Dearly loved friends,
To each and every one of you in this historic Conference we
send our most cordial and loving greetings. The famous island in which you are
now gathered, so strategically placed between the two great continents flanking
the vast oceanic area which surrounds it, to which the Teachings of Christ were
brought a millennium ago, and which, in this Dispensation, was mentioned by the
Centre of the Covenant in His Tablets of the Divine Plan, first heard the Name
of Bahá'u'lláh in 1924 when the Hand of the Cause Amelia Collins stopped
briefly in Reykjavik and made the acquaintance of Holmfridur Arnadottir who
subsequently became the first Bahá'í of Iceland. Eleven years later the beloved
Martha Root spent a month in this land which she loved so well. On that
occasion, with the help of Holmfridur, the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh was widely
proclaimed in the press, on the radio and from the lecture platform.
The great Ocean extending from the equator to the Pole and
from Europe to North America, which has been both the barrier and the link
between the Old and the New Worlds, has played a highly significant part in the
later history of mankind. Long before Columbus arrived in the West Indies the
Vikings, forebears of Icelanders of today, were plying its northern waters. In
later centuries wave upon wave of Europeans sailed from east to west, engaging
in one of the most significant migrations in human history. In the twentieth
century 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself sailed across it and back, a voyage unique in the
religious history of mankind and creating a remarkable parallel with the Light
of the Cause itself, beaming from the East across the great Ocean to the heart
of the North American Continent, being reflected back again, firing new beacon
lights in Europe and in later years diffusing its radiance throughout the
world. The great Republic whose eastern shore forms part of the boundary of
this Ocean has become the Cradle of the Administrative Order and at this
present time the banner of the Most Great Name is being raised in island after
island of this Ocean, two of which -- Iceland and Ireland -- will raise, next
Ridvan, new pillars of the Universal House of Justice.
