CHAPTER XIX
Abdu'l- Baha's Travels in Europe and America
The establishment of the Faith of Baha'u'llah in the Western Hemisphere-- the most outstanding achievement that will forever be associated with Abdu'l- Baha's ministry-- had, as observed in the preceding pages, set in motion such tremendous forces, and been productive of such far- reaching results, as to warrant the active and personal participation of the Center of the Covenant Himself in those epoch- making activities which His Western disciples had, through the propelling power of that Covenant, boldly initiated and were vigorously prosecuting. (279:1)

The crisis which the blindness and perversity of the Covenant- breakers had precipitated, and which, for several years, had so tragically interfered with the execution of Abdu'l- Baha's purpose, was now providentially resolved. An unsurmountable barrier had been suddenly lifted from His path, His fetters were unlocked, and God's avenging wrath had taken the chains from His neck and placed them upon that of Abdu'l- Hamid, His royal adversary and the dupe of His most implacable enemy. The sacred remains of the Bab, entrusted to His hands by His departed Father, had, moreover, with immense difficulty been transferred from their hiding- place in far- off Tihran to the Holy Land, and deposited ceremoniously and reverently by Him in the bosom of Mt. Carmel. (279:2)

Abdu'l- Baha was at this time broken in health. He suffered from several maladies brought on by the strains and stresses of a tragic life spent almost wholly in exile and imprisonment. He was on the threshold of three- score years and ten. Yet as soon as He was released from His forty- year long captivity, as soon as He had laid the Bab's body in a safe and permanent resting- place, and His mind was free of grievous anxieties connected with the execution of that priceless Trust, He arose with sublime courage, confidence and resolution to consecrate what little strength remained to Him, in the evening of His life, to a service of such heroic proportions that no parallel to it is to be found in the annals of the first Baha'i century. (279:3)

Indeed His three years of travel, first to Egypt, then to Europe and later to America, mark, if we would correctly appraise their historic importance, a turning point of the utmost significance in the history of the century. For the first time since the inception of the Faith, sixty- six years previously, its Head and supreme Representative burst asunder the shackles which had throughout the ministries of both the Bab and Baha'u'llah so grievously fettered its freedom. Though repressive measures still continued to circumscribe the activities of the vast majority of its adherents in the land of its birth, its recognized Leader was now vouchsafed a freedom of action which, with the exception of a brief interval in the course of the War of 1914- 18, He was to continue to enjoy to the end of His life, and which has never since been withdrawn from its institutions at its world center. (279:4)

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