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THE SPIRITUAL POTENCIES OF THAT CONSECRATED SPOT The transfer of the sacred remains of the brother and mother of our Lord and Master 'Abdu'l-Baha to Mount Carmel and their final interment within the hallowed precincts of the Shrine of the Bab, and in the immediate neighborhood of the resting place of the Greatest Holy Leaf, constitute, apart from their historic associations and the tender sentiments they arouse, events of such capital institutional significance as only future happenings, steadily and mysteriously unfolding at the world center of our Faith, can adequately demonstrate. (31:1) The circumstances attending the consummation of this long, this profoundly cherished hope were no less significant. The swiftness and suddenness with which so delicate and weighty an undertaking was conducted; the surmounting of various obstacles which the outbreak of war and its inevitable repercussions necessarily engendered; the success of the long-drawn out negotiations which the solution of certain preliminary problems imposed; the execution of the plan in the face of the continued instability and persistent dangers following the fierce riots that so long and so violently rocked the Holy Land, and despite the smoldering fire of animosity kindled in the breasts of ecclesiastics and Covenant-breakers alike - all combined to demonstrate, afresh and with compelling power, the invincible might of the Cause of Baha'u'llah. (31:2) The Purest Branch, the martyred son, the companion, and amanuensis of Baha'u'llah, that pious and holy youth, who in the darkest days of Baha'u'llah's incarceration in the barracks of 'Akka entreated, on his death-bed, his Father to accept him as a ransom for those of His loved ones who yearned for, but were unable to attain, His presence, and the saintly mother of 'Abdu'l-Baha, surnamed Navvab by Baha'u'llah, and the first recipient of the honored and familiar title of "the Most Exalted Leaf," separated in death above half a century, and forced to suffer the humiliation of an alien burial-ground, are now at long last reunited with the Greatest Holy Leaf with whom they had so abundantly shared the tribulations of one of the most distressing episodes of the Heroic Age of the Faith of Baha'u'llah. Avenged, eternally safeguarded, befittingly glorified, they repose embosomed in the heart of Carmel, hidden beneath its sacred soil, interred in one single spot, lying beneath the shadow of the twin holy Tombs, and facing across the bay, on an eminence of unequalled loveliness and beauty, the silver-city of 'Akka, the point of Adoration of the entire Baha'i world, and the Door of Hope for all mankind. "Haste thee, O Carmel!" thus proclaims the Pen of Baha'u'llah," for lo, the light of the countenance of God, the Ruler of the Kingdom of Names and Fashioner of the heavens, hath been lifted upon thee." "Rejoice, for God hath in this Day established upon thee His throne, hath made thee the dawning-place of His signs and the day-spring of the evidences of His Revelation."
(31:3)
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