Letters from the Guardian to Australia and New Zealand

I am instructed by our beloved Guardian to express his thanks for your communication of May 14th, with the enclosed copy of the resolutions passed by the Australian and New-Zealand N.S.A. in its April meeting held in Melbourne. He has also noted with deep satisfaction the program of the public meeting you 27 had arranged on that occasion, and is very much heartened to know that the response from the public has been most genuine and quite beyond your expectations.

The general situation of the Cause in Melbourne, however, has caused immense grief to his heart, specially as the believers themselves are losing interest and seem to be drifting away. The decision taken by your Assembly to hold the next Annual Convention there, with the view of encouraging and guiding the friends to re-organise their activities, and also in order to stimulate the progress of the teaching work in that center is most splendid. The Guardian would strongly advise that in the meantime every effort be exerted, through such means as the N.S.A. may find feasible and effective, to bring back into the Community those members who have already left, and to take immediate measures to discourage those who contemplate doing so.

With reference to Miss Martha Root’s projected teaching trip to your shores; the Guardian highly appreciates the cordial invitation extended to her by your Assembly, and has every hope that through her splendid zeal, mature and wide experience in the teaching field, she will be able to lend an unprecedented impetus to the expansion and consolidation of the teaching work throughout Australia and New-Zealand during this coming winter.

In closing I wish to convey through you to the newly-elected N.S.A. the Guardian’s heartfelt congratulations and sincere greetings, and to assure them of his prayers, that throughout their new term of office, they may be assisted in acquitting themselves befittingly of their task.

Also kindly extend to them his loving thanks for the expression of deep sympathy which they have conveyed to him on their behalf, and in the name of the believers in New-Zealand and Australia, in the passing away of the Holy Mother, Munírih Khánum.

I truly admire the manner in which the national representatives of the believers of Australia and New Zealand are discharging their responsibilities and fulfilling their vital and manifold 28 functions. I, moreover, feel eternally thankful for the spirit which the believers themselves manifest, the support they extend to them, the vigilance, steadfastness and self-sacrifice that distinguish the record of their services. The foundations they are laying will endure and broaden as the days go by, and the institutions they are erecting will multiply a thousandfold if they persevere in the path they are now treading. The blessing of the Abhá Beauty will enable them to achieve still greater victories if they refuse to hesitate and falter.