However severe their trials, and disheartening the present situation may
appear, they must remember that the Faith to which they owe allegiance has
weathered, not so very long ago, storms of a far greater severity that
seemed, at times, capable of engulfing and of obliterating its nascent
institutions. The newly planted sapling of a divinely conceived
administrative order, having driven deep its roots in German soil, bent
momentarily under the hurricane which so violently swept over it, and no
sooner had the tempest spent its force than it righted itself, and,
growing with a fresh vigour, put forth branches and offshoots that now
overshadow the entire land, and even stretch out as far as the heart of
Austria.
The experience of so miraculous a recovery from so devastating an ordeal
should, alone, prove sufficient to infuse an invigorating spirit into
those who have been subjected to it, as well as into the new generation
who are still close enough to those events to appreciate its extreme
violence, such as will not only enable them to withstand onslaughts of
still greater severity, but impel them, both young and old, men and women
alike, to struggle, with redoubled vigour and deeper consecration, to meet
the pressing and the manifold requirements of the present hour.
To answer decisively the charges levelled against them, and the Faith
which they represent, by their adversaries and critics, they can do no
better than to determine—nay to ensure—that their numerical strength will
rapidly increase throughout the length and breadth of their homeland; that
the isolated centres, groups and local assemblies will multiply to an
unprecedented degree; that every firmly grounded local spiritual assembly
is duly incorporated; that the Bahá’í Marriage Certificate and the Bahá’í
Holy Days are recognized by the Civil authorities; that the literature of
the Faith in German, Russian and those languages spoken in the Baltic
States, is not only translated to an unprecedented extent, but broadcast
far and wide; and, above all that their zeal, whatever betide them, will
remain unquenchable, their spirit indomitable, their loyalty inflexible,
their determination to succeed unshakable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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