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GRATITUDE TO PIONEERS Assure each pioneer immeasurable gratitude. Such vigorous response at such perilous times to so vital a call opens brilliant epoch in Formative Age of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. I am impelled to congratulate the Assembly for its wise, efficient trusteeship. (19:1) MY PLEA, MY SUPREME ENTREATY I have in two recent, successive messages, cabled to your Assembly, giving expression, as far as it lay in my power, to the feelings of over- powering gratitude which the response of so many pioneers to the call of teaching has evoked in my heart. I have moreover felt impelled to convey my congratulations to the members of your Assembly who, through their resource, unity and singlemindedness, have lent so needed and timely an impetus to the mighty work associated with the second year of the Seven Year Plan. There can be no doubt whatever that what the American believers, no less than their elected National representatives, have accomplished, the long and assiduous care of the former and the potent methods employed by the latter, have witnessed to the uprising of a new spirit on which the defamers of the Cause may well pause to reflect, and from which its lovers cannot but derive deep joy and solace. I again wish to thank with all my soul those whose acts have stirred the imagination of friend and foe alike. (19:2) In my desire not to omit anything that might help to spur on or rein force the community of the American believers as they move on to their destiny, I feel it necessary to add a word of warning in connection with the work that has been so splendidly begun lest it should be jeopardized or frustrated. The initial phase of the teaching work operating under the Seven Year Plan has at long last been concluded. They who have pushed it forward have withstood the test gloriously. By their acts, whether as teachers or administrators, they have written a glorious page in the struggle for the laying of a continent-wide foundation for the Administrative Order of their Faith. At this advanced stage in the fulfillment of the purpose to which they have set their hand there can be no turning back, no halting, no respite. To launch the bark of the Faith, to implant its banner, is not enough. Support, ample, organized and unremitting, should be lent, designed to direct the course of that work and to lay an unassailable foundation for the fort destined to stand guard over that banner.
(19:3)
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