with no organization to sustain them, labored with such fidelity and devotion in various countries throughout that continent. The first century of the Bahá’í Era witnessed in darkest Persia the birth of the Faith, as well as the establishment of the Administrative Order—the Child of that Faith—an Order which, cradled in the heart of the North American continent, has already succeeded, in less than a decade and in direct consequence of the initial operation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Plan, and through the concerted, the sustained, and richly blessed efforts of the champion builders of that Order, in spreading out its roots and in rearing its institutions in no less than twenty Republics throughout the length and breadth of the Western Hemisphere. The second century is destined to witness a tremendous deployment and a notable consolidation of the forces working towards the world-wide development of that Order, as well as the first stirrings of that World Order, of which the present Administrative System is at once the precursor, the nucleus and pattern—an Order which, as it slowly crystallizes and radiates its benign influence over the entire planet, will proclaim at once the coming of age of the whole human race, as well as the maturity of the Faith itself, the progenitor of that Order. As the Plan bequeathed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá unfolds, through successive decades of the present century, its measureless potentialities, and gathers within the field of its operations nation after nation in successive continents of the globe, it will be increasingly recognized not only as the most potent agency for the development of the world Administrative System, but also as a primary factor in the birth and efflorescence of the World Order itself in both the East and the West.