The national plans, formulated and vigorously and systematically prosecuted, in the course of the concluding years of the first, and the opening years of the second, epoch of the Formative Age of the Faith, by the Bahá’í communities in the United States, in Persia, in the British Isles, in Latin America, in Canada, in India, Pákistán and Burma, in ‘Iráq, in Australia and New Zealand, in Germany and Austria, in Egypt and the Súdán, have raised the number of Bahá’í centers established in both hemispheres to two thousand five hundred maintained by representatives of the white, the black, the yellow, the red and the brown races of mankind, comprising ten in the Arabian Peninsula, over thirty in Egypt and the Súdán, over forty in the recently opened European goal countries, over fifty in the British Isles, over sixty in Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania, over seventy in Germany and Austria, over ninety in Canada, over ninety in India, Pákistán and Burma, over one hundred in Central and South America, over six hundred in Persia and over one thousand two hundred in the United States of America. The superstructure of the Sepulcher of the Martyr-Herald of the Faith—a three-quarters of a million dollar enterprise—is nearing completion, on the slopes of the Mountain of God, within the heart of the Holy Land, the nest of the Prophets, and the divinely chosen Spiritual and Administrative Center of the Bahá’í world. The preliminary measures, heralding the unfoldment of the institution of Guardianship, the pivot of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Will and Testament, have been adopted, through the appointment of the first two contingents of the Hands of the Cause, numbering nineteen, recruited from the five continents of the globe, representative in their extraction of the three principal religions of mankind, and constituting the nucleus of that august institution invested with such weighty and sacred functions by the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant. The International Bahá’í Council, comprising eight members, charged with assisting in the manifold activities attendant upon the rise of the World Administrative Center of the Faith, which must pave the way for the formation of a Bahá’í International Court and the eventual emergence of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme legislative body of the future Bahá’í Commonwealth, has been established, enlarged, and the functions of its members defined. The number of the pillars of the Universal House of Justice has been raised to twelve through the successive formation of the Canadian, the Central American, the South American and the Italo-Swiss National Spiritual Assemblies. The stupendous process of the rise and consolidation of the World Administrative Center of the Faith has been accelerated through the acquisition, in the Plain of Akká, of a one hundred and sixty thousand square meter area, surrounding the Qiblih of the Bahá’í world, permitting of the extension of the Outer Sanctuary of the Most Holy Tomb—to be