Dearly loved friends,
Seventy years ago 'Abdu'l-Baha visited Montreal, hallowing
it forever. The visit of the beloved Master to America, the laying by Him of
the cornerstone of the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkar of the West and the revelation
by Him five years later of the Tablets of the Divine Plan, which invest its
chief executors and their allies with spiritual primacy, constitute successive
stages in the gradual disclosure of a mission whose seeds can be found in the
Báb's address to the people of the West, urging them to aid God's Holy Cause.
This mission was given specific direction through Baha'u'llah's summons to the
rulers of America, calling on them to heal the injuries of the oppressed and,
with the "rod of the commandments" of their Lord, to bring their
corrective influence to bear upon the injustices perpetrated by the tyrannical
and the ungodly. 'Abdu'l-Baha revealed in clearer details than those given by
either the Báb or Baha'u'llah the nature and scope of that glorious mission. In
His eternal Tablets unveiling America's spiritual destiny the Master wrote,
"The continent of America is, in the eyes of the one true God, the land wherein
the splendours of His light shall be revealed, where the mysteries of His Faith
shall be unveiled, where the righteous will abide and the free assemble.
Therefore, every section thereof is blessed ..." and, referring to Canada,
He asserted that its future "is very great, and the events connected with
it infinitely glorious." Even more specifically, He expressed the
"hope that in the future Montreal may become so stirred, that the melody
of the Kingdom may travel to all parts of the world from that Dominion and the
breaths of the Holy Spirit may spread from that centre to the East and the West
of America."
