and in
accordance with the provisions of a God-given Charter, to play such a
preponderating role in the spiritual conquest of the entire planet. Above
all, the rapid prosecution of an enterprise transcending any undertaking,
whether national or local, embarked upon by the followers of the Faith of
Baha'u'llah, destined to attain its consummation with the erection of the
dome of the Bab's holy Sepulcher, imposes an added obligation, owing to
unforeseen circumstances, on the already multitudinous duties assumed by a
community wholly absorbed in the various tasks it shoulders. In fact, as
the Centenary of the birth of Baha'u'llah's prophetic Mission approaches,
His American followers, not content with the successful conclusion, in
their entirety, of the tasks assigned to them, must aspire to celebrate
befittingly this historic occasion, as becomes the chosen recipients, and
the privileged trustees, of a divinely conceived Plan, through emblazoning
with still more conspicuous exploits, their record of stewardship to a
Faith whose Author has issued such a ringing call to the rulers of the
American continent, and the Center of Whose Covenant has entrusted the
American Baha'i Community with so glorious a mission. Indeed the present
stage in the construction of the superstructure of so holy a shrine
imperatively demands a concentration of attention and resources
commensurate with the high position occupied by this community, with the
freedom it enjoys and the material means at its disposal. The signing of
two successive contracts, for the masonry of the octagon, the cylinder and
the dome of the edifice, necessitated by a sudden worsening of the
international situation, which might cut off indefinitely the provision of
the same stones used for the erection of the arcade and the parapet of
that Sepulcher, and amounting to no less than one hundred and ninety
thousand dollars; the subsidiary contracts for the provision of steel and
cement for the erection of the wrought iron balustrade and the metal
window frames of both the octagon and the cylinder, involving an
additional expenditure of no less than twenty thousand dollars, to which
must be added the cost of the excavation for and the sinking of the eight
piers designed to support the weight of the dome and the immediate
construction of the octagon--these call for a stupendous effort on the part
of all Baha'i communities and a self-abnegation unprecedented in Baha'i
history. A drastic reduction of national and local budgets; the allocation
of substantial sums by all national assemblies; the participation of
individuals through sustained and direct donations to the first
international and incomparably holy enterprise synchronizing with the
birth of the International Baha'i Council at the very heart and center of
a world-encircling Faith can alone insure the uninterrupted progress of an
undertaking which, coupled with the completion of the Mother Temple of the
West, cannot fail to produce tremendous repercussions in the Holy Land, in
the North American continent and throughout the world. A period of
austerity covering the two-year interval separating us from the Centenary
celebrations of the Year Nine, prolonging so unexpectedly the austerity
period already traversed by the American Baha'i Community, and now
extended to embrace its sister communities throughout the Baha'i world, is
evidently not only essential for the attainment of so transcendent a goal,
but also supremely befitting when we recall the nature and dimensions of
the holocaust which a hundred years ago crimson-dyed the annals of our
Faith, which posterity will recognize as the bloodiest episode of the most
tragic period of the Heroic Age of the Baha'i Dispensation, which involved
the martyrdom of that incomparable heroine Tahirih, which was immediately
preceded by the imprisonment of Baha'u'llah in the subterranean dungeon of
Tihran, and which sealed the fate of thousands of men, women and children
in circumstances of unspeakable savagery and on a scale unapproached
throughout subsequent stages of Baha'i history.