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"Noon of day after to-morrow is the hour. Edward, do you know that our good doctor is a Waldensian?" "No, I did not, and am pleased to learn it; though I was satisfied that he was no Papist." "Yes, he is one of that long-persecuted noble race, and will take you to see his pastor on our behalf.

The idea of compelling long-persecuted bishops to resign their sees was no less distasteful than the latter proposal, which involved acquiescence in sacrilegious robbery. At least, pleaded Mgr. Spina, let tithes be re-established. To this request the First Consul deigned no reply. None, indeed, was possible except a curt refusal.

In Persia, in the United States of America, in the Dominion of Canada, in the British Isles, in France, in Germany, in Austria, in India, in Burma, in Egypt, in ‘Iráq, in Russian Turkistán, in the Caucasus, in Australia, in New Zealand, in South Africa, in Turkey, in Syria, in Palestine, in Bulgaria, in Mexico, in the Philippine Islands, in Jamaica, in Costa Rica, in Guatemala, in Honduras, in San Salvador, in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Chile, in Brazil, in Ecuador, in Colombia, in Paraguay, in Peru, in Alaska, in Cuba, in Haiti, in Japan, in the Hawaiian Islands, in Tunisia, in Puerto Rico, in Balúchistán, in Russia, in Transjordan, in Lebanon, and in Abyssinia such councils, constituting the basis of the rising Order of a long-persecuted Faith, were gradually established.

The reaction, so swift and so energetic, of the members of this same community, now deservedly recognized as the impregnable citadel of the Faith of God, and the cradle of the rising institutions of its World Order, to the sudden onslaught made upon the institutions, the lives and the livelihood of their oppressed brethren, members of the numerically leading and the most venerable national Bahá’í community, by the traditional adversaries of a long-persecuted Faith, has been such as to deepen, to a marked extent, the feelings of genuine admiration and esteem, so strongly felt throughout the Bahá’í world, for the enduring and magnificent services rendered in the course of more than six decades by the American believers to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh and its embryonic World Order.

The result was, that, with a countenance expressing mingled surprise and anxiety, the officer led his men from the scene, and left the long-persecuted Covenanters in peace. "Losh, man! div 'ee railly think the news can be true?" asked Andrew Black, after they had settled down and heard it all repeated.

That act of material assimilation, that feeding off the very Godhead in most literal manner, as described in the hymn to the Most Holy Sacrament, was symbolic of the return from exile of the long-persecuted instincts of mankind. It meant that, spiritually or grossly, each according to his nature, men had cast fear behind them, and O res mirabilis! grown proud once more to love.

The first to respond to the call of the New Day in the western world; for many years, in concert with the small band of Canadian believers residing in its immediate neighborhood, the sole champion of the newly proclaimed Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh; foremost in its decisive contribution to the creation of the pattern, the erection of the fabric, the enlargement of the limits, and the consolidation of the institutions of the embryonic World Order, the child of that same Covenant and the harbinger of a still unborn world civilization; singled out by the pen of the Center of that same Covenant for a unique and imperishable bounty as the principal custodian and chief executor of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Divine Plan; doubly honored in the course of His extensive visit to the shores of its homeland through the distinction conferred by Him on the community’s two leading centers, the one as the site where He laid the cornerstone of the holiest House of Worship in the Bahá’í world, and the other the scene of the proclamation of His Father’s Covenant; the triumphant prosecutor of two successive historic Plans, boldly initiated by its elected national representatives for the propagation of the Faith it has espoused in the land of its birth, in the Dominion of Canada, in Central and South America and in the continent of Europe and for the erection of its own House of Worship, the Mother Temple of the West; outstanding in its role as the defender of the Faith, as the supporter of its down-trodden, long-persecuted sister communities in both the Asiatic and African continents, and as the formulator of the national Bahá’í constitution, embodying the by-laws regulating the internal affairs of the members of the Bahá’í communities; incomparable throughout the Bahá’í world as the dynamic agent responsible for the opening of the vast majority of the over two hundred sovereign states and chief dependencies of the globe to the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh; surpassing even its over a hundred-year old sister community in the cradle of that Faith in the number and variety of isolated centers, groups and local assemblies it has succeeded in establishing over the face of the Union stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards and from Alaska to Mexico; noteworthy in the rapid accumulation and wise expenditure of material resources, often involving a self-abnegation reminiscent of the self-sacrifice of the dawn-breakers of the Apostolic Age of the Faith, for the sole purpose of systematically propagating the Faith it has pledged itself to serve, of enhancing its prestige, of multiplying and perfecting its administrative agencies, of enriching its literature, of erecting its edifices, of launching its manifold enterprises, of succoring the needy among the members of its sister communities, of warding off the dangers confronting it from time to time through the malice of its enemiesthe American Bahá’í Community, boasting of such a record of exalted service, can well afford to contemplate the immediate future, with its severe challenge, its complex problems, its hazards, tests and trials, with equanimity and confidence.

The idea of compelling long-persecuted bishops to resign their sees was no less distasteful than the latter proposal, which involved acquiescence in sacrilegious robbery. At least, pleaded Mgr. Spina, let tithes be re-established. To this request the First Consul deigned no reply. None, indeed, was possible except a curt refusal.